When we talk about brands, we talk about brand personality, brand wants, brand traits, etc. We make brands out to be people with quirks and idiosyncrasies, a personality, and a drive. If brands are indeed like people, would it be smart for a brand to have a bucket list?
Life is pressure. There are a few things that ease that pressure: family, love, vacation, popcorn, and a nice walk on the beach. All of these things have been scientifically shown to reduce the pressure of life. Now, that’s not really true. I have no scientific data to back the claim that popcorn eases life’s pressure, but it tastes good, and I love it so much that I just added it to the list. The point is, there are a lot of things in this life that build pressure around us. Work pressure, family pressure, just general life pressure, and with all that pressure, I wonder why some people willingly choose to put more pressure on themselves by drafting a bucket list.
If you’ve never heard the term, then I’ll enlighten you. The term Bucket List came to us from screenwriter Justin Zackman, who compiled a 1999 personal list of things he wanted to do before he kicked the bucket. This, of course, is a quaint euphemism for dying. Zackman then wrote the screenplay for The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, about two terminally ill older gents who decide to make a bucket list. This 2007 film then cemented the idea in the public mind, and everyone and their second cousin twice removed was all in on the bucket list. The feeling was that you’re not a fully realized human being unless you have a bucket list.
Like, I need that added pressure to my life. I mean, I have a job, a life, a mystery plant growing in a long-forgotten planter, and now I have to put together a list of things I want or need to do before I die. Okay, here’s my bucket list: #1 find a way to be immortal. #2 See action item #1. Done and done.
The smart guys in the world say that having a bucket list is a great thing. It helps you focus, step outside your comfort zone, and create memories that will last a lifetime. Of course, if you’re terminally ill, like the two guys from the movie, memories will last a very short lifetime. To me, it’s time-consuming and a wish list of things that I will never do, cannot afford to do, and certainly do not have the time to do. Which, I guess, is the point. You do things now that you think you don’t have time to do, and then you’re a better, more full and rich person. Too much work. So, I have always shied away from, and even actively avoided, the bucket list.
Thinking about it now, I can see that a bucket list is not for me. I just don’t operate that way. If I can get through the day without spilling anything on my clothes, insulting someone with a terrible joke, or mispronouncing the word coelacanth, that’s bucket enough for me, and I live to fight another day. But what about brands?
When we talk about brands, we talk about brand personality, brand wants, brand traits, etc. We make brands out to be people with quirks and idiosyncrasies, a personality, and a drive. If brands are indeed like people, would it be smart for a brand to have a bucket list, and if so, what should be on a good brand’s bucket list?
Now, that’s a question worthy of its own blog, don’t you think? I do, and since I’m the one writing it, I’m going to answer yes. A brand bucket list would make for an interesting blog.
The Brand Version of “Someday”
At some point, every brand ends up with a bucket list, even if it never calls it that. It usually sneaks in quietly. A future version of the brand starts hovering just out of reach, doing the meaningful work it swears it will get to once things calm down. Once the timing is right. Once there’s a little more certainty and a little less risk.
The problem is that brands, like people, are already under pressure. There are targets to hit, shifts to respond to, and internal dynamics that rarely align cleanly. Adding a bucket list doesn’t remove any of that. It just reframes pressure as aspiration. And aspiration is often a polite way of postponing a decision.
A brand bucket list feels productive because it looks intentional. But most of the time, it’s a collection of things the brand isn’t yet willing to commit to. Not because the ideas are wrong, but because acting on them would force uncomfortable choices. Tradeoffs. Clarity. The kind of clarity that closes doors as fast as it opens them.
So instead of acting, brands wait. Instead of choosing, they keep options open. And instead of doing the one thing that would actually change how they operate today, they move it into a future that always feels close, but never quite arrives. That’s when the bucket list stops being inspiring and starts becoming a liability.
