Post by Simon Defoort

Name: People don’t fall in love with a brand because of how it looks. They fall in love with it because of
Uploaded: 2026-01-15T13:00:17.405Z
Channel: Simon Defoort
Description: People don’t fall in love with a brand because of how it looks. They fall in love with it because of what it tells, what it stands for, and whether they recognize themselves in it. Brand strategy is

Co founder @Cycle-cc EX Senior Innovation Leader@Volkswagen

People don’t fall in love with a brand because of how it looks. They fall in love with it because of what it tells, what it stands for, and whether they recognize themselves in it. Brand strategy is not about aesthetics. It’s about purpose, values, and meaning and about expressing them through a strong and inspiring story so that everyone involved in the implementation can understand it, believe in it, and embody it. Our challenge, while working on the brand strategy together with Bao Lorena Truong, Christian Schreiber, Dr. Ulrich Feldinger, Dorota Kapryan and many talented colleagues, wasn’t to reinvent Volkswagen from scratch, but to clarify what Volkswagen truly is, what it has always stood for, and how that belief should be experienced, consistently across every touchpoint. That’s where holistic thinking becomes essential. A brand experience doesn’t start when you enter a car. It starts the first time you discover the brand: when you see an ad, visit a website, walk into a dealership, sit behind the wheel, and live with the product over time. If these moments don’t speak the same language, there is no experience, only disconnected touchpoints. Today, I’m extremely proud to have been part of this journey and to have played a role in shaping the future of Volkswagen. Congratulations to Andreas Mindt, who embodies this vision like no one else and inspires the team every day to make it a reality.

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