Creative Jam Sessions

Gap’s recent viral success isn't a coincidence. It's a case study in building brand in the right order. Two campaigns. One formula. Pair Gen Z talent with millennial music nostalgia. Kelis's Milkshake with Katseye, Lil Wayne's Lollipop sampled by Young Miko and you reach consumers from their teens through their forties in a single piece of content. 80 million views on Instagram alone. But the detail most brand leaders are missing is this: the Young Miko campaign is Gap's first commercial entirely in Spanish, featuring their first openly queer Latina face. That level of representation didn't land as a PR moment it landed as culture. Because it was built on top of a real creative brief, real heritage IP, and a story strong enough to carry it. That's the difference between an inclusion statement and an inclusion strategy. If you missed Part 1, I broke down the five-level brand pyramid that underpins all of this it's on my profile. What brand do you think is doing cultural capital better than anyone in your industry right now?

Most rebrands fail before the designer opens a single file. Here's what no branding agency will put in their proposal: the logo sits at the very top of the brand pyramid. It's the last thing you build not the first. Yet most founders and CMOs start there, skip the foundation, and wonder why nothing converts. The five levels every memorable brand is built on, bottom up: 1️⃣ Cultural capital — your authority, your IP, your category ownership 2️⃣ Reputation — word of mouth that compounds while you sleep 3️⃣ Customer experience — every touchpoint, without exception 4️⃣ Messaging architecture — what you say before anyone sees your brand 5️⃣Visual identity — now you can do the logo This matters especially for brands making DEI and purpose commitments. I've watched well-funded companies go very public with their values and very quietly walk them back because they built the roof before the walls. That's not a diversity problem. That's an architecture problem. Part 2 tomorrow: the brand that built all five levels in the right order and generated 80 million views from it. Which level is the weakest in your organisation right now?

Fashion just handed brand leaders a masterclass in what not to do. Zara x Galliano isn't a creative partnership it's a repositioning strategy dressed up as one. And consumers, investors, and talent are getting better at spotting the difference. The brands winning long term aren't the ones who look premium. They're the ones whose values are visible at every level not just the campaign. If your inclusion and sustainability commitments aren't embedded in your strategy, no designer collab will save you.

A new UK music report just dropped and the numbers deserve more than a repost. Black music has generated £24.5 billion over the last 30 years. That's over 80% of the UK's total recorded music revenue. And Black artists are still the least paid in the industry. This is not a diversity conversation. It's a business one. Brands that continue to treat Black culture as a marketing moment without equitable pay, genuine partnership or shared ownership are not just missing the point. They're accumulating reputational and commercial risk. The brands leading right now are the ones going beyond optics. I work with brands to close the gap between inclusion messaging and inclusion practice. Does your favourite brand walk the talk or is it all aesthetic? Drop them below 👇🏿

New Balance was a dad shoe brand. Then they 2.8× their sales without a rebrand, without a celebrity deal, without chasing trends. They did something most brand leaders are too cautious to commit to. They chose culture over media. Relevance over reach. Presence over visibility. The City Pack 2.0 campaign, "The Nod" wasn't built around awareness. It was built around belonging. That silent exchange between people who are genuinely in on something. And they engineered an entire full-funnel strategy around earning that moment. The results: ↗️ 1.2M engagements ↗️ Traffic 33% above benchmark ↗️ 2× clicks ↗️ 2.8× items sold vs benchmark Here's where most brands go wrong: They flip the order. Media first, culture never. They chase reach before they've earned relevance. And when the numbers don't convert, someone blames the creative. It's not a creative problem. It's a sequencing problem. Full-funnel marketing isn't about being everywhere. It's about being unavoidable and believable. Those are two very different briefs. If your brand language can't risk anything, it can't move anyone. The brands winning right now didn't buy visibility. They earned it. Follow for weekly brand strategy that actually challenges how you think. DM me to discuss what this looks like for your brand.

