Premium used to mean picking a lane. Focus. Identity. A clear stance.

But in today’s dissonant world, brands are being asked to hold emotional multitudes. People want indulgence and restraint. Escapism and purpose. Timelessness and trend. If you only do one, you feel rigid. If you try to do everything, you feel hollow.

So how do premium brands move through contradiction and still feel like themselves?

We posed this to Jenny Southan of Globetrender, Nicole Bourdette-Kosmider of Fever-Tree, and our own CJ Fiala at our recent Dissonance Decade webinar.

Be clear on what flexing costs you

“If a brand chases everything, it stops standing for anything,” said Nicole. “There has to be a core. And then, if you flex, do it consciously and know what you’re trading off.”

Fluidity is powerful, but it needs an anchor. Nicole has worked on brands that toggle between heritage and trend. For her, the key is to build from the centre out, not the other way around.

Speak to states of mind, not market segments

Jenny pointed out that travellers now want stimulation and serenity, and don’t want to have to compromise.

“They might want a wild culinary experience one day, and digital detox the next,” she said. “It’s not that they’re inconsistent. It’s that they’re multifaceted. So the best brands speak to modes, not just demographics.”

Instead of picking a single archetype, the best brands create environments that adapt to people’s changing emotional needs.

Let dissonance shape the strategy

CJ sees this tension play out inside agency walls all the time.

“Clients are terrified of being incoherent, but being one-note is worse,” they said. “We’re allowed to have contradictory truths. It’s just about holding them with clarity.”

“The work isn’t in simplifying the human, it’s in designing systems that make the complexity legible.”

In other words: contradiction isn’t the enemy. But lack of intentionality is.

What we’re seeing

Brands that hold complexity well tend to:

• Stay emotionally consistent, even if visually varied
• Make trade-offs transparent, not hidden
• Speak to human tensions, not idealised personas
• Use contradiction as a creative constraint

Premium now means presence in complexity. Not perfection, but coherence.