Strategy and meaning

Brand strategy as a lever for business and culture. Research-backed essays on positioning, purpose, value, and the decisions that shape how brands endure.
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Strategy and meaning

When the soul is the asset: what the Hering crisis reveals about brand identity and M&A

The R$4.7 billion in value Hering lost between 2021 and 2026 was not lost to a market downturn. It was lost to the dilution of a brand identity that took 145 years to build. The soul was never separate from the asset. It was the asset.
Strategy and meaning

The SMS that sold nothing: on presence marketing and the brands that show up without asking

The brands that build lasting trust are not the ones that communicate most. They are the ones that show up at the right moment, without asking for anything in return.
Strategy and meaning

What your biggest fans already know about your brand

The customers who love your brand are not just commercially valuable. They are the most precise source of insight into what your brand actually is, and what tension it named before anyone else did.
Strategy and meaning

AI on autopilot: how lazy AI use is quietly killing brand identity

The problem is not using AI. It is using AI as a substitute for the kind of thinking that cannot be automated: the judgment about what a brand sounds like, what it believes, and why any of that should matter to anyone.
Strategy and meaning

The filter economy: why the next brand battleground is attention, not abundance

The future of the market isn't about who offers more. It's about who helps consumers filter the world. But building that filter genuinely, structurally, not just rhetorically, is exactly what most brands are not set up to do.
Strategy and meaning

When brands become memes (and why it works)

A meme works not because it is funny, but because it signals cultural membership. Brands that understand this stop trying to go viral and start trying to be genuinely fluent in the language of the spaces they want to inhabit.
Strategy and meaning

The cinematic brand: lessons from film in building emotional connections

Cinema and branding share the same toolkit: character, structure, visual language, and emotional architecture. The brands that understand this are not producing content — they are building worlds.
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