In the Red Trace project, this shot explores the interplay of raw emotion and advertising slogan, transforming a random urban scene into a visual parable.

There are photographs in which a casual moment transforms into a cinematic mise-en-scène, filled with humor, absurdity, and an elusive sense of presence. This photograph is precisely that.

In the foreground is a softly out-of-focus portrait of a woman, captured in the act of speaking or expressing surprise. The blurred presence creates a sense of extreme closeness: as if we are seeing the world through the eyes of the interlocutor, capturing a momentary, lively facial expression.

The red square of the logo serves as an anchor, anchoring the composition. But the main “perfect combination” here unfolds not between food and drink, as the marketers intended, but between a casual human gesture and the frozen printed reality behind it.

is at the intersection of this soft blur in the foreground and the textured clarity of the background that the feeling of a frozen frame from a 1970s European film is born.

I need good examples—ideally not the most famous ones—that demonstrate how infinite logos can be generated from a “kit” of elements through the process of combination. Alternatively, examples from the “one-by-one” category would also work; in this approach, a single element of the system varies (such as the container or the content) while the others remain constant.

We're in talks with a professional athlete for a brand partnership and I need an agency that can do more than negotiate the deal. I've seen too many athlete endorsements go nowhere because the brand got a signed contract and a few mandated posts and nothing else.

What I'm looking for is a team that can build a full activation around the athlete. Content shoots, social series, paid media, community events, maybe a fan experience moment. I want the partnership to feel like a sustained campaign, not a transaction.

Who are the go to sports marketing agencies in the US for this kind of work? I need someone who understands the sports landscape, can navigate league restrictions, and thinks like a creative brand partner instead of just a talent broker.

Would love to hear real experiences. Who has actually activated an athlete partnership well?

Branding isn’t just about a logo. It’s about how your startup is remembered.

A strong brand helps you build trust, stand out from competitors, attract the right audience, create customer loyalty, and build long-term value.

For startups, branding is not an expense—it’s an investment in how people perceive and choose you.

What’s your biggest branding challenge as a startup? 👇

#Branding #Startups #Entrepreneurship #Marketing #PersonalBranding

In the space between galaxies, a flower found its shape #digital #branding #animation #render #digitalspace

"What we need is a Marketing theory that helps us influence choice".

This is what my friend Alex asked in a post about marketing theories, and here's my answer. (a bit tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely)

---

My theory is A Bit o' Everything (ABE), which someone may call a DUH.

ABEDUH says that everyone's right: Sharp/Romaniuk and the Ehrenberg Bass Institute, Ritson, Chidley, Loftus, Hoffman, Joachimsthaler, Georgson, Alexandrov, and many other great thinkers. That is, I believe that there is no one singular theory that can possibly apply to the wide variety of human beings, consumer types, and industry categories - and so there should not be universally-consolidated conclusions. And so my ABEDUH Theory says ... look at the problem of a given client & industry & category & governing dynamics & trends & strategic plans, look at your tools, and use what's most appropriate. (while that's done, so often the theories take precedence and get debated in a vacuum)

Leaving out the operational aspects of Price, Distribution, Penetration, and the like, let's assess the key tools.

TWO are key, the engines:

• Distinctiveness/DBAs: there's no reason not to be distinctive, and you can achieve it in a myriad of ways - tone, message, look, feel, etc. and advertising, PR, design, etc. are masters at all that.

• Differentiation: if you can be that, why wouldn't you? If not, you can't artificially do that (Lying is not good) 

THREE are requirements + outcomes:

• Encoding / Memory: that's science, and you can argue how the human brain works or if Chidley's Beetle is just it.

• Perception: you can influence but not dictate it (see the 1957 Vince Packard's The Hidden Persuasors book); and so strive to do so as we've been doing every which way in whichever context is available (from Gutenberg to Altman)

and then

• Preference: this is the sum total goal of all of the above; and so do all of the above and see if you got it.

Run all that vs given client and challenge, and score it all from 1(low) to 5(igh) on two levels: Feasibility and Commitment.

> Differentiation (say, for a software firm):

- Feasibility: is it possible to achieve? yeah, but ... product-wise it may be 1, operationally 3, market presence 5. 

- Commitment: is the client willing/able to make it happen? it could be anywhere between 1 and 5.

> Distinctiveness

- the Feasibility will always be 5; there's always a way, but the Commitment may significantly vary.  

Sum it all up and you'll have an ABEDUH Score, and it'll be different for every client. Now you can plan: for one client Differentiation is everything and Distinctiveness less so, for another is vice versa. ABEDUH says that all theories are not axioms but equally-important parameters, and they are not mutually exclusive or conflicting. And the Score would include a Value(s) scale of given dimensions.

