As part of the IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands, Tom Moloney explains what brands can learn from comedians to help them find a voice, deepen their identity, and set off on the path to becoming an enduring ‘Headliner’.
What A Time To Be Alive
We live in a fascinating time for growing a business. The purchase funnel has collapsed; the gap between discovering a brand and buying it is narrower than ever, and consumers congregate on digital platforms in numbers that far exceed what any physical venue could accommodate..
As a consequence, brands can now scale at an unprecedented pace—if they can harness the power of the algorithms that govern us.
Figures 1a & 1b show the contrast in time elapsed to >$400m in annual revenue for Nike, Inc. and MEDVi.
A new path to success is possible for brands. When walking it, they exhibit three behaviours: algorithmic compliance, overt financial motivations and a default to speed.
In this paper I will explain why I believe brands must move beyond this set of shallow ‘Hack’ behaviours, and develop identities with depth.
Inspired by successful stand-up comedians—performers who must overcome remarkably similar challenges to today’s brands—I outline three shifts (Fig. 2) that any industry practitioner can apply to help a brand ‘find its voice’, deepen its identity, and set off on the path to becoming an enduring ‘Headliner’.
[Now, put your hands together, clap and cheer as we welcome to the stage…The first section!]
Knock Knock. Who’s There? A Comedy Parallel
We live in a fascinating time for stand-up comedy. The old media gatekeepers have collapsed; the gap between discovering a comedian and consuming their content is narrower than ever, and audiences congregate on digital platforms in numbers that far exceed what any physical venue could accommodate.
As a consequence, stand-ups’ careers can now scale at an unprecedented pace—if they can harness the power of the algorithms that govern us.
Figures 3a & 3b show the contrast in time elapsed x audience reach for Steve Martin and Mo Gilligan
There are many parallels between stand-up comedy and brands: Both try to elicit a specific reaction (laughter/purchase) from groups of people (crowds/consumers) in relatively similar but always slightly altered contexts (venues/channels). Numbers of both are booming: 18% of respondents to the UK Live Comedy Survey 2025 reported as “being relatively new to the sector.” (Live Comedy Association, 2026). Meanwhile the EUIPO (2025) recorded the highest number of trademark applications in its history.
But perhaps the most striking parallel is in the pathways.
Established Headliner stand-ups, like the American Steve Martin, exemplify the ‘old way’ comedy careers were constructed: a path to success forged through hundreds of formative shows in small venues, honing your material, developing your identity, building a following. Eventually you might be picked up by mainstream media (in those days, TV) and catapulted to household fame; success that can be parlayed into other areas (e.g. Hollywood films.
I did stand-up comedy for eighteen years. Ten of those were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success.
Martin’s career trajectory—a sustained period of learning and refining that precedes huge success, is echoed in the trajectory of Nike’s business (Fig. 1a). ”It’s a messy, perilous, and chaotic journey riddled with mistakes, endless struggles, and sacrifice. (...) [but] walk down almost any street in the world today and you’ll likely find someone wearing a pair of Nikes.” (Gates, 2016)
For every Steve Martin there is now a Mo Gilligan; an act that came up the ‘new way’: A shorter, steeper path, defined by the use of digital platforms that amplify impact:
Twelve months ago he was selling jeans. Now, he’s playing the Albert Hall, Drake quotes his catchphrases – and he’s sold out 22 nights at Leicester Square theatre.
Just as Martin’s windy road to success was mirrored by the Nike brand, Gilligan’s rapid ascent is mirrored by Medvi (Fig. 1b), the US-based, GLP-1 weight-loss drugs provider. The business scaled to $401m in revenue within its first twelve months, by using a suite of A.I. tools to build and operate key business functions (Griffith, 2026).
Whilst there are fundamental similarities between brands and comedians across the ages, the biggest difference now is the environment they exist in.
Welcome To The Hackosphere
The 2004 definition of ‘hack’ is “any strategy, adaptation, or expedient solution adopted in order to manage one’s time and daily activities in a more efficient way.” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2026). The use of digital media to reach and influence audiences is, by definition, a hack.
