We begin in the misty, cedar-filled mountains of Japan, far from the neon of Tokyo. Here, a collective of farmers, calling themselves the “Mushroom Monks of Kyushu,” did something that defies all agricultural logic.
They foresaw a future where the Japanese youth, increasingly urbanized, would feel a deep, aching disconnect from their ancestral land and its culinary heritage. The taste of the forest, the umami of specific wild mushrooms, was becoming a fading memory on the palate of a nation.
So, what did they do? They didn’t just optimize their mushroom yield or improve their supply chain.
They started a “Taste Archive.”
They began deliberately cultivating and preserving the exact taste profiles of mushrooms from specific forests, at specific altitudes, from a specific time. They created a library of flavours, a sensory time capsule. They partnered with high-end kaiseki chefs not to sell a product, but to sell a memory—a memory their customers hadn’t even lost yet.
The Insight:They weren’t selling mushrooms. They were selling a bridge back to a soulful, authentic Japan that was slipping away. They painted a future where taste is a time machine, and they made themselves the chief engineers. They created nostalgia in advance.
You see, transformative brands don’t win because they predict the future. They win because they refuse to be guests in it. They don’t wait for invitations. They show up with spray paint and start creating murals on tomorrow’s walls.
And the rest? They’re still probably arguing about the color of their logo.
Let’s look at some brands that painted their own tomorrow.
The Soap Company That Became a Social Movement
Dharavi Diary didn’t start as a brand. It started as an uncomfortable question: “What if we stopped talking about marginalized communities and started amplifying from them?”
While premium brands were busy with sustainability theater—you know, the kind where they plant one tree for every thousand products sold—this Mumbai-based social enterprise turned leather waste from Dharavi into luxury bags. But here’s the twist: they didn’t position themselves as charity. They positioned themselves as craftsmanship.
No pity marketing. No poverty porn. Just world-class design that happens to demolish every assumption about where innovation comes from.
The future they painted? One where “made in slums” becomes a badge of honor, not shame. A lot of the brands are probably still running “awareness campaigns.”
Dharavi Diary became the awareness.
The Funeral Home That Chose Joy Over Grief
Stay with me here. I assure you it is NOT morbid.
In Australia, a funeral home called Bare Cremation looked at an industry drowning in Victorian solemnity and asked: “What if death doesn’t have to be depressing?”
They stripped away the ornate caskets, the hushed tones, the unnecessary $15,000 price tags. They created affordable, transparent, even—dare I say it—cheerful end-of-life services. Their website doesn’t whisper. It converses. Like you’re planning a celebration, not attending a tragedy.
The industry called it disrespectful. Families called it liberating.
While legacy funeral homes were polishing mahogany, Bare Cremation was rewriting the emotional contract around mortality itself.
Here’s our reality check: If a funeral home can inject radical optimism into death, what’s our excuse for boring our customers to tears with “value propositions”?
The Speedbreaker: Where Most Brands Get Stuck
Let me tell you where you’re hemorrhaging potential right now.
You’re obsessed with adaptation. Reading trend reports. Attending webinars on “future-proofing.” Hiring consultants to tell you what millennials want (spoiler: they’re almost 40 now, and you’re still asking the wrong question). Adaptation is defense. It’s playing not-to-lose.
Transformative brands don’t adapt to the future. They implicate themselves in its creation.
There’s a difference between asking “How do we stay relevant?” and “What future are we brave enough to demand?”
One keeps you in the game. The other changes the game entirely.
What is NOT common: Uncommon Courage- The Bank That Became a Lifestyle Before “Fintech” Was Cool: Nubank
Brazil’s purple revolution, didn’t launch with better interest rates. They launched with a middle finger to bureaucracy.
Traditional banks in Brazil treated customers like supplicants. Nubank treated them like humans who were tired of being patronized. No physical branches. No fine print ambushes. No waiting 45 minutes to talk to someone who’d ultimately say “no.”
Just clean design, transparent pricing, and a tone of voice that actually sounded like it was written by humans, not compliance officers.
By 2024, they’d become Latin America’s most valuable bank. Not by perfecting banking. By reimagining what banking could feel like.
The wake-up call: They didn’t win by being the best bank. They won by being the least bank-like bank.
