FAQs

Modern brands like Amazon and Airbnb and Tesla were essentially built without marketing. Do I really need to invest in Brand or Creative Strategy?

Not always! Do you offer something truly groundbreaking and remarkable like those darlings, and do you deliver a great customer experience? If so, then an upward trajectory deliciously free of brand dalliance awaits. But if you’re among the vast majority of businesses that competes in an a crowded industry, and you need help connecting the dots across your ecosystem, then investing in strategy matters. Just ask Geico. Or Dos Equis. Or Allbirds. Or Bloomscape. Or monday.com. Or Calm. Or Sonos. Or any fast food brand. Or liquor brand. Or financial services brand.

I already have an optimized DMP that’s cheap to run and has generated a strong initial customer base. Why do I need to worry about Brand-building?

Because what comes after you’ve picked the low hanging fruit? Is that it? Has your potential been realized? Is your ambition slaked?

I want my Brand to be more purpose-led. Can you help?

Yes! But we won’t call it Brand Purpose—that’s really only for the rare companies that were formed with an altruistic pursuit as part of their business plan. For you, let’s just find something credible that your company is prepared to clearly and unapologetically stand for, figure out interesting ways to demonstrate that idea, and go from there.

I’m a VC that has six months to juice this business and get as many subscribers as I can before selling. Do I need a brand?

No. I mean…yes? But no. Go forth and pillage.

What if I’m torn between hiring a consultant, finding agency, and building the capability in house?

You and everyone else! What’s nice is that great talent can be found across all professional constructs. Find people you like and who have complementary skills to your own, set expectations clearly about what you want to achieve, and let it breathe.

Paying for creativity, big ideas, and a durable strategy makes me uneasy, because instead I can just fill the boxes of a programmatic marketing plan with pretty much anything, and then optimize the results, which usually creates lines in graphs that go up, and frankly there’s not much upside to doing anything beyond that, because my organization just wants to get bought, and it demands that every dollar spent on marketing clearly demonstrates the maximum immediate return, and my performance is judged monthly, and I’m perceived as a kook whenever I ponder an approach that might trade short-term sales for long-term band salience…what should I do?

I don’t know. Can we colonize Mars and start over?