Your brand needs to shoot for the stars so your customers can land on the moon

If you want your brand to be aspirational, it can’t just be ‘kinda cool’... it needs to be extreme. The brands that stick in your head - the ones people talk about, trust, and pay a premium for - are the ones that go all in.
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Look at Red Bull - they didn’t just sponsor a 10k fun run. They sent a bloke up to the stratosphere in a bloody helium balloon and chucked him out. That’s extreme. But that’s the point - it’s so over-the-top that it sticks in your head and makes you think ‘if Red Bull can send someone to space, it’ll definitely get me through another dreary Monday afternoon of back-to-back Zoom calls’.

Or take North Face. They don’t just make content about someone strolling to work in their jacket. They put it on the backs of people climbing Mount Everest. If it can handle Everest, you’d better believe it’ll keep you warm while you’re freezing your arse off at the side of the pitch, watching your kid’s footy match on a grim Sunday morning.

The lesson here? You don’t just talk the talk. You walk the walk, and then you sprint a marathon for good measure. That’s how you make your brand aspirational. But how do we take this to B2B?
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To build a strong brand in B2B, you need to stop playing it safe.

Too many B2B brands play it safe. They’re terrified of rocking the boat, of putting off a single potential customer, so they end up looking and sounding just like everyone else. Bland. Beige. Forgettable.
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If you want your brand to stand out, you need to go big. Here’s how:

1. Know your customers, otherwise you’re pissing in the wind.

I won’t apologise for the amount of times I say this, but you need to know your customer. You can’t build an aspirational brand if you don’t know who the hell you’re trying to impress. Without understanding your customer, everything you do is based on guesswork and that’s a one-way ticket to irrelevance.
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Who are they? What do they value? Where do they hang out? What inspires them? What’s the one thing they’re desperate for that no one else is giving them? When you know the answers to these questions, you’re not just marketing. You’re solving problems, fulfilling desires, and becoming the go-to brand in your industry.

2. Be brave (no half measures)

If you know who your customer is, and you know your competitive advantage, go all in. I mean, why wouldn’t you?
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Take North Face, for example. They didn’t just say, “Oh, our coats are warm and durable.” They proved it by putting their gear on the backs of people scaling the harshest environments on Earth.
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In B2B, this might mean leaning into your expertise in a way that no one else dares. Are you a SaaS company specialising in streamlining HR processes? Show how your software makes HR teams as efficient as Formula 1 pit crews. You need to get your customers thinking: “Bloody hell, if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for us.”

3. Don’t worry about putting people off

Here’s the thing: you’re not going to be for everyone - and that’s a good thing. As one of our team at Unearthed always says… ‘variety is the spice of life’.
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Too many brands try to appeal to everyone, terrified of alienating a single customer. But the truth is, being everything to everyone means being nothing to anyone. You can’t expect abnormal results and abnormal growth if you’re not taking an abnormal approach.
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Here’s some numbers to put it into perspective. Here’s some market sizes in the UK…

• SEO: £22bn
• Legal: £50bn
• Software: £45bn
• Recruitment: £142bn
• Fintech: £32bn

These markets are huge. Even if you piss off half your audience, there’s still plenty of pie left to go after. Being polarising will make you more appealing to the people who matter - your target audience.

How you can apply Red Bull’s approach to your B2B business…

If you’re in B2B, you’re not chucking people out of balloons (I hope), but you can still go big. But let’s imagine you’re a… B2B logistics company - not particularly sexy, right?
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Instead of branding yourself as just “efficient” or “cost-effective,” you could position your business as the force that keeps the world moving.
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Your identity could focus on extreme dependability under the most challenging circumstances. Think: moving critical supplies to remote Arctic research stations, drone deliveries to unreachable disaster zones, or orchestrating supply chains in active war zones.
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Picture this: A campaign featuring a delivery convoy crossing a desert under military escort to deliver vaccines, or a lone drone fighting through a storm to drop life-saving medicine to a village cut off by floods. Your brand could become synonymous with not just reliability, but audacious solutions where others wouldn’t dare tread. You’ll have to use your imagination on this, as this is the best DALL•E could come up with…

The whole point of this, is that it’ll make people think ‘if they can deliver parcels through war-torn deserts, they’ll definitely be able to deliver this parcel to Bromley’.
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Your visuals could be bold and gritty - vehicles braving snowstorms, drones slicing through fog, command centres buzzing with precision planning. Combine that with messaging that inspires trust and ambition, and you’ve got a brand identity that screams “unstoppable.”
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Tagline? ‘Unbreakable Reliability. Unstoppable Deliveries.’
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This kind of extreme, aspirational identity doesn’t just sell logistics - it sells heroics, making your business the undisputed choice for mission-critical challenges.
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Final thoughts

Your brand needs to shoot for the stars if you want your customers to land on the moon. Stop playing it safe. Stop trying to appeal to everyone. Instead, get to know your customer, go all in on what makes you brilliant, and don’t be afraid to put a few noses out of joint along the way.
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I’m Louis, and I run Unearthed - a brand agency for businesses that aren’t here to play tiddlywinks and want to start building brands people actually give a shit about.
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If you’re into straight-talking, no-bs takes on brand strategy, stick around. If not? Well, you’ve just learned who not to follow for advice.
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P.S. This article was inspired by a Hormozi podcast I listened to recently. He nailed it: the brands that win aren’t just good; they’re unapologetically brilliant at what they do. This isn’t about being flashy for the sake of it. It’s about proving, beyond doubt, that your brand can deliver. That’s what makes you aspirational.
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Catch you next time.