I Called Someone the Wrong Name. Then I Audited My Entire Brand.
Is Your Brand Telling the Same Story Everywhere, or Sending Mixed Signals That Make You Forgettable?
It was supposed to be a simple introductory call. First time speaking, we'd only exchanged a few emails. I pulled up their name — the one that had been sitting right there in their signature and attached to the email address for every single message — said hey [name I saw in the email], and addressed them by it.
They smiled (you know the one) and very graciously let me know: "I actually go by something different."
No big deal. Quick correction. We moved on like the adults we are.
But I couldn't let it go. Not because of the awkwardness (and yes, I was cringing on the inside) but because of what it revealed. This person had been showing up, consistently, in their own communications, under a name that wasn't really theirs. And no one questioned it. Not because people didn't care. But because we work with the signals we're given. We don't go looking for the real story unless something makes us stop and ask.
Your audience does the same thing with you brand - every single day.
The moment I pressed "leave call", I did something I hadn't done in a while. I went through every single place my brand shows up and asked myself "Ok, Amber, does this look, feel, and sound like who you actually are?" Or have I been handing people a name that doesn't quite fit too?
Even though my internal dialogue initially thought "Soooo, why is that the name you put in your email if that's not how you want to be addressed", my self-awareness said "Hold on Judgey McJudgepants...". Because what I found was equal parts enlightening and embarrassing. I was thoroughly humbled. And I think a lot of business owners would find the same thing if they took the same walk.
Before Your Audience Reads a Word, Their Brain Has Already Decided
Here's the part that genuinely keeps me up at night — in the best way. Of all the senses, smell is the only one with a direct neural pathway to the amygdala — where your emotions are processed and to the hippocampus, where your memories are formed and stored. It doesn't go through the thalamus (which is your brain's reception desk) like everything else. It doesn't wait in line. It bypasses logic entirely.
What that means practically - by the time a conscious thought can form about how you feel about something, the emotional impression is already set. Your book has been judged by its sensory cover. Scent-triggered memories are more vivid, older, and more emotionally charged than memories triggered by any other sense. The brain isn't politely waiting to hear your pitch. It already has opinions.
And scent is just one signal. Visuals, messaging, tone, feeling — the brain reads all of them simultaneously, triangulating in real time to arrive at a single, decisive verdict...
Does this feel true?
And allow me to stay for here for just a moment, because I think the scent angle alone lets brands off the hook a little too easily. "Well, we don't have a signature scent, so we're fine." Not so fast, Flash.
If, like me, you grew up in the mall culture of the 90s & early 2000s, then this next name will feel very familiar. Abercrombie & Fitch. You could smell it just from reading the name, huh?
Abercrombie & Fitch told the world they stood for aspiration, ease, and confidence — the effortless cool of youth. That was the story. That was the "name" they wanted to be addressed by. But look at every signal they were actually sending:
Their marketing excluded. Their sizing excluded (because why do you have so many size 00 jeans). Their CEO went on record saying he only wanted "cool kids" wearing the brand. That's not a great look when you're claiming to celebrate everyone, buddy. Their stores hired based on appearance. And then there was their signature scent, Fierce — every store drenched so heavily that the scent itself became a sensory barrier, a wall of "this might not be for you" before a customer even touched a product.
Every single signal pointed to a different emotional destination than the one they claimed. And the brain — and your audience's brain — doesn't separate these things. It synthesizes them. It processes scent, visuals, messaging, and feeling all at once, and it again arrives at one gut-level verdict...
DOES THIS FEEL TRUE?
When the answer is no, people don't usually articulate it. They don't write you a strongly worded letter explaining the disconnect. They just drift away. They don't come back. They tell someone else without quite being able to say why. And A&F spent years (and a boatload of money) trying to rebuild trust with an audience that had already made up its mind.
The scent wasn't the problem. The misalignment was. And the misalignment wasn't just in the store — it was in everything.
Which brings me back to that phone call. And to the question I've been sitting with ever since - in how many places are you showing up under a name that isn't really yours?
This isn't about perfection. It's not about having a flawless brand deck or a color palette that makes designers cry happy tears. It's about coherence — about whether all the signals you're sending are telling the same cohesive story.
There are four channels your audience is reading at once: your visual identity, your messaging and tone, your sensory signals (yes, including scent — whether that's a product, a space, or simply the absence of intention there), and the feeling that lingers after someone experiences you. When all four say the same thing, trust builds fast. When they contradict each other, even subtly, the brain notices before the person does.
When all four signals say the same thing - that's brand alignment.
Quick Check-In: Four Questions About Your Brand Signals Worth Sitting With
- Does you visual identity feel like the emotions you want to evoke?
- Would a stranger experience your brand the way you intend (with your explanation)?
- Does your scent signal reinforce your message or contradict it?
- Is the feeling people leave with the one you meant to create?
Here's the thing about brand misalignment: it's almost never dramatic. Nobody has a meeting where they go, "You know what? Let's send four completely different emotional signals and just see what happens." It accumulates.
An email signature that was set up five years ago.
A bio that doesn't quite reflect who you've become.
A product scent that was chosen because it smelled nice, not because it aligned with the emotion the brand is meant to evoke.
A website tone that sounds like a version of you from three business pivots ago.
Each individual thing seems fine in isolation. But the brain doesn't experience them in isolation. It experiences them all at once, every time someone lands on your page, walks into your space, or opens your product. And if those signals are telling different stories, the brain files you under a category that's very hard to recover from: unclear.
Now, unclear doesn't mean bad. It just means forgettable. Yikes. And in a market where attention is the scarcest resource, forgettable is the thing we actually can't afford.
That one call gave me more useful brand intel than any audit I could have scheduled. Sometimes it takes someone politely saying "that's not actually my name" to make you go check every single place you might be doing the same thing.
So: go check. Not as a punishment, but as an act of care for the brand you've actually built — and the audience that deserves to meet the real version of it.
Amber Epperson - Founder+ Scent Strategist, The Scented Vine®