What Brands Usually Put on Their Bucket Lists
When brands talk about their future, they tend to aim high. Not morally high, but visibly high. The kinds of things that look impressive when written down. They want to be category leaders. They want to be known for something admirable. They want awards, scale, recognition, loyalty. They want to “show up differently,” and “stand for something,” and “build community.” All of which sound reasonable until you realize how vague they are.
A brand bucket list rarely contains anything operational. It almost never includes the boring work that would actually make those ambitions possible. It’s light on behavior and heavy on outcomes. Heavy on identity. Light on consequence.
That’s because bucket lists, by nature, favor aspiration over obligation. They describe what a brand would like to be associated with, not what it is willing to be accountable for. They sketch the destination while avoiding the cost of the trip. And that avoidance matters.
When a brand says it wants to be trusted, for example, that sounds noble. But trust isn’t something you achieve once and check off. It’s something you either earn repeatedly or quietly erode. If trust is on the bucket list, it usually means the brand likes the idea of trust, but hasn’t yet committed to the behaviors that make trust unavoidable.
The same goes for differentiation. Brands love to say they want to stand out. Very few are willing to decide what they will stop doing in order to make that true. Standing out requires exclusion. It requires choosing not to appeal to everyone. A bucket list lets brands want distinctiveness without ever having to practice it.
This is where the bucket list becomes dangerous. It gives brands a way to hold their ambitions at arm’s length. They can talk about them. Circulate them internally. Reference them in planning sessions. All without letting those ambitions interfere with how the organization actually behaves today.
In that way, a brand bucket list doesn’t just delay action; it also undermines it. It insulates the present from change.
And the longer that insulation stays in place, the harder it becomes to remove. Teams get used to the gap between who the brand says it wants to be and how it actually operates. That gap becomes normal. Even comfortable. The bucket list becomes a shared understanding that real change always comes later.
Which is fine. Until later never comes.
Why the Human Analogy Breaks Down
The reason bucket lists make sense for people is simple: people have an ending. There’s a finite window, and eventually the clock runs out, whether you’re ready or not. A bucket list is a way of negotiating with that reality. It’s a reminder that time is limited, so intention matters. Brands don’t have that constraint. At least, not in the same way.
A brand can exist for decades without changing much at all. It can drift, rebrand, get acquired, split into divisions, or slowly hollow out while still technically surviving. There’s no hard stop that forces urgency. No built-in moment where the brand has to ask, “If not now, when?” That difference changes everything.
When a person delays something meaningful, the cost is personal. Regret is felt. Time is visibly lost. When a brand delays something meaningful, the cost is distributed. It gets absorbed by teams, customers, and culture in small, almost invisible ways. No single moment feels catastrophic, so nothing triggers a course correction.
That’s why borrowing the bucket list concept from human life creates a false sense of urgency. It suggests that brands need reminders to dream bigger, when in reality, they usually need reminders to make decisions sooner.
For a person, a bucket list is about maximizing experience before the end. For a brand, a bucket list often becomes a way to avoid committing to a direction that would make certain experiences impossible. The analogy flips. What motivates action in a human context quietly excuses inaction in a brand one.
What a Brand Bucket List Would Have to Be
If a brand is going to have a bucket list at all, it can’t look like the ones we’re used to. It can’t be a catalog of ambitions or a mood board for the future. It has to operate under different rules.
A useful brand bucket list would focus less on what the brand wants to become and more on what it is willing to give up. It would name the behaviors that must change, not just the outcomes that would be nice to achieve.
Instead of saying it wants to be trusted, it would commit to the specific decisions that make trust unavoidable, even when those decisions are inconvenient. Instead of wanting to stand out, it would decide who it is no longer trying to impress. Instead of aiming for growth, it would clarify which forms of growth it will refuse.
In other words, a real brand bucket list would feel uncomfortable. It would create tension inside the organization. It would force conversations that don’t fit neatly into planning cycles or strategy decks. And that’s how you’d know it was working.
Because the goal isn’t to imagine a better brand someday. The goal is to make it harder for the brand to keep behaving the same way tomorrow.