But the term has another meaning in comedy circles. “Hack: An insult meaning cheesy, obvious, unoriginal, easy, lazy comedy (...) It can be a noun, ‘Dude is a total hack.’ or an adjective, ‘Such a hack premise.’” (Lowell Jenson, 2024) “The classic definition is someone who uses the first funny idea, rather than pushing to a more original one.” (Goldsmith, 2026a)..
By conflating these two meanings of Hack (a shortcut or expedient solution + derivative and uninspired performer) I believe we reveal something about the state of brands today:
Brands are increasingly taking shortcuts and seeking out the most expedient solutions.
Most marketers claim they use A.I. to produce more, faster (Adobe, 2026). 92% of businesses intend to invest in generative A.I. tools over the next three years (Mayer et al., 2025).
Brands have become derivative and uninspired.
With 73% of brands deemed replaceable (Havas, 2021) the creative quality of advertising in decline (Wood, 2019) and half of all ads eliciting no emotion (Evans, Field, Morgan, System 1, 2024), indifference reigns supreme.
This ‘Hackification’ of brands has consequences:
Interbrand (2024) estimates that $3.5 trillion in brand value has been lost since 2000 due to an industry-wide obsession with short-term metrics at the expense of long-term potential.
Business lifespans are shrinking
One-tenth of all public companies fail each year, a fourfold increase since 1965 (Boston Consulting Group 2015). Forecasts suggest that about half of the S&P 500 will be replaced in the next 10 years (Innosight, 2026).
Consumers are disengaging
7 out of 10 consumers feel brands send so many messages that they have stopped caring about what they say entirely. (CSG, 2026).
Trust is low
70% of people believe leaders from business, government and media are deliberately misleading them (World Economic Forum, 2025
Let’s be clear: Brands fulfil a commercial role. They have a job to do. But that doesn’t mean they have to be transactional. Freedman (2013, p.12) describes strategy as “the art of creating power”. Headliners understand that identity has the power to make the world more interesting, change behaviour, foster connection, and make businesses more resilient. The Hacks run along, knowing one misstep could consign them to history.
For brands wishing to escape the ‘Hackosphere’, a critical criteria must be established, one that Headliner have achieved: build an identity with depth.
The Need For More Depth
Hall (1976) posited that the culture of a society is an iceberg, with some aspects visible, ‘above the water’, but larger amounts hidden ‘beneath the surface’. Today the iceberg analogy (Fig. 4) is commonly used as a coaching tool to explore the full depth of one’s identity..
Brands, like people, have identities just by virtue of existing. This automatic nature explains how both can go through life with identities that are “performed with ease or clumsiness, awareness or not, guile or good faith”(Goffman, 1959, p. 75).
Against this backdrop, intentionality can be a difference-maker.
When those deeper traits are known and understood, the visible actions and behaviours have a greater chance of aligning with them, and the impact of any action is magnified. Comedians refer to this phenomenon as ‘finding your voice.’ It explains why the same words, uttered from different mouths, elicit different responses.
“As served by any other comedian, this (subject matter) would be pretty stale pub fare, but in Eddie’s (Izzard’s) hands, it’s Michelin-star material.” (Thompson, 2004, p. 104)
Patagonia’s ‘Don’t Buy This Jacket’ (Fig. 5) exemplifies congruent, identity-inspired action. The brand knew “It would be hypocritical to work for environmental change without encouraging customers to think before they buy.” (Patagonia, 2011). So it did something only a Headliner can: Be yourself.
In using the example of Patagonia, I do not intend for ‘depth’ to be understood as ‘purpose’.
An identity defined with depth is one with fidelity and richness, where who you are is the thing that comes into focus, more so than why you exist. Identity depth is about character, perspective, lore, values, attitude. ‘Don’t buy this jacket’ is successful because it manages to convey all of those things. Identity depth provides brands with a framework for how to approach things.
