Is Your Brand a Thermometer or a Thermostat? 

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Agency News

Published by

Charles Vallance

Date

27/01/2025

In a 90 second Instagram post, Rabbi Shais Taub delivers a wonderful homily on the difference between Thermometer people and Thermostat people.

He sums up the fundamental difference as follows, "A thermometer tells the temperature in the room. Whereas a thermostat tells the room the temperature'.

His analogy beautifully illustrates the power of agency. Thermometer people are low agency. As a result, they are shaped by their environment and are "doomed to be reactive"

Thermostat people, on the other hand, make a choice to define rather than be defined, to initiate rather than follow. They are high agency. They get out of bed in the morning and "they choose to be productive, they choose to be of service".

The power of the Rabbi's logic derives not just from its simplicity, but also its applicability. There are so many situations, so many interactions, so many contexts where we can choose to be either a thermostat or a thermometer. In our work lives, in our private lives, in our social lives. And, of course, in the advice we give to our Clients.

Just like people, it's quite easy to classify brands based on their sense of agency. There are Thermometer brands which observe market conventions and try not to make too many waves. And there are Thermostat brands which set the agenda, impose themselves and challenge the status quo.

In my experience, it's the Thermostat brands which deliver disproportionate success. Indeed, I have worked on a number of Thermometer brands that would have gone out of business had they not switched to a Thermostat mentality. VCCP's founding Client is a perfect embodiment of the switch. Cellnet trailed its competitors as a flagging, reactive brand. O2 re-energised both the brand and the market by setting a new agenda, shifting the goalposts from mobile telephony to digital oxygen, championing the essential role that pervasive wirefree connectivity plays in our lives.

It is inevitably easier to be a thermostat at moments of change, when a brand is launching or relaunching, or going through some other kind of upheaval andperhaps there is always a balance to be struck between the right blend of thermostat and thermometer modes. Just like the temperature, conventions aren’t always wrong. There is no need to disrupt gratuitously, as there are many things in life that don't need challenging. A thermostat, after all, is seldom required in the summer.

This means every brand needs to find the cadence that suits it best between low and high agency settings. The majority of successful organisations alternate between these two modes, sometimes consolidating on their strengths, sometimes challenging and disrupting. Without the former they are unlikely to maximise returns, without the latter, they will become the victims of disruption, trapped in low growth backwaters.

But whatever balance you strike, there is one golden rule. Your core belief, your North Star, must be driven not by the compliance of the Thermometer, but by the conviction of the Thermostat. The future you envision for your brand must be one that it has shaped, where it has made a difference, where it has set the temperature.

For Cadbury, the goal is to reward and celebrate the innate generosity of human nature. To change the psychological setting in a world where it is all too easy to be cold and cynical. For Compare the Market, the task is to simplify and engage in a category that is far too often complex and alienating. For easyJet, the mission since launch has been to help people experience, share and belong by getting out there into new horizons. And for Vitality, success involves shifting the dial from problem to solution; encouraging people to be well, rather than just insuring them against illness.

Much is written about the declining levels of trust and growing levels of polarisation in society. And the commentary is perfectly valid. We live in factional times. But your brand does not need to be part of this narrative. It can set its own path and write its own storyline. It can be a beacon of trust. It can deliver on its promises. It can help people unite and belong through shared experience. It can be of service to its customers by telling the rest of the market what the temperature should really be.

Your core belief, your North Star, must be driven not by the compliance of the Thermometer, but by the conviction of the Thermostat. The future you envision for your brand must be one that it has shaped, where it has made a difference, where it has set the temperature. Charles Vallance