The Bookstore That You Fell For, Book, Line & Sinker
To them, books were just the begining. Atta Galatta in Bangalore could have been another independent bookstore losing to Amazon’s algorithms and discounts.
Instead, they became Bangalore’s living room.
Author events? Sure. But also standup comedy. Political debates. Startup pitch nights. Children’s theater. A café where ideas percolate as much as coffee. They didn’t sell books—they sold belonging to a community that still believes words matter.
When Crossword and Landmark shut their doors, Atta Galatta expanded.
The brutal truth you need to hear: Your customers don’t need what you sell. They need what you stand for.
The Anatomy of Painting Yourself Into Tomorrow: Let’s get tactical. Because inspiration without implementation is just expensive procrastination.
1. Stop Completing Sentences. Start Asking Different Questions.
LVMH didn’t ask “How do we make luxury more accessible?” They asked “How do we make inaccessibility even more desirable?”
Patagonia didn’t ask “How do we sell more jackets?” They asked “How do we create customers who buy less?”
Zomato didn’t ask “How do we improve food delivery?” They asked “What if we turned delivery agents into micro-entrepreneurs?”
The quality of your future is determined by the quality of your questions. Right now, you’re probably asking incremental questions and wondering why you’re getting incremental results.
2. Embrace Productive Discomfort
In 2019, Mahindra launched the Treo electric three-wheeler, targeting last-mile mobility in India. Conventional wisdom said go big or go home. They went small—and strategic.
While everyone was obsessing over electric cars for the elite, Mahindra was electrifying the backbone of Indian commerce: the auto-rickshaw. Unglamorous? Absolutely. Transformative? Ask the 25,000+ drivers who now save ₹60,000 annually on fuel.
Your uncomfortable question: Are you chasing the spotlight or changing the system?
3. Build Mythology, Not Marketing
OpenAI didn’t position ChatGPT as “advanced language technology.” They positioned it as the democratization of intelligence itself. They made you feel like you were witnessing history, not buying software.
Amul, for 50+ years, hasn’t just sold butter. They’ve sold cheeky commentary on Indian culture, one topical ad at a time. They’re not in your refrigerator; they’re in your national consciousness.
The guilt trip you’ve earned: When was the last time your brand made someone feel something other than a commercial transaction?
So, Where Do We Go From Here? Here’s what separates transformative brands from those destined for case studies titled “What Went Wrong“:
They stopped asking permission.
Not from investors. Not from focus groups. Not from industry conventions.
They looked at the world as it was, imagined it as it could be, and started painting.
While Kodak was perfecting film, Instagram was erasing the need for it.
While Blockbuster was negotiating late fees, Netflix was ending the concept of “late.”
While your competitors are benchmarking each other, someone is benchmarking a future where you’re all irrelevant.
The Takeaways: Mind You- They Are Non-Negotiable
1. Stop forecasting. Start authoring.
Trends are what happened. Vision is what could happen if you have the courage to make it so.
2. Your competition isn’t another company. It’s inertia.
The reluctance to make your own products obsolete. The comfort of incremental gains. The fear of being misunderstood.
3. The future doesn’t need more participants. It needs more protagonists.
You either shape the narrative or you become a footnote in someone else’s.
In Closing, Truth Be Told
Most brands are preparing to survive the future.
Transformative brands are too busy creating it to care about survival.
The question isn’t whether the future will arrive.
It’s whether you’ll be part of the scenery—or part of the story.
So pick up that brush.
The wall is waiting.
And tomorrow doesn’t care about your quarterly review.
These Are Not Just For The Journal, But For Action: Three things you can do before your next meeting:
The Mortality Test: If your brand disappeared tomorrow, what would your customers actually miss? If the answer is “convenience,” you’re not a brand. You’re a utility awaiting disruption.
The 10-Year Reversal: Imagine your industry in 2035. Now work backward. What needs to die today for that future to exist? Are you brave enough to kill it?
The Alien Perspective: If someone from another planet read your brand materials, could they tell you apart from your competitors? If not, you’re not painting the future. You’re photocopying the present.
Stop waiting for the future to tell you who to be.
Start telling the future who you’ve decided to become.
That’s State Of The Heart Branding.