Consider On, the athletic shoe and sportswear company. Their identity is felt through a series of seemingly disparate yet obviously congruent actions (Fig. 6) united not just in visual style, but in substance and sentiment: from product forms like CloudTec® and brand ambassadors like Federer, Elmo and Zendaya, to the restrained, high-end store design. Each avoids the tropes of the category and contributes to a brand that stands for far more than just intensity or victory. It has values and is valued: On reported a record 64.2% gross profit margin in Q1 2026, significantly outperforming the industry average (On Holding AG, 2026a).
Codifying the depth of one’s identity, down to the murky depths of beliefs and philosophies, is hard. And in the Hackosphere, where brands can scale faster than ever, the incentive to do this slow, soul-searching work is not clear. Instead, successful patterns and approaches are imitated, algorithms are gamed, and identity rarely develops beyond the tip of the iceberg: a shallow set of visual and verbal markers optimised for algorithmic performance.
Consider Anker, ‘The World’s NO.1 Mobile Charging Brand’. Which is something they’ll tell you repeatedly, at the cost of saying nearly anything else about themselves (Fig. 7). An exemplar of how to scale a brand on Amazon, Anker effectively manipulates the marketplace algorithm to maximise visibility and conversion, with little-to-no spend on off platform advertising (Bose, 2024). As Anker looks to scale into more diverse sales channels and product verticals (MatrixBCG, 2025), the lack of depth in the brand’s identity is palpable, limiting, and is something that must be retrospectively addressed.
Why ‘Brand-Building’ Is Not Enough
Our industry’s advice for businesses like Anker? Brand-building. Binet & Field (2013) champion a balance between hack-like ‘sales activation’ and ‘brand-building’: the pursuit of establishing lasting emotional connections and memory structures that prime consumers to choose the brand..
But brand-building as a term is nebulous. It does not capture the depth of the emotion, or the quality or authenticity of the memory-structures being built. It is something that can be, and is, hacked: Brands can become salient (i.e. remembered in a buying situation) but without creating lasting value (i.e. actually meaning something to someone beyond fulfilment of a task). Brands like GoDaddy and Yahoo are examples of this. Reach without resonance. Telling these businesses to do ‘brand-building’ is a bit like telling a comedian to ‘be funnier’—the right advice, but unhelpfully vague.
Without deep identity definition, investment in brand-building becomes pouring water into a bucket filled with holes. Define your identity with depth is a more accurate instruction. It forces brands to think about both the visible and invisible: how a set of Distinctive Brand Assets (Romaniuk, 2018) stem from, connect to, and implicitly reinforce deeper identity traits. Assets and behaviours working in lockstep, guided not by what has worked for others, but by a clear sense of self.
No Time Like The Present
The terms Hack and Headliner are subjective. They are also not mutually exclusive. Brands can exhibit behaviours from both, and will continue to do so.
But the more brands hack, the shallower their identity becomes.
The terms Hack and Headliner are subjective. They are also not mutually exclusive. Brands can exhibit behaviours from both, and will continue to do so.
For the brands like Anker, who start as Hacks, the road to Headliner is a long one. It’s a journey best started right now, with the first shift.
SHIFT 1:
From: Compliance → To: Originality
The hardest thing to do is to be true to yourself, especially when everybody is watching.
Hack brands look and behave in the way that algorithm demands they do. They shape-shift to optimise results and follow best practices. Some, like Shein, with their ‘Large-Scale-Test-And-Reorder’ process, have made this their entire business model. (HBR, 2024). For most, compliance is a mindset.
In 2022, writer and designer Elizabeth Godspeed noted “an increasing detachment between art direction and a brand's strategic mission” observing a wide array of brands adopting the same aesthetic approach, with little to no rationale beyond ‘trend’. Four years on and examples of this ‘aesthetic compliance’ are everywhere.
Comedians face a similar dynamic. Crowd-work clips have been proven to drive engagement and following. As a result, many comics have “begun tacking Q&A portions onto their shows to keep their reserves stocked.”(Pandya, 2022). We all follow what works.
