Baiba Matisone on Translation & Community

Baiba Matisone is a brand & creative strategist in Berlin. She is the co-founder of brandLingual, a learning platform that bridges evidence-based and intuitive marketing. Previously, she has held strategy roles at Ogilvy, Grey, Fallon, Kantar Millward Brown, and Antoni Berlin, working on global accounts including Mercedes-Benz, Vodafone, L’Oréal Paris, and Google across Asia, Europe, and North America. She lectures at Miami Ad School, and is the founder of strategy community Planning Folklore, and practitioner community Strategy Pints Berlin.

I start all these conversations with the same question, which I borrowed from this friend of mine who’s a neighbor and she helps people tell their stories. It’s a beautiful question, but it’s very big. So I over-explain it the way that I’m doing now. So before I ask it, I want you to know that you’re in absolute control and you can answer or not answer any way that you want to. And it’s impossible to make a mistake. And the question is, where do you come from?

And what was it like growing up in Latvia. It was very challenging. I think that times were very different and it was right after when the regime collapsed. And I do believe people were very traumatized by what happened during those 60 years while the country was occupied.

And to break a lot of patterns or cycles how they have behaved or how their parents have behaved or how the system pushed people to behave during those days. And I see a lot of changes happening in the culture at the moment. And I have this fresh now impression because I was just last week in Siberia.

So for me, it feels like, okay, I’m still reflecting and I’m still trying to make some conclusions about.

Yeah. What was it like to return home?

I think that the biggest difference was that conversations internationally on these video calls, we always talk about something intellectual. It’s not something that is so personal towards ourselves, which is more about ideas and what the future or things that we are not happy about in culture or in politics or whatever. When I went back home, it was just a weird thing that everybody was just talking about themselves.

And that honesty and raw honesty about what life means to them and what experiences they have faced in the past couple of years or in the past decade. It was just very refreshing and also a little bit weird in a way because it felt so honest and so true. But then again, it’s where’s the boundary?

And yeah, I think that’s still a question in my head.

And do you have recollections of being young, being a girl and what you wanted to be when you grew up?

Oh yeah, this is a very big question again. When I graduated my kindergarten, they pushed me to write down what do you want to be when you grow up? And I said that I want to be in the air.

And they were do you want to be a pilot? And you want to manage an airplane? I was no, I don’t want to be a pilot.

Do you want to be a stewardess? I was no, I don’t want to be a stewardess. And they were, my teachers, they were trying to figure out what does it mean to be in the air?

In the air?

In the air, yeah. I just didn’t have an explanation. I just got a feeling I want to be in the air, up somewhere in the sky. And now, by looking back, I am in the air. I’m constantly having these conversations with people from different parts of the world. Internet basically means that we are in the air.

That’s amazing.

They didn’t know what the internet means during that time. But I had the feeling where I want to be in my life. So I think that I have succeeded.

Yeah, you were just reporting from the future about where you’re going to be.

Yes. And they pissed me off. And I said, in the end, because I needed to write down something very concrete.

And I said that I want to be a teacher. And now by looking back and by knowing what we have created with Christopher Rowan’s Brandlingual project, I’m also a teacher. So I did both things.

That’s amazing. You’re a teacher in the air, is what you’re saying. Congratulations.

Yes. I succeeded on my own future vision about myself and also what I needed to tell to these people who are just pushing me to answer these questions.

That’s amazing. So catch us up. Tell us, you’re doing it a little bit already, but where are you now? And what is the work that you’re doing?

I mean, last year in December 15th, we launched Brandlingual, which is an educational and training platform together with Christopher Rowan, who has also been part of this podcast. As I made the joke that he’s the only A-list celebrity who has been on this podcast. And I think that it’s still a great joke.

But anyways, we are trying to solve a very big problem. I would say that there is this gap in our industry between the theory and the practice, and that everybody has these theory books in their bookshelf, but not that many people know how to actually translate them in practice. And also we are trying to find a way how to create a better understanding about the language and how people in creative strategy or in the advertising world, they are using the language and what do they mean by the words or terms that they are using on a daily basis.

And I know for a fact that before we planned this conversation with you, Peter, we had a call and we talked about Otto Scharmer. And today I was just checking some notes and I felt the problem about seeing this gap between what is going on now and what is highest potential in the future, what Scharmer is talking about, is something that is actually being built at the core of Leonard Brown.

Yeah. Yes. I was at the morning we talked last time that you and I connected about Otto Scharmer and he just had this piece in Noema, I think is how you say it, talking about us approaching a second axial age.

Yeah, so I’m excited to talk to you about Scharmer. And you’re saying that the diagnosis that you and Christopher have in the industry is similar to the diagnosis that he has had broadly? Can you say more about the overlap between Scharmer and what you’re doing?

I think that for us it’s the same thing that we spotted a very clear problem in our industry and what Scharmer is talking about in theory U is that people are creating the world with their actions and then they don’t want to take collective responsibility. They basically want to say, I didn’t do it. Someone else came and did.

Someone built the system and they did it. It’s not me. I’m not part of the system.

But what Scharmer is basically saying that each one of us should need to take responsibility because we are all building the system together. And if we are talking about marketing and advertising, it’s the same principle. It’s just that people don’t want to be accountable and take responsibility.

And I think there’s the that is the problem that we are actually embedding at the core also of the brand label.

Can you tell me a little bit of your history, your work that led you up to brandling? Well, you and Christopher, you’re solving this big problem. How did you discover the problem? What was your experience of the problem? What did it like to work in the problem that so much so that you developed this program? How did you come to identify the problem?

