Brand, Creative & Category.

• →When we recall a memory, the brain re-fires the same neurons as the original event - so experiences compound long after the moment.
• →Create flashbulb memories: vivid, emotional moments the market can’t forget.
• →“A brand is … the product of a thousand small gestures.” (Michael Eisner) - every touchpoint enriches or erodes it.
• →“The best marketing is invisible … it makes you feel something.” (Seth Godin)
• →Train the muscle: the HaHa Journal, and an inspiration gallery of emotional-moat brands (Liquid Death, Lavender, LEGO).

Influence: Jonah Berger’s Contagious - engineer the STEPPS drivers (Social currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical value, Stories) and word-of-mouth does the distribution.

• →At Flip, a product seen as a legacy IVR became “the Alexa-like experience for your contact center” - and a new Voice AI category.
• →Recognized as a Pavilion 2023 Category Leader finalist.
• →Play Bigger lessons: recruit partners who back your POV; build lightning-strike moments the market can’t ignore; hold a POV strong enough to create discussion.
• →Own the mic - podcasts, content, and speaking carry the category narrative.

Influence: Play Bigger - you design and condition a category rather than compete in it; the “lightning strike” rallies the market behind your POV, and the category king captures most of the value. April Dunford’s positioning discipline underneath it.

• →Small hit squads beat big orgs. A small, deliberately built team beats both the bloated org and the solo contributor - scrappy enough to move at lightning speed, deep enough to do impressive work - but only if you invest in building the team first, then run a real iteration loop with them: brainstorm and architecture, through launch, through the data and the feedback.
• →Quirks are superpowers. A person’s quirks usually point straight at their superpower - assemble the team like puzzle pieces, each person running the one thing only they do well.
• →Fail forward - never punish the attempt. Data-driven decisions and failing forward through experimentation. Punish the attempt once and you kill the next ten experiments.
• →Audience at the heart. The audience belongs at the center of every piece - their issues, the problem they’re solving, the space they live in. Start from the emotional driver and back it with data: gut first, proof second, never one without the other.

The brand & creative operating model: how a small, deliberately built hit squad swiftly builds the foundations of a winning go-to-market.