The problem with algorithmic compliance is you become part of the herd. Success becomes about who can zag hardest, or quickest. The only way to step off the treadmill is to do something different. The mindset we must adopt is one where a higher price is put on originality.
Many before me have recognised the importance of originality: “Good-to-great organisations think differently about technology and technological change than mediocre ones.” (Collins, 2001, p162). It has been dished out as advice to brands for decades: "’Cherchez le creneau’. Look for the hole (...) You must have the ability to think in reverse, to go against the grain." (Ries and Trout, 1981 p54). But it is famously hard to do.
I was walking across the quad when a thought came to me, one that was nearly devastating (...) There could be nothing that made the audience feel they weren't seeing something utterly new. This realization mortified me.
Prioritisation is the first step. “What’s a completely new way of approaching this?” is the hard question that must be asked. It’s an attitude that today’s Headliner brands testify to: Stuart Jackson, Co-founder of Octopus Energy, notes the importance of prioritising newness, stating, “We’ve been very good at saying, ‘Let’s try it’. Quite often, trying stuff leads to outcomes you don’t expect” (cited in Mahil, 2024).
Curiosity is essential. “When we become curious [about things] (...) that awareness gives us the courage to contemplate how we can change them” (Grant, 2016, p. 8). For comedians, being curious is the attribute that helps them find the funny in subjects, pushing past surface-level observations to develop informed, identity-driven points of view.
Another key skill is the ability to notice. With over 15’s in the UK now spending 7.5 hours a day engaged in screen-based activities (IPA, 2025), the ability to notice—perceiving, spotting and becoming aware of things— is under threat. Michael Wolff, co-founder of the eponymous firm Wolff Olins, nails it:
Noticing and appreciating are vital to imagination (...) Without their essential nourishment, creativity will struggle to happen.
Figure 6: The first Hack to Headliner shift
SHIFT 2:
From: Financial Motivations → To: Personal Beliefs
A friend said to me, ‘you seem to have made a career out of being John Robins professionally’, and that’s exactly true..
CNET describes itself as “a trusted digital publication that provides expert information, reviews and analysis on consumer technologies, services and trends.” (CNET, 2026). In 2023, the accuracy of that description was challenged when reporting revealed the use of A.I. to author stories, publish them using fake bylines, and pack them full of revenue-generating affiliate links and SEO terms (Vincent and Sato, 2023). “We didn’t do it in secret,” said the (then) editor-in-chief, “we did it quietly” (cited in Vincent and Sato, 2023). Whilst the business subsequently U-turned on this decision, the motivations for making it in the first place are abundantly clear: revenue.
Commercial brands exist to make money. Simply put, they can do that in two ways: creating desire or harvesting it. The Hack mindset is focussed on harvesting. The challenge comes when that latent thirst for something is quenched, but the business must continue growing to deliver shareholder returns. This is when the brand mask slips, and the gap between stated values and observable actions can open.
In stand-up terms this might play out when a comedian makes a decision weighted towards commercial aspirations e.g. designed to appeal to decision-makers at TV networks, over artistic merit and self-expression: “The New York clubs were awful, full of dreadful hack comics trying to hone seven-minute sets about nothing into tight three-minute sets about even less for Letterman and such like…” (Stewart Lee, 2010, p. 66).
What CNET lacked, which Headliner brands and comics do well, is the ability to frame their self-serving actions in a desirable way. This isn’t about misdirecting, or about sacrificing growth at the altar of brand. It’s about providing desirable context for your actions. And it’s something that can only be done when you know who you are.
Groundbreaking comedians all do it: a personal experience, perspective or fixation shapes the content and delivery of a performance into something truly unique. In 2017, Hannah Gadsby debuted Nanette, a show in which they resign from stand-up comedy, “deliver a fiery and furious takedown of the heterosexual patriarchy” (Neutze, 2019) and “deconstruct comedy conventions by having the audience undergo the same tension in which marginalised people suffer on a daily basis” (‘Hannah Gadsby: Nanette’, 2026). Such serious actions might seem counter-intuitive for a comedy show, but the resulting critical acclaim is testament to the power of the authentic, identity-driven approach: the depth becomes the product.
