Growing Up Isn’t a Brand Platform

By Leah Brier Bienstock, Head of Strategy, Redscout

Every August, brands compete to own back-to-school. The stories are thoughtful, optimistic, and emotionally resonant. Children are building confidence. Teenagers are discovering who they are. Parents are letting go.

None of that is wrong, it’s just not enough.

The strange thing about back-to-school is that it’s one of the few moments when almost every brand is talking about the same life transition at the same time. But, instead of revealing how differently brands understand that transition, it often reveals how similarly they approach it. The category hardly matters anymore. Strip away the logos, and learning platforms, beauty brands, toy companies, retailers, technology brands, and entertainment companies all arrive at roughly the same place, with emotional promises that become interchangeable.

Confidence. Independence. Belonging. Self-expression.

These have become some of the most sought-after emotional territories in branding, not because they’re unimportant, but because they’re universally desirable. They’re safe. Few people would argue against them. The problem is that they describe where people hope to arrive, not what they’re actually living through. Nobody experiences confidence in isolation. We experience the uncertainty that comes before it. We don’t remember belonging as a feeling. We remember wondering whether we would belong in the first place. Independence only becomes meaningful because it asks us to give up the certainty of being looked after.

Growing up isn’t a sequence of emotional outcomes. It’s a sequence of contradictions.

For the most part, our industry just isn’t built to think that way. We talk about middle schoolers, Gen Alpha, teenagers, or parents of elementary school children as though each group is moving through the same experience at the same pace. But as we all know, while demographics tell us who someone is, they rarely tell us what they’re becoming.

Consider two children walking into middle school for the first time. They may be the same age, shopping in the same aisle, and targeted by the same media plan, but they are not living the same story. One has spent the summer desperate to leave childhood behind. The other would happily stay exactly where he is. One wants more freedom. The other wants reassurance that he doesn’t have to grow up quite so quickly.

A demographic will never be able to explain that. And neither can an emotional territory. Understanding the contradiction each child is trying to resolve is where meaningful connections between consumers and brands are most likely to not just occur, but last.

That’s something we’ve seen repeatedly while working across brands that shape childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood from very different viewpoints. Quizlet isn’t simply helping students feel more confident, it’s guiding students to reduce the fear of falling behind before confidence ever enters the picture. Sephora isn’t just about self-expression, it sits at the intersection of experimentation, aspiration, social pressure, and parental comfort. Hasbro isn’t only creating opportunities for play, it’s helping children rehearse adulthood without asking them to leave childhood behind.

None of those brands succeed because it owns a bigger emotion than its competition. They succeed because each understands a different contradiction. That’s the role strategy should play—deciding which human experience a brand has earned the right to address, not which emotion it owns.

Every back-to-school season, brands collectively tell children and parents what this moment is supposed to feel like. Usually it’s hopeful. Exciting. Empowering. Maybe a little scary, but still positive. Those emotions belong in the story, they just aren’t the whole story.

So this year, the real opportunity for brands isn’t to define how students, parents, educators, and communities should feel, it’s to understand what they’re trying to work through—and to build a role for the brand there. Because we rarely remember the emotion a brand promised, we remember the brand that helped navigate a moment we couldn’t have navigated alone.

About the Author:

Leah Brier Bienstock is Head of Strategy at brand consultancy, Redscout. Leah is a builder—of brands, teams, and momentum. With 15+ years in strategy leadership, she’s driven growth for iconic and ambitious organizations like Verizon, Netflix, Celebrity Cruises, MSK, Citi, TikTok, and Nestlé. Known for her blend of rigor and empathy, she helps clients unlock their potential by connecting insight to creative possibility. At Redscout, Leah is focused on culturally-relevant marketing and helping brands scale with soul at the center.