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Ideas to Ponder – May 2026 Edition
One explanation is risk—fear of missing the mark, offending someone, or simply not being funny. But that only explains the hesitation, not the outcome.
Around the Agency – May 2026 Edition
Beth spent some time this week at the Nodes AI conference, where a lot of very smart people are trying to solve the same problem: how to make AI actually understand what it’s working with.
Ideas to Ponder – April 2026 Edition
An inside look at our latest explorations and undertakings. Why clear identity matters more than ever This piece on brand ontology gives language to something a lot of teams are already feeling: the growing complexity brands are operating inside and what happens when coherence starts to slip. [...]
Around the Agency – April 2026 Edition
An inside look at our latest explorations and undertakings. A beautiful day in the North Loop neighborhood Megan joined the North Loop Association Business Summit this month—bringing together ~40 local business leaders to talk marketing, ideas, and how we engage and invite more people into the neighborhood [...]
Clarity under pressure
In an era of accelerated consequence, the brands that endure are the ones whose meaning holds. When skepticism becomes behavior Why consequences now arrive faster Consumers build mental models of organizations whether companies intend them to or not. Those models include assumptions about: What the company prioritizes What [...]
Brand as infrastructure
Identity as an operating system, not a performance Brand is one of the most discussed concepts in business—and one of the most consistently misdiagnosed. It is treated as expression, storytelling, differentiation, or culture signaling, while its real impact shows up somewhere far less glamorous: in how decisions get made [...]
Ideas to Ponder – March 2026 Edition
An inside look at our latest explorations and undertakings. Leading with identity When things feel uncertain, the instinct is often to tweak the messaging. Adjust the campaign. Push harder. But brand isn’t a megaphone—it’s infrastructure. It’s the system that steadies decisions, aligns teams, and makes action coherent when circumstances [...]
When integrity becomes economic
Integrity is no longer a background value. It’s becoming a visible business variable. Not gradually. Not hypothetically. Now. What used to register as cultural inconsistency is resolving directly into action: hesitation, disengagement, withdrawal, replacement. Meaning isn’t debated anymore. It’s tested—and decided—against behavior. That shift is already underway. In this [...]
Around the Agency – March 2026 Edition
We’ve been looking for ways to help here in Minneapolis and have been deeply moved by the support pouring in from across the country.
Marketing isn’t the problem. Identity is.
Why capable organizations stall—and why marketing takes the blame. If marketing feels harder than it should, it’s rarely because the team lacks skill, effort, or experience. Most organizations we work with have already invested heavily—internal teams, external partners, new tools, new strategies. Work is happening. Decisions are being made. [...]
