It's Giving 'Brand Identity': Why Aesthetic and Vibes Matter

There’s something quite brilliant about releasing Wuthering Heights on Friday 13th February. Oh it’s an obvious choice I hear you cry, Valentines season. But Friday the 13th has other connotations of course, and if you know the story of Heathcliff and Cathy then you know it’s hardly a sweet tale of everlasting love.

I’ve been following (like a dog to the end of the earth) the marketing campaign for Wuthering Heights, particularly on Instagram and the vibes-only approach it’s taken. What I’ve seen is that it clearly understands its target audience, what it is and what it isn't. It knows that romance isn’t one note and that its audience has a deep understanding and appreciation for that fact, demanding more from the stories in the ilk of Wuthering Heights. Love is wild, uncomfortable, consuming, evil, selfish, full of unquenchable yearning. And yearning is the central theme.

If you can make your audience yearn for your brand, well that’s a winner in my book. So what can we, as brand communicators, learn about brand identity from this?

Well, we’re in the era of yearning, with the dark romantasy genre topping book charts worldwide for the last three or four years. 

The marketing campaign and the Wuthering Heights film itself noticed this and built around that cultural shift in female audiences. Their creative team has leaned into that truth. The mood is unmistakable: dark, atmospheric, slightly dangerous. 

Before you’ve read a word or watched a frame, you already know what kind of emotional territory you’re entering.

‘Now That’s What I Call Branding 2026’

I think it’s such a useful reference for brands thinking about identity, tone and recognition. This isn’t about film marketing in isolation. It’s about how strong visual worlds create meaning, memory and distinction at speed informed by being deeply rooted in current cultural shifts and feeding them to continue to support your products' future fame.

Too often, look and feel is treated as decoration. A final layer added once the 'real' strategy is locked. But aesthetic IS strategy. Art direction is positioning. Visual consistency is how brands teach audiences to recognise them without effort. Fennell’s Wuthering Heights doesn’t explain itself or soften its edges to be more broadly appealing during Valentine’s season. It passed its own vibe check. The visual language does the work, signalling tone, intent and emotional depth in seconds.

Plenty of brands show up for cultural moments and still vanish into the background. What makes this campaign effective is, of course, timing but it’s because timing and aesthetic are working together.

In a feed-driven world where decisions are made in milliseconds, strong aesthetics collapse friction. The Wuthering Heights visuals are instantly recognisable because they’ve been built using real-world sub-cultural references, they belong to a coherent world with an already primed audience thirsty for more. Colour, texture, framing, costume, sound, and pacing all align. You don’t have to think about what it is or who it’s for. You just feel it. That’s brand recognition doing its job.

Brand Polarity

Taste, of course, is subjective. Not everyone will respond to this interpretation of Wuthering Heights, and I fully believe that’s part of its strength. Lots of people have been in uproar on the use of modern fabrics and methods in costume design and choice of cast, claiming (rightly) that it’s not book-accurate. Who cares! Certainly not the audience this film and its marketing is designed for! And brands should be as bold and certain in their choices.

Aesthetic confidence creates polarity. It draws the right audience in more deeply and filters out those it was never meant for. Brands often fear this, mistaking broad appeal for effectiveness, but safe work rarely creates lasting memory. Bold, considered work does.

Aesthetic + Intent = Emotion = Engagement

What’s striking is how much emotional weight the campaign carries without relying on explanation. The aesthetic does the talking. Mood leads, words follow. That’s where brand content so often falls short, leaning heavily on messaging while underestimating how much meaning is communicated visually, instinctively, before copy has a chance to land.

The lesson for brands isn’t to imitate look and feel, but to adopt the strategic and textured thinking behind it. Clear visual intent. A defined emotional tone. Confidence in aesthetic decisions. Teams who understand that craft and art direction aren’t embellishments, but core strategic tools.

When look and feel are treated as a serious and vital part of brand identity strategy then everything performs better. Recall improves. Recognition sharpens. Campaigns live longer in people’s minds. In moments saturated with sameness, like Valentine’s, or any cultural calendar spike, difference is everything.

"Creative direction or aesthetic are not about being pretty. It’s all about being remembered."

What Next?

If your brand shows up at the right moments but still blends into the background, it might not be a media problem. It might be a look and feel problem. 

Book a call with our team and let’s build a visual identity people actually remember.

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