The Cost Shows Up for Customers First
When a brand keeps its most meaningful changes on a bucket list, customers feel it long before the company does.
From the inside, things seem fine. Work is getting done. Metrics are being tracked. Meetings are happening. But from the outside, the experience starts to fray. Promises don’t quite line up with reality. Small inconsistencies creep in. The brand sounds confident, but behaves cautiously.
Customers are remarkably good at sensing this gap. They may not articulate it, but they feel when a brand is hedging. When it’s talking about commitment without actually making one. Trust doesn’t disappear all at once. It thins. It gets conditional. People stop assuming the brand will do the right thing and start double-checking instead. That shift is expensive.
It shows up as hesitation in the buying process. As questions that shouldn’t need to be asked. As customers choose the safer option, even if it’s less interesting. None of this looks dramatic on a dashboard. But over time, it adds friction everywhere the brand touches the market.
This is why bucket list brands often feel they’re doing everything right yet still not getting the results they expect. The issue isn’t effort. It’s alignment. Customers can sense when a brand’s future self is doing all the heavy lifting while the present one stays carefully noncommittal.
By the time leadership feels the impact, it’s usually framed as a marketing problem or a messaging problem. But what customers are reacting to isn’t language. It’s behavior. Or more accurately, the lack of it.
Why Rebrands So Often Fail
Rebrands are supposed to be moments of clarity, a line in the sand, or a declaration that the brand is choosing a direction and committing to it. But most rebrands function like bucket lists.
They describe what the brand wants to be known for without forcing the organization to change its behavior. New language gets rolled out. Visuals change. A narrative is introduced. And underneath it all, the same decisions keep getting made the same way they always have.
This is why rebrands so often feel hollow to customers and exhausting to teams. Everyone can sense that something important is being talked around instead of being confronted. The brand sounds different, but nothing meaningful has changed.
A rebrand that behaves like a bucket list gives the organization permission to postpone the hard work. It creates the illusion of movement without any of the risk. Leadership can point to the rebrand as evidence of progress, while the underlying constraints remain untouched.
The irony is that the moments when a rebrand actually works are the moments when it stops acting like a wish list and starts acting like a forcing function. When it makes certain behaviors impossible. When it removes options instead of adding them. Without that, a rebrand is just another entry on the list. Something the brand hopes will matter someday, without letting it matter now.
A Simple Test
If a brand insists on having a bucket list, there’s an easy way to tell whether it’s helping or hurting. Look at what’s on it and ask a single question: What would have to change right now for this to be true?
Not eventually. Not after the next quarter. Right now.
If the answer is vague, or procedural, or framed as someone else’s responsibility, then the item doesn’t belong on a bucket list. It belongs in the category of things the brand likes to talk about without being accountable for.
A useful entry on a brand bucket list should make someone uncomfortable the moment it’s written down. It should threaten existing habits. It should create friction with the organization's current way of working. If it doesn’t, it’s probably just decoration.
The test is simple because the standard is simple. Real intention creates pressure in the present. Anything that safely lives in the future is just another way of avoiding a decision.
Which brings us back to why I never liked bucket lists in the first place. Life already applies enough pressure on its own. The only lists worth keeping are the ones that make you act differently today.
The Takeaway
Most brands don’t lack ambition. They lack the decision-making that’s willing to cost them something.
A bucket list feels harmless because it keeps everything hypothetical. It lets a brand admire its better future without letting that future interfere with the present. Over time, that distance becomes the problem. The brand starts outsourcing its courage to “someday” and calling it strategy.
At ThoughtLab, we spend a lot of time with brands in that exact moment. Not when they need more ideas, but when they need fewer options. The real work isn’t imagining what a brand could become. It’s deciding what it will no longer do so that something else can finally take shape.
That kind of clarity doesn’t ease pressure. It concentrates it. And that’s the point.
If a brand wants to be remembered for something, it can’t just list what it hopes to become. It has to change how it behaves now, while the pressure is real and the stakes are visible.
Everything else is just popcorn. MMMMMMM … popcorn.