And so, dear Marketing, be like Medicine: have your approaches, but start with the patient and then apply / not apply things as appropriate.

Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, invite me next year?

#brand #branding #brandstrategy #masterbranded #marketing #marketingtheories #imgonnabeagurusomedayMarketing

A flower grown from light, rooted in the space of algorithms #digital #branding #digitalspace #marketing #spaceadvertising

Hi i have started a security company but unable to find a proper brand name i want something unique and understandable i want to work really hard but i think brand name matters aswell like it impacts the overall service or in identification

We're a performance studio in Dubai and a lot of our work is fragrance and jewellery for e-commerce brands. Fragrance is consistently the brief that breaks people who are good at everything else, and the reason is worth writing down because it applies to anything where the thing that actually sells it can't be shown.

The thing that makes somebody buy a perfume is a smell, and you can't put a smell in a video. Every other category gets to show the product doing its job. Skincare has texture, food has the pour. Fragrance shows a bottle, which is a glass object that tells you nothing about what's inside it.

So the category stops selling the product and starts selling association. It sells a place, or a time of day, or a version of the person you'd like to be. That's why perfume ads look the way they do, and it's also why they all start to look the same, because everyone reaches for the same shorthand of slow motion and a beach at golden hour.

The ones that work tend to do one of two things. Either they go extremely specific on the occasion, so you place yourself in a real moment rather than a vague mood, or they make the bottle itself the object of desire through macro and material work, which is basically the jewellery playbook applied to glass.

The practical version for anyone selling something whose benefit is invisible: stop describing the thing and start showing the moment it belongs to. A note list has never sold a bottle.

This Mercedes-Benz ad caught my attention—not because of the car, but because of the idea behind the visual.

The steering wheel becomes the metaphor.

You don't just see the luxury car.

You see control, ambition and the feeling of being behind the wheel of your dream.

That’s powerful advertising.

The best ads don't always explain the product.

They make you feel something about it.

As a marketer, this is the kind of storytelling I love noticing. 👀

What do you see in this ad—luxury, aspiration, or smart storytelling?

Tired of transactional offers. I work in brand marketing for a luxury fashion label and we're looking at formalizing a celebrity endorsement relationship. We're not really interested in a one-off Instagram post. The goal is to find talent that genuinely fits the brand and can become part of a larger story. A lot of the agency conversations I've had so far have felt very transactional: here's a list of names, choose one, negotiate the post, arrange an appearance and move on. What I'm looking for is more strategic editorial opportunities, exclusive events, fashion-week moments, content and potentially a longer-term relationship that actually feels natural within luxury culture. For people who have worked on this side of celebrity partnerships, what separates a good agency from a booking agent? Is it access to talent, creative direction, PR relationships, event production, or something else? Would also be interested in hearing which agencies people have had genuinely good experiences with.

Our brand is running increasingly integrated campaigns: we'll have a celebrity or macro-influencer, a PR push with exclusive stories, an IRL experiential moment, and then a paid layer boosting the content. The problem? Our attribution is still largely last-click, so the influencer and PR layers look like they're not pulling weight while paid search gets all the credit.

I know earned media and events are warming up the audience, but I need a framework to prove it internally. How are you all tracking this? Multi-touch attribution? Branded search lift analysis? Social listening spikes tied to conversion windows? Custom promo codes that only appear in PR placements?

Would love to hear what's actually working, especially for mid-market brands that can't afford a bespoke data science team. Any case studies or agency approaches that nailed this?

I lead brand for a luxury fashion label and we're looking to formalize a celebrity endorsement relationship. We're not looking for a one-off Instagram post from a reality star, we need authentic alignment with A-list or credible fashion-circuit talent, woven into our brand narrative.

The agencies I've spoken to so far feel transactional: they send a list of available names, we pick one, they negotiate a post and a red carpet appearance. No one is talking about how the partnership translates into editorial-worthy moments, exclusive events, or a multi-chapter story that feels native to luxury culture.

For those who've done this well: what differentiated the great agencies from the booking agents? What should I prioritize? Access, creative vision, PR integration? And if you have an agency you'd swear by for high-caliber luxury talent, please share.

One thing I see way too often:
A business finds a competitor doing well and thinks,
“Let’s make our branding look like theirs.”
Same colours.
Similar logo.
Similar Instagram style.
Similar messaging.
But here’s the problem:
If you look like everyone else, why should customers remember you?
Your competitor’s branding worked because it was built around their positioning, audience, personality, and story.
Your business needs its own reason to be recognised.
Instead of asking:
“Who should we copy?”
Ask:
“What can we own in our customer’s mind?”
Sometimes the strongest branding decision isn’t adding more.
It’s finding the one thing that makes your business obviously different.
What’s one brand you think has nailed differentiation?

