My experience is pretty much the same as yours, and I largely agree with everything you've said. One thing I'll add is that one of the reasons why branding is

My experience is pretty much the same as yours, and I largely agree with everything you've said. One thing I'll add is that one of the reasons why branding is hard is because there is often a surprisingly large disconnect between how users perceive a brand/product, and how the creators perceive it. My favourite approach to coming up with a brand structure is to go through archetypes with both the client and a subset of users. Archetypes are a great way to get the initial planning of brand perception down, but a lot of designers will do it purely with the client. Nearly every time I've had the fortune to work at an agency that does it for both sides, the perception of the brand has been very different. I think the agency have done a good job, but I do wonder whether they took the time to see how users perceive the Go language. Based on the comments on here, my guess is that they didn't. https://smashingideas.com/behavioral-archetypes/ https://smashingideas.com/behavioral-archetypes/