Written by Nicole Webb

For decades, marketers and communicators have been obsessed with consistency. 

Same message. Same visual identity. Same tone of voice. Same carefully approved language repeated across every channel. 

Consistency built strong brands because repetition-built recognition. 

But in 2026, consistency is no longer enough. 

Coherency is the new black. 

It was one of the more interesting themes to emerge from this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.  

Coherence isn’t a new idea. What’s new is the number of places a brand’s reputation is now being built – by media, creators, communities, search and increasingly AI – making coherence more important, and harder to achieve, than ever. 

Consistency is about sameness. Coherency is about meaning. There is an important distinction. 

Consistency asks: Are we saying the same thing everywhere? 

Coherency asks: Does everything we say, do and inspire others to say add up to the same thing? 

Let’s look at an example: 

Imagine a business that wants to be recognised as a leader in innovation.  

Traditional consistency might mean ensuring its website, CEO speeches, media releases and LinkedIn posts all describe the company as “innovation-led”. 

Coherency goes much further.  

The CEO talks about where the industry is heading; engineers publish interesting thinking; the company launches new products; customers describe it as innovative; media associate it with emerging technology; partnerships reinforce the positioning; and AI search surfaces the company as ‘innovative’. 

Different voices. Different stories. Different channels. 

Nobody has to repeat the exact same sentence but everything adds up to the company being ‘innovative’. 

Why has this suddenly become so important? 

Brands have less control over their own narratives. 

A customer might encounter your CEO on LinkedIn, read a journalist’s assessment of your business, hear a creator discussing your product, meet an employee talking about your workplace and then ask ChatGPT if your company is any good. 

It is no longer enough for your communications to agree with each other. The evidence surrounding your organisation needs to agree with them too. 

That creates a completely different challenge for communicators, and this is where your PR team has a much bigger role to play. 

Coherency moves PR beyond message distribution towards reputation architecture. 

Our job becomes connecting what an organisation says, does, and proves, with what others say about it. 

That means starting with the reputation the organisation wants to build and asking some harder questions. 

Is there a clear narrative behind it? Can we prove it? Do our leaders reinforce it? Does the customer and employee experience support it? 

Do journalists, creators, industry bodies and other trusted voices validate it? 

And increasingly: does AI see the same organisation we want people to see? 

The gaps between those answers are where tomorrow’s communications strategies will be built. 

This doesn’t mean consistency is dead. Distinctive brand assets, repeated messages and disciplined positioning remain fundamental to building memory. But they are now the foundation rather than the finish line. 

The opportunity is to move from controlled consistency to distributed coherence. 

That means allowing different executives to have different voices. Allowing creators to interpret rather than repeat. Allowing communities to participate rather than receive. And allowing stories to evolve across different formats and audiences. 

The objective isn’t that everything looks and sounds identical. It’s that everything adds up. 

The six layers of IMPACT’s Reputation Coherence Framework

1. Narrative – Say it

What do you want to be known for? 

2. Evidence – Prove it 

Can you prove it? 

3. Voice – Carry it 

Who is carrying the story? 

4. Experience – Live it 

Does behaviour match communication? 

5. Ecosystem – Validate it 

What does the world say about you? 

6. Machine – Surface it 

What story does AI reconstruct?