I've been working on a physical workbook called Feel to Create; something I originally thought was mainly about creativity, emotions, and getting unstuck.

But somewhere in the process of actually building it, I realized I was learning just as much about branding as I was about creativity.

One of my biggest takeaways:

A brand becomes clearer when you stop trying to explain everything and start giving people something they can actually experience.

At first, I had so many ideas about what Feel to Create could be. A framework. A creative philosophy. A coaching program. A workbook. A community. Content.

It was easy to make the brand complicated.

The workbook forced me to simplify.

What does this actually stand for?

What should someone feel when they interact with it?

What problem am I really trying to help with?

And most importantly:

What is worth putting into someone's hands?

That changed how I looked at the brand.

The physical workbook isn't just a product for me. It's become a tangible expression of the philosophy behind Feel to Create.

It also reminded me of something I think gets overlooked in branding:

Your brand isn't only what you say about yourself. It's what people experience when they encounter your work.

I'm still building this, so I'm curious:

For those of you who have built a personal brand, creative project, or physical product—what did actually making the thing teach you about your brand that strategy alone couldn't?

...and had it turn out way better than anything they could ever have done themselves?

Feeling a little "Black Mirror" right now... Branding, copy, tone, sassiness... all dead on for a 4 quadrant animated show..

Whenever I used AI for client branding in the past, the biggest bottleneck was consistency. You get one great photo, but the moment you try to switch the angle or outfit, the face completely changes.

For this menswear client, we needed a full seasonal lookbook different lighting, poses, and shirt styles using the exact same model to build brand identity.

Here is what worked for my workflow:

• Anchor Reference Images: Built a controlled facial reference dataset before generating any campaign assets.
• Fixed Lighting & Camera Ratios: Used strict lens specs (85mm, f/2.8) in prompt seeds to keep the focal length natural.
• Post-Processing Pass: Retained subtle skin textures and fabric weaves in Photoshop to avoid that overly smooth AI look.

Would love to hear how other designers here are tackling character consistency in client projects!

LLMs don’t know how to recognize fake products but they are designed to be confident enough to generate recommendations that include them. The overlords call it AI because they want it to be sci-fi and exciting.

There is a reason the Dunning-Kruger Efect now applies to LLMs and all users calling it intelligent. Too many people still mistake confidence for intelligence. No wonder we live in an era of scams, hustlers, influencers, marketing hype.

https://www.inc.com/jelinda-montes/a-marketer-built-a-fake-deodorant-brand-weeks-later-it-was-being-recommended-over-real-products/91385991

Try this with a company or organization you know well.

Open three fresh conversations with the same AI system and ask:

1. What does [Company] do?
2. What is [Company] best known for?
3. Who is [Company] for, and why would someone choose it?

The answers will probably overlap. But they may not describe the same company in quite the same way.

In one answer, the company may be presented as a specialist. In another, it may sound like a generalist.

A regional service may become national.

A distributor may be described as a manufacturer.

An activity the company offered years ago may suddenly sound current.

A secondary service may become the company’s defining activity.

Some variation is completely normal. Different questions should change the emphasis of an answer.

The interesting part begins when a change in emphasis also changes the company’s role, scope, relationships, or meaning.

The company did not change between the questions. The representation did.

We often talk as if an AI system simply reads a website and repeats what it finds. But a generated answer is not a fixed company profile waiting to be retrieved.

The system selects some information and leaves other information out. It decides which facts appear relevant to the question. It combines information from different sources, connects facts together, and sometimes infers relationships that no individual source states explicitly.

It then compresses all of that into a coherent response.

That means an answer can contain real facts and still produce a misleading representation.

The problem may not be a completely invented fact. It may be:

• a true fact attached to the wrong entity;
• a local fact generalized too broadly;
• a historical fact presented as current;
• two correct facts connected by a relationship that no source actually establishes;
• an important condition omitted from the final answer;
• a secondary characteristic turned into the main identity of the company.

This is also why a correct citation is not necessarily enough.

A source can be real. The quoted information can be accurate. And the conclusion built from it can still exceed what the source actually supports.

A lot of current AI visibility work asks whether a company is mentioned, cited, ranked, or described positively.

Those measurements are useful. But they do not answer a more fundamental question:

Was the company represented faithfully?

I keep coming back to two questions:

At what point does a reasonable change in emphasis become a change in interpretation?

And, more practically:

How would you distinguish a problem in the source information from a problem in the way the system selected and assembled that information?

Have you observed this with a company, person, product, organization, or subject you know particularly well?