Most brands aren't underperforming because of the algorithm. They're emotionally incoherent. Five generations active in market simultaneously. One tone of voice across all of them. That's not an inclusive strategy that's a positioning failure hiding behind good intentions. Each generation demands something fundamentally different from a brand: Boomers need certainty and human reassurance. → Gen X needs proof — they have no patience for noise. → Millennials need integrity — vague purpose statements read as corporate lies. → Gen Z needs identity — the moment it feels like an ad, it's dead. → Gen Alpha doesn't consume brands. They participate in them. You cannot activate all five in one campaign. And somewhere in a boardroom right now, someone is blaming the creative for a strategy problem. Here's the reframe brand leaders need to hear: Choosing one generation to speak to isn't abandonment. It's positioning. The most commercially inclusive decision a brand can make is understanding one human deeply enough to speak to them directly. Trying to reach everyone at once isn't inclusion. It's avoidance and the market knows the difference. The brands converting right now chose clarity over comfort. They picked a human, understood their world, and built everything around that. The question isn't who you're targeting. It's who you've been too afraid to commit to. That's the strategic gap I help brands close. If this landed, follow for weekly brand strategy that doesn't waste your time. DM me to discuss what this looks like for your brand.

The brands winning right now aren't spending more on ads. They're spending smarter on memory. There's a shift happening in marketing that most brands are sleeping on. Physical experiences, pop-ups, activations, immersive events are driving cultural relevance in a way that digital alone simply can't replicate. Here's why: an ad earns attention for a second. A real moment earns a story someone tells for years. The brands that understand this aren't choosing IRL over digital. They're using IRL to make their digital infinitely more powerful. If you're a brand still betting everything on the algorithm question worth asking is: what are you actually building that people will remember? Gisou by Negin Mirsalehi Aló Yoga Club

My For decades, women's marketing ran on a single engine: shame. Make her feel broken. Sell her the fix. Repeat. It worked until women started paying attention. Here's what the data now tells us: women influence 70–80% of all consumer purchasing decisions. And they are increasingly brand-literate, emotionally aware, and faster than ever at identifying messaging that treats them as problems to be solved. The brands still leading with "correction" language...wrinkle fixes, body "flaws," inadequacy as an entry point aren't just behind culturally. They're leaving revenue on the table. The marketing shift isn't a trend. It's a structural change in how women relate to brands. What's replacing the old model: 1️⃣ Messaging that reduces anxiety rather than manufactures it 2️⃣ Campaigns that grant agency instead of highlighting deficiency 3️⃣ Creative that normalises real life rather than selling impossible standards 4️⃣ Brand voices that celebrate women as they are, not as a project This isn't about being "nice." It's about being commercially intelligent. The brands growing the most loyal female customer bases in 2026 share one thing in common they stopped trying to fix women and started reflecting them. If your brand's messaging still centres correction, that's not a creative brief problem. That's a values alignment problem. And it shows up in your retention numbers whether you've named it yet or not. This is the work I do with brands, helping them build marketing strategies that are both inclusive and commercially sharp. If this landed, follow for more. Or let's have a direct conversation about where your brand stands. ♻️️ Repost if someone on your team needs to see this. #IWD #InternationalWomensDay

Many brands say they are “tapping into culture.” What they are often doing instead is outsourcing relevance. Modern marketing aesthetics, language, humour, music, visual codes are deeply shaped by Black culture. Yet strategic ownership and investment rarely follow cultural influence. This creates a credibility gap audiences increasingly recognise. The strategic lesson is simple: If culture drives outcomes, culture must shape decision-making not just execution. The question for brand leaders: Are you collaborating with culture, or extracting from it?

The BAFTAs incident raises a leadership question not just a cultural one. When a tape-delayed broadcast airs a racial slur during a celebration of Black artistry, that is an editorial decision. The disability context surrounding the incident is important. So is safeguarding. In crisis moments, institutions are judged on three things: • Editorial judgement • Aftercare • Accountability language “If you were offended” is not accountability. Inclusion requires infrastructure not optics. From a brand perspective, this is about risk management and trust architecture. If you were in the control room during a tape-delayed broadcast would you have aired it?