Notes from the studio.
Strategy and brand insights, plus the operating system behind modern marketing teams. Written by the studio for people building ambitious companies. No marketing podcast clichés, no “10 tips” lists.
- 02 · Brand Your logo is exempt. Your buttons aren't.Most brand palettes are chosen to look right in a deck, then fail the moment they become text and buttons. The fix belongs in the brand system, not in a widget bolted on afterwards. Oct 2026 · 6 min
- 03 · Digital The rent always risesMost companies build their audience on rented land, and the landlord has read the lease more carefully than they have. The durable asset is the one that survives any single platform. Oct 2026 · 6 min
- 04 · Digital Nobody notices the switch. Everybody feels it.A toggle is the plainest control on a screen. We rebuilt one layer by layer, with live examples you can play with, to show why care at this scale is a brand decision. Oct 2026 · 5 min
- 05 · Strategy Create the category, or stop pretending you didThe strongest position is one you don't share, but most companies claiming a new category have only found a new adjective. When category design is real, and the slow work it asks for. Oct 2026 · 6 min
- 06 · Brand Anyone can say it now. Proof is the position.When AI can generate a plausible version of any claim, and every rival promises the same outcome in the same words, assertions stop persuading. What is left is evidence a buyer can inspect. Sept 2026 · 6 min
- 07 · Studio The founder is the cheapest channel you ownBefore anyone trusts your logo, they trust a person. Early on the founder is a company's most efficient channel. How to spend that without becoming the single point of failure. Sept 2026 · 6 min
- 08 · Strategy The funnel is a fictionThe tidy awareness-to-conversion funnel doesn't describe how anyone buys. Buying is non-linear, mostly invisible and largely decided before a buyer raises a hand. What that means for budget. Sept 2026 · 6 min
- 09 · Brand Competence is now free. Taste isn't.When AI makes competent design, copy and campaigns free and infinite, every category drifts to the same mean. The defensible asset is distinctiveness, and the taste to enforce it. Sept 2026 · 7 min
- 10 · Strategy The 95% you aren't selling toAt any moment only about 5% of your buyers are ready to purchase. The other 95% choose who to buy from long before. Most growth-stage companies spend as if the reverse were true. Sept 2026 · 7 min
- 11 · Digital The answer engine is your new homepageBuyers now ask an AI and get one answer with a handful of citations. If you are not one of them you do not exist, and you can't game your way onto the list. What actually earns the cite. Aug 2026 · 7 min
- 12 · Strategy Strategy is the productA logo on its own can't change a market. A campaign on its own can't change a buyer. The thing that compounds is the strategic decision behind both, and whether the work in market is faithful to it. Apr 2026 · 4 min
- 13 · Brand Why brand is a budget line, not a vibeMost finance teams can tell you what they paid for cloud compute to two decimal places. Ask the same team what they spent on brand and the answer is a shrug. That shrug is the problem. Mar 2026 · 4 min
- 14 · Process Audit before you art-directThere's a kind of agency pitch that arrives in week three with eight visual directions and zero questions answered. It is theatre. The work that performs starts somewhere far less photogenic. Feb 2026 · 4 min
- 15 · Studio The case for a smaller agencyThe agency org chart is a confession. Read the boxes and you can predict the work before the kickoff call, which is why a smaller agency is often the better hire. Jan 2026 · 6 min
- 16 · Strategy What every Series B should fix before scaling brandThe week after the round closes, the marketing budget triples. The same week, the four cracks that brand spend can't paper over also triple in size. Dec 2025 · 6 min
- 17 · Process The Growth Lifecycle, fully annotatedA long-form walkthrough of the six-stage process we run on every engagement. What each stage is, what tends to break it, and the line in the sand we draw before moving on. Nov 2025 · 9 min
- 18 · Brand Why most rebrands fail (and the three that don't)A new logo can cost a company three quarters of growth. Sometimes it is worth it. Usually it is not, because the rebrand is solving the wrong problem. Oct 2025 · 6 min
