Recho Omondi's argument, amplified through Business of Fashion, is structural: brands that treat TikTok as a distribution channel are already behind. The platform rewards conviction, not content calendars. What she is describing is a collapse of the old separation between brand voice and brand behaviour. On TikTok, you cannot have one without the other, and the brands still managing 'tone' from a style guide are effectively invisible. This matters beyond TikTok. The behavioural shift she is naming, where audiences punish blandness faster than they punish mistakes, is the defining brand pressure of 2026.
Three stories today point to the same structural shift: Recho Omondi arguing that brand personality is now a survival requirement on TikTok, Taylor Swift building a campaign whose entire value is fan-driven interpretation rather than brand-controlled messaging, and Helsinki designers gaining international traction precisely because their work has a specific, uncompromised point of view. The brands still investing in consensus-safe positioning are not playing it safe.
They are making themselves indistinguishable at the exact moment audiences are selecting for distinctiveness. The risk calculus has inverted.
For people who’d rather be early and wrong than late and safe.