Some of the most important companies in America still treat branding like a side project. We see it constantly: at tradeshows, site visits, dealer meetings, industry events, inside trade pubs, on trucks, on websites, in recruiting materials, and across sales decks held together by three different logos and a PDF exported sometime around 2014. Meanwhile, the actual companies behind those materials are often incredibly impressive. These are the businesses building infrastructur

We spend a lot of time working around products that are objectively good for people. Healthy foods. Natural fibers. Ingredient systems. Agricultural products backed by decades of research and real-world benefit. And one thing keeps coming up: Just because something is better for people doesn’t mean people automatically choose it. That’s the hard part. Because most consumer decisions are not made logically. They’re made quickly, emotionally, habitually, socially, and usually w

Big influencers have their place. So do celebrity partnerships, paid media, PR, email, retail, events, and all the other pieces of the marketing machine. But if your next campaign doesn’t at least consider micro or smaller creators, you’re probably leaving trust on the table. Not every product needs a famous face. Some products need the right person, talking to the right audience, in a way that feels like it belongs there. That’s where smaller creators get interesting. Trust

We've recently been sitting in conversations, panels and webinars about GLP-1s, Ozempic, food behavior, and retail trends and they left us mostly thinking the same thing: A lot of food brands are dramatically underestimating how big this shift could become. Not because everyone is suddenly going to stop eating. And not because we’re doctors. We are very much not doctors. But from a marketing and communications standpoint? The consumer mindset around food is clearly changing.

We’ve worked across a weirdly wide range of consumer brands over the years: cannabis, prepared meals, beauty, beverage, ingredient marketing, wellness, hair care, and food systems that eventually end up in somebody’s grocery cart. Different industries. Same reality: People make fast decisions when it comes down to them standing in the middle of an aisle. And lately, those decisions are getting even faster, more emotional, more price-conscious, and way more selective. A few th

Some of the most important branding work we do is work the public will never see. Not the website. Not the campaign. Not the social media post. Not the tradeshow booth. We’re talking about: ☑️ employee entrances ☑️ locker rooms ☑️ break rooms ☑️ onboarding materials ☑️ internal messaging ☑️ environmental graphics ☑️ recruiting touchpoints ☑️ internal presentations ☑️ shop walls ☑️ hallways ☑️ meeting spaces The places employees see every single day. And we think that work mat

There’s a very specific kind of tension we keep running into lately. The organizations doing genuinely important work, libraries, economic development groups, manufacturers, associations, long-standing community institutions, know they need to evolve. They can feel it. Staff can feel it. Leadership can feel it. Their audiences can definitely feel it. But they’re also terrified of losing the trust they spent decades building. And honestly? Fair. A lot of these organizations we

A lot of industrial and infrastructure companies are still recruiting like it’s 2007. A stock photo. A list of requirements.“Competitive pay.”“Family atmosphere.” Maybe a blurry photo of a truck if we’re lucky. Meanwhile, the companies actually winning talent are communicating something much more important: Why should somebody choose this job over the other five offers they could probably get this week? That’s the real recruiting question now. And no, this isn’t about “sellin