Ten years ago, Webcopy+ published an eBook called The Biggest Branding Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.

More than 70 design professionals from around the world contributed their thoughts on what businesses were getting wrong with their brands.

A decade later, I went back to a few of them with a simple question:

Do you still agree with what you said?

The creative landscape has changed considerably since 2016. TikTok didn’t exist. ChatGPT certainly didn’t exist. Creating a logo, campaign, website or steady stream of content still required considerably more time, skill and money than it does today.

Now almost anyone can generate dozens of creative directions in minutes.

So I was curious whether the old advice would still hold up.

It does. In some cases, it may matter even more.

WHEN CREATION BECOMES EASY, SELECTION GETS HARDER

In the original eBook, Jt Taylor of J Taylor Design warned about businesses trying to say everything with their branding.

Too many ideas led to busy, unfocused design, and that thinking tended to spill over into websites, advertising and everything else the brand produced.

Ten years later, he sees the same problem, only now we have considerably more tools to feed it.

“The tools for creating and distributing content have become incredibly accessible, which makes it easier to act on every idea rather than deciding which ideas are actually worth pursuing.”

That distinction matters even more now.

Canva’s 2026 global study of 1,415 marketing leaders and 3,547 consumers found that 97% of marketing leaders use AI in their daily creative work. Yet 87% of consumers believe the best advertising still requires a human touch, while 70% say they can usually spot AI-generated ads because something feels missing.

The scarce resource isn’t content anymore.

It’s judgment.

As Jt puts it:

“Good design and branding choices aren’t about using every tool available. They’re about knowing what belongs and, just as importantly, what doesn’t.”

Ten years ago, brands needed discipline because producing things took effort. Today, they need it because producing things is ridiculously easy.

YOUR BRAND ISN’T WHAT YOU PUBLISH

Ryan Short’s original contribution came at branding from another direction.

In 2016, he argued that businesses put too much attention on the obvious brand assets, such as the logo, website and sales promotions, while overlooking all the other experiences that actually shape how customers feel about them.

Customer service. Packaging. Returns. Invoices. Support.

His point was simple: the experience is the brand.

Today, Ryan is CEO and Co-Founder of CivicBrand, and he takes that original idea a step further.

“The one thing I’d emphasize more today is that a brand should play just as important a role internally as it does externally. In fact, probably more so.”

He describes the brand as an organization’s North Star, helping guide what it prioritizes, how it operates, where it invests and even what it chooses not to do.

That feels especially relevant now.

Brand consistency doesn’t come from generating more things that look and sound vaguely alike. It comes from people making decisions from the same understanding of who the organization is, what it stands for and where it’s going.

Ryan sums that up nicely:

“The brand isn’t something you project. It’s something you use to make decisions.”

That’s a much higher bar than keeping the logo the right colour.

AI CAN GENERATE THE OPTIONS. IT CAN’T OWN THE DECISION.

Guylaine Régimbald of Smiling Surface contributed another idea that has held up remarkably well.

Her advice in the original eBook was that brands need to be actionable, compelling and true. People inside the organization need to understand the standards, believe in the purpose and actually deliver on the promise.

Her view hasn’t changed much.

The environment has.

“Humans haven’t changed; what has changed is the technology they have access to.”

Guylaine sees AI as a tool that can produce visual directions faster, but speed doesn’t eliminate the need for someone who understands the brief, the market and what the brand actually needs to accomplish.

“AI still needs an experienced person behind the keyboard, someone prompting with a clear brief and vision while understanding the market the brand will compete in.”

Interestingly, marketing leaders themselves seem to recognize the limit. In Canva’s 2026 study, when asked what AI would never fully replicate, 42% pointed to empathy and emotional intelligence, 41% to the human imperfection that sparks originality, and another 41% to brand intuition and creative judgment.

Those aren’t production skills. They’re judgment skills.

And that may be where a lot of brand value is moving as the production side gets faster and cheaper.

Guylaine makes the point in six words:

“Customers don’t see the AI; they see the brand.”

MAYBE THE FUNDAMENTALS DIDN’T CHANGE

Going back through the old eBook, what surprised me most was how little the best advice had aged.

The same fundamentals kept coming up: know what you stand for, understand your audience, keep the message focused, build the brand from the inside out, and don’t mistake activity for strategy.

AI changes the speed and scale of what we can create. We can research faster, explore more directions and produce more variations in an afternoon than many teams could have managed in days 10 years ago. That’s a real advantage, but only if someone is making good decisions about what deserves to move forward.

If anything, that makes judgment and restraint more valuable. When powerful creative tools are available to almost everyone, the advantage isn’t simply making more. It’s knowing what belongs, what doesn’t, and why.

The tools have changed drastically. The fundamentals haven’t. Good branding still comes down to clear thinking, sound judgment and the discipline to make choices.

Ten years later, that advice holds up remarkably well.

Rick Sloboda is the founder and Chief Content Strategist at Webcopy+.

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