The hard question we must all ask is “Money aside, what matters most?” Suspending the myopic focus on commercial performance opens the door to deeper identity definition by connecting us to motivations and compulsions.
Bravery is a prerequisite. The performers and brands who are able to reveal this level of personal motivation are in the minority. Stepping outside of the status quo requires an aptitude for risk and ability to weather discomfort.
Conviction, the ability to commit, hold the line and not let things get watered down or reverted to known best practices, becomes a differentiator.
Figure 7: The second Hack to Headliner shift
SHIFT 3:
From: Defaulting to Speed → To: Being Deliberate
‘You can be good’, Eddie Izzard has often been heard to aver (...) ‘or you can be fast.’
Speed is a defining quality of Hacks. And generative technologies have been a huge enabler of this pace. But in moving fast, precision is often lost.
In Medvi’s (Fig 1b) case, A.I. was used to do the brand, marketing, website, media and ads. Efficient. But when we dig deeper we begin to see the issues with their speed-first approach: “Medvi’s website featured photos of models who looked A.I.-generated and before-and-after weight-loss photos from around the web with the faces changed. Some of its ads were A.I. slop. A scrolling ticker of media logos made it look as if Medvi had been featured in Bloomberg and The Times when it had merely advertised there.” (Griffith, 2026)
For a brand ostensibly in the health sector, these are decisions made without an overt amount of care or attention. Speed has trumped everything—including ethics—and the results speak for themselves: Medvi is facing legal and regulatory actions for its business practices, and a pending class action lawsuit accusing the violation of California’s anti-spam law. (Griffith, 2026)
The sentiment that ‘when success comes quickly, something is lost’ is shared by many in comedy: “I feel a bit sad they’ve [viral TikTok comedians] circumvented the grotesque struggle I’ve had (...) the skills you build from relentlessly doing hard gigs—you just can’t learn that online.” (Bella Hull, cited in The Sunday Times, 2026.
If ‘slow down’ is not acceptable advice for brands, perhaps ‘be more deliberate’ is.
The hard question we must ask of every action is “How does this align with our identity?” This ensures we build congruent pathways between our visible actions and behaviours and the deeper identity elements that sit below the waterline.
The Costco ‘hotdog and beverage combo’—$1.50 since it was introduced in 1985, despite inflationary pressures—is a great example of this discipline. Former CFO Richard Galanti (quoted in Wahba, 2024) explains “the price is there to send a message (...) a $1.50 dog signals that Costco is holding the line on low prices.” This is a brand deeply aware of its identity, resisting quick fixes, making deliberate choices, sending clear messages.
Acting with intention is the skill we must hone. The discipline to use identity as a filter for every decision, in an environment that wants you to move fast and fit in.
Rigour compliments this intention. The ability to sweat the small stuff; like staging or set structures - for comedians, or the price of one of millions of SKUs - for brands, that all add up to something far, far greater.
Fig 8: The third Hack to Headliner shift:
It’s Almost Time For Your Next Act
We live in a fascinating time. Businesses can grow bigger and faster than ever before, whilst their lifespans shrink dramatically. Consumers have more choice and more access, yet many report feeling uninspired and untrusting.
For brands, the temptation is to look out; learn, copy, adopt what’s worked for others. But this approach comes with a ceiling, even if you can’t see it yet. By using ‘hacks’ - shortcuts - brands risk becoming ‘Hacks’ - derivative and uninspired performers.
What the Headliner stand-ups show us, is that our search shouldn’t be outward, but inward. So, look down, look in, and do the hard-but-valuable work of developing an identity with depth.
Fig 9: The full Hack to Headliner table
[Exit stage left.]
Tom Moloney is Executive Strategy Director at Koto. This essay was submitted as part of the IPA Excellence Diploma in Brands.
The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and were submitted in accordance with the IPA terms and conditions regarding the uploading and contribution of content to the IPA newsletters, IPA website, or other IPA media, and should not be interpreted as representing the opinion of the IPA.
Last updated 22 September 2026