Hi Reader,
Little personal update for you: a week from today I’m getting married!
That means I’ll be out of the office for the month of October, so I’ve put together a six-week email series in collaboration with some business friends to keep these emails coming while I’m away.
They’ll be here every Friday to share what has been working for them and their clients — their best advice for smart, sustainable, and strategic marketing as we roll into the last quarter of 2026.
At the end of each email I'll share resources and next steps you can take to connect and continue learning from them. If you enjoy their insights and want to stay in touch it's a great way to take action and say thanks for sharing their expertise.
And if you know of a friend who would enjoy this series, please share this link with them so they can join the fun!
To kick us off, here’s what’s working now in brand strategy, based on my own client work and conversations:
Owned audiences vs rented ones.
I’ve been doing this work for a long time now and “build on owned, not rented land” has always been solid advice. The change has been in the options at your disposal.
It used to be just blogging and email. Then podcasts joined the party. Now there’s even more choice: private podcasts, newsletters, and memberships are all great ways to grow your brand in a style that suits you and offers direct lines of communication to your audience.
Owned spaces are where your brand gets to be fully itself, in your voice and preferred format, without an algorithm deciding what people see. They allow you to prioritize relationships over reach, while giving you control and predictability. And with social platforms of all stripes making it increasingly difficult to reach your people consistently, that matters a lot.
Naming your way of working.
As the amount of slop and AI-generated content continues to multiply, Google and the LLMs are hungry for human insights and fresh, unique perspectives… which I’m sure you have in spades!
Turning the way you approach your work into a proprietary method or framework makes your thinking memorable and easy to understand. It’s a brilliant way to build credibility, clearly and succinctly stand out from other experts, and create real, branded IP that will be an asset to your business. It’s a strategy that works well for the algorithm and your human audience.
Brand as a system, not a launch.
Instead of treating branding as a one-time project or event, I’m seeing more conversations around building consistency across every touchpoint: website, emails, sales calls, onboarding, offboarding. We’re starting to think more sustainably and holistically about how we make our brands work as a system rather than something you launch once and let sit.
This is very good news for reasons I’ve talked more about here. But it does take intention and thoughtfulness to do well. You need to have a solid foundation in place and be willing to set priorities around where you’ll focus and where you’ll say no. If this is something you want to spend more time on, the Brand Commons or a Brand Strategy Session are two good places to start.
Being unmistakably human.
With so much AI-generated content out there, specific details, a real voice and lived experience stand out more than ever. Your perspective, your stories and the way you think are the parts of your brand no one else can copy. And at a time when we’re craving connection and our allergy to generic slop is only getting stronger, leaning into your hard-won expertise and being a real human behind the screen / phone / email goes a long way to building engagement and trust.
I’d love to hear what brand growth strategies and tactics have been working well for you recently! And I’m so excited to share our first guest email next Friday. Here’s the sign-up link again if you want to share with a friend.
Have a beautiful weekend,
Kristen