Brands are Designing themselves Into Sameness?

In the last few projects, I’ve noticed a pattern that is hard to ignore.

Clients and teams are coming in with references that look eerily similar. Clean beige packs. Minimal grids. Loud product names. A few health badges. A bowl shot. Repeat.

Most of these are AI-generated. And now, they are no longer just references. They are shaping the visual direction of real brands on shelf.

The recent Bingo Kitchen Style launch fits right into this pattern. It is well-executed. It is clean. It is legible. But it also feels like something we have already seen.

So the question is not about one brand. It is bigger than that. Are we entering an era of generic packaging in FMCG?

The 1-inch tile has changed everything. On an e-commerce shelf, your product is not experienced. It is scanned. In that moment, clarity beats craft. Product names need to be readable instantly. Claims need to be visible at thumbnail size. Color contrast needs to cut through clutter.

NielsenIQ* points out that digital-first shoppers rely heavily on recognition heuristics. Familiar layouts, bold naming, and clear category signals help people make fast decisions. Kantar echoes this with data showing that a majority of FMCG decisions are made in seconds, often driven by quick visual cues.

So brands respond logically. They simplify. They standardize. They optimize for scanning.

But there is a quiet trade-off happening here that many teams are not fully acknowledging.

When everything is designed for instant recognition, the only way recognition actually works is through repetition. A cue becomes powerful only when it is seen again and again in a consistent context. Layout, typography, color, structure. These are not just design choices. They are memory-building devices.

If a brand keeps changing these devices with every new product, it resets that memory every single time.

So while brands believe they are optimizing for scanning, they are actually weakening the very mechanism that makes scanning effective. Recognition does not come from familiarity with a category alone. It comes from familiarity with a brand within that category.

This is where consistency stops being an old-world principle and becomes even more critical in a digital-first environment.

Because on a screen, stripped down to a grid of thumbnails, your brand has only a few repeated cues to hold on to. If those cues keep shifting, you are not building recognition. You are borrowing it from the category.

And category codes are a dangerous thing to lean on. They help you get noticed once. They rarely help you get remembered.

AI has quietly amplified this problem.

Most AI systems are trained on what already exists and what performs well. They learn patterns that are proven, popular, and widely accepted. When you ask AI for a “premium natural snack pack” or a “modern healthy food brand,” it does not understand your brand context. It assembles the most statistically successful version of that idea.

Beige minimalism. Clean grids. Soft shadows. Ingredient-led visuals. Functional badges.

It is not wrong. In fact, it is highly effective.

But it is also completely indifferent to brand distinctiveness.

So what happens is this. Every brand starts from the same optimized template. Every decision is backed by what has worked before. And slowly, unknowingly, brands begin to converge.

AI is not breaking design principles. It is over-applying them.

It is taking the idea of clarity, hierarchy, and recognisable codes and pushing them to a point where they override context. The nuance of what makes one brand different from another gets flattened because the system is designed to prioritise what is most likely to work, not what is uniquely right.

And that is where the real risk lies.

Because consistency and recall are built on distinctiveness. And distinctiveness often comes from choices that are not the most obvious or the most popular.

When every brand is built on the same set of “proven” decisions, the outcome is predictably similar.

Look at how brands are stretching.

Two Brothers Organic Farms moved from a strong soil-to-soul organic narrative into low GI and high protein cues. Khapli flour leans heavily into heritage and nostalgia. Functional rice packs are becoming increasingly clinical.

Each move makes sense in isolation. But together, they blur into a predictable system.

This is where the identity crisis begins.

When one product says mad, indulgent fun and another says small-batch, homely care, what is the brand actually saying?

Take Bingo. Mad Angles is loud, disruptive, youth-first. Kitchen Style is rooted in care, tradition, and better-for-you cues. Both are valid opportunities. But together, they raise a larger question. What does Bingo stand for in the consumer’s mind?

Or take Hocco. A strong, joyful brand world with a playful mascot. Then comes Aamchi. A nostalgic aam-ka-peti pack with a completely different visual language.

Did it fit the brand world? No.Did it work in the market? Yes.

This is the paradox.

Could Hocco have created Aamchi within its existing world of playful mascots and that imagined land of joy? Could the mango story have been told through that same lens, instead of stepping into nostalgia and retro cues? Possibly. And if done well, it might have even strengthened the brand further by reinforcing its core universe rather than stepping outside it. But would it have been as successful in the market? That is harder to answer. The pull of nostalgia, especially with something as culturally loaded as mango, is powerful and immediate. The aam-ka-peti visual is almost instinctive in its appeal. So while a more consistent approach may have built stronger long-term memory, the short-term impact might have been very different. We can only speculate. We will never know for sure.

Short-term attention rewards deviation. Long-term brand building demands consistency.

There is also the pressure of funding and speed. Startups are not just building brands. They are chasing velocity. New SKUs need to launch fast. Trends need to be captured early. Categories need to expand quickly.

So brands stretch. Organic becomes high-protein. Heritage becomes functional. Playful becomes serious overnight.

Each decision drives short-term growth. But over time, it fragments the brand.

And this is where research still holds true.

Kantar’s BrandZ studies consistently show that brands with clear and consistent meaning command stronger pricing power and long-term loyalty. Nielsen also highlights that while trial can be driven by novelty, repeat purchase is driven by trust and familiarity.

Trust does not come from chasing every trend. It comes from consistency.

What is also happening is that brands are mistaking variation for relevance. A new trend emerges and the instinct is to redesign everything to match that moment. Each response feels sharp and timely. But over time, the brand starts to feel like a collection of reactions rather than a point of view.

Consumers may still buy. Because the product is visible. The claim is clear. The need is immediate.

But what quietly erodes is recall.

The ability to pick the same brand again without thinking. The sense of familiarity that builds over time.

This might just be a transition phase. Startups experiment widely. They test multiple narratives. They stretch across segments. And eventually, they converge.

We have seen this before.

The real question is not whether experimentation is right or wrong. It is about knowing when to stop experimenting and start building.

Because strong brands do not resist change. They evolve within a system.

In a world now shaped by AI and driven by recognition heuristics, consistency is not a limitation. It is the multiplier. It allows every impression to build on the last one. It turns scanning into recall. It turns visibility into memory.

So the question is not whether brands should simplify or standardize. That is already happening. The question is whether they are doing it in a way that compounds over time, or in a way that resets with every launch. Because in the end, the brands that win will not be the ones that were easiest to scan once.

They will be the ones that were impossible to forget.

Broad Sources:

• Kantar BrandZ India Report 2025 

• Kantar on Why Brands Must Keep Adding Value 

• NielsenIQ studies on digital shopper behaviour Disclaimer: Images used are the property of the respective brands and are used here only for illustrative purposed.