This post was created in partnership with Kantar
When you consider the top brands that have had staying power over the last few decades, one of the common threads between them is that they’ve all embraced tension well. They’ve found balance in battles like reinvention vs. core values, short- vs. long-term success, and experimentation vs. consistency.
During a Brandweek 2025 session co-hosted with Kantar, ADWEEK CEO Will Lee sat down in conversation with Jeff Greenspoon, CEO, Americas of Kantar, to discuss how some brands have turned tension into transformation and the valuable lessons CMOs could learn from these endeavors.
Be meaningfully different
To start, Greenspoon defined tension as what’s created when two opposing forces pull us in different directions. And in the world of brand building, tension is a daily occurrence.
“Brand builders, specifically within the marketing ecosystem, are faced with choices that are often in conflict with one another,” he explained. “How you navigate those, both with the right evidence and the right support from your organization, will matter in how fast you can grow today, as well as how you set the stage for growth over the next 5, 10, or 15 years as an enduring brand.”
Greenspoon shared that being a trusted, consistent brand can conflict with trying to differentiate and innovate over time. “But brands that are meaningful and different are 70% more likely to grow,” he said. He then shared two examples of brands that have mastered this well.
Nespresso balances luxury brand status with sustainability
Nespresso targets a higher-spending consumer, but it also wanted to lean into a sustainability message based on a broader cultural conversation. “The brand wanted to command the premium pricing, but still have enough margin to cover the sustainability message,” Greenspoon said. However, he explained, the challenge is that making sustainability affordable requires scale. It means revamping the entire supply chain—from how farmers harvest the coffee beans to how the serving pods are ultimately recycled. But from a luxury brand perspective, you don’t want too much scale.
To find that balance, Nespresso decided to build a sustainability message into its luxury experience. “Whether it’s how you integrate into the app or how you go into their premium luxury boutiques, sustainability is part of the experience. Nespresso leaned into both sides of the tension,” shared Greenspoon.
Empowerment and reinvention collide for Mattel
Greenspoon cited Mattel’s Barbie as another case study in mastering brand tension. For Mattel, it meant balancing consistency—specifically, the message of “I can be anything I want to be”—with complete reinvention with the release of the Barbie movie in 2023.