I think that it started in 2024 when I think it was the first wave when the was created. It was launched, sorry. And everybody was starting to test and share their observations about how to better use this tool and how to use other AI tools and what AI means and how to adapt to this transition into this new era.

And what I was seeing as a pattern is actually that what is actually important is not that much what AI is bringing new to our everyday life or everyday practice. But what is more important is that actually most of the planners or most of the strategists or practitioners on the marketing side, they actually don’t understand the fundamentals. And this conversation started to become more and more stronger across multiple smaller circles of different people who were also working inside of the industry.

And during that time, I came up with this idea, let’s do a strategy retreat. Let’s come together for one weekend in presence here in Berlin and let’s just try to go back to the fundamentals. Let’s just think about all together what are the key fundamentals in marketing brand and creative strategy.

And we came together last year in May 2025 and we did a retreat and it was a fantastic experience and also incredibly challenging experience to bring 10 people in the room. And then basically I realized that actually it’s even hard for us to figure out what are the roots or what are these fundamental principle that hasn’t changed through the time. So brand lingual grew out from this retreat.

It’s just that Christopher and I was the most hyped ones who were okay, let’s build something bigger out of this. Let’s not just create the PDF and share with people on LinkedIn and just let this whole idea go. But we were we saw that there’s a fundamental problem and that problem needs to be addressed and the problem needs to be solved.

Especially by knowing that there will be more and more people who will be using AI and to actually use an AI, you need to be an expert. So the first step to actually use an AI as a marketer or as a creative strategist or brand strategist is actually by knowing and understanding fundamental principles. Because how can you prompt AI if you don’t know the core things about your own that you need to practice.

And only when you know these fundamental principles, then you can judge what AI is providing as an information to you. And then you know how to go in the right direction. Because what is happening at the moment is that a lot of people are jumping just on the fool’s goal by believing that this is something revolutionary.

And actually it’s nothing new or nothing interesting, or maybe it’s even false information. But just because they don’t have a clear understanding about what they have found, they believe that it’s something big.

Yeah. When did you first discover that you could make a living in this world of brand and advertising and marketing? What was your first experience?

I mean, I think this goes back, I don’t know, back in my personal history more than 15 or something years ago, which is more about, yeah, when I was I don’t know, 20 something in my, I don’t know, maybe even early 20s, or maybe I was 18 years old when I was trying to figure out what do I want to study in my bachelor studies, or what kind of bachelor degree do I want to take. And during that time, I knew that I want to take a bachelor degree in commercial arts. I just figured out that I’m not a good artist.

But it doesn’t mean that I don’t want to stay close to the commercial arts. And I do believe advertising has always been called as commercial arts. And I do believe that this is just something where I have been for a very long time.

And it’s just that if you are passionate about something, and you care, people feel this, and they want to come closer to you, and they want to collaborate with you, and they want to learn from you. And I do believe that that is the answer to your question, how do you stay still into this business? And how do you still figure out how to also stay successful?

Yeah. In what way is it an art? I think you spoke to it a little bit. But yeah, in what way is commercial is what we do or what you do art?

I mean, advertising has always been called as commercial arts. During that time, when I was studying, there was a clear line between what is art and what is commercial art. And I was always very much into the idea that I need to create something that would, first of all, it would help other people, it would be very helpful to a large masses, it would make some change.

And the other thing, of course, is how to make it profitable for myself. And in my academia, where I was studying, none of my professors were on the same page. They were thinking that they were more into this idea that art is for art reason.

And it’s not about commercial aspects around your ideas when you’re creating art. And, and I think that there, I found out that I am not into the art scene, they’re more into the advertising scene. And even in nowadays, I’ve had, of course, multiple conversations with the artists who are trying to survive nowadays, and every artist is now a brand.

So every artist is now thinking about their own way how to survive and be still profitable. So I would say that art in general has transitioned to be a commercial art. It’s my personal take.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you love about the work? Where’s the joy in what you do for you?

I think that I was just reflecting this morning that I saw someone who was also incredibly passionate about what she’s doing. And I was reflecting on myself. And I thought that, oh, there was a time I don’t know, five, six years ago, I was the same person.

Now I feel I learned some things. And I feel I figure out something, but I love this phase. And I do believe it’s in everyone’s life, when you just try to figure out what is this thing that I’m trying to understand in my business or in my industry, where I am working.

And then you are open to do a lot of interviews, you are open to do a lot of coffee chats with so many practitioners and professionals, just to figure out how do they do their thing? Did this resonate with you? Because I do believe it did.

Yeah, very much. Very much. Of course, it did. That’s beautiful. And I wonder, yeah, can you tell me a story about where that began for you? I mean, yeah, I mean, you’re really just describing having a big, big question.

It was during the COVID time, because everybody was available, everybody was more or less in lockdowns, and they were sitting at home. And during that time, I came up with this idea of why not to interview a bunch of strategists across the globe and figure out how they are doing their daily work? How do they think about the strategy?

Where is there some internal process, how they go about the client’s problem? And I interviewed more than 50 strategists.

Wow. Nice. What would you say? Do you have an idea of what the question is? Because I recognize this in myself. I don’t know exactly why I’m doing what I’m doing, but there’s definitely something in me that wants to keep doing it.

It is a question. I don’t know that it’s very concrete. But do you have a feeling of what it is that you’re after?

During that time, I tried to figure out what are the undervalued skills. So I thought that everybody who is now fired, and then there will be a phase when people will be hired back, then these undervalued skills will help them to have some competitive edge in the market. So it wasn’t a selfish project.

It was a more selfless project that I wanted to share these findings with everyone and just to help others to also feel supported and that they would have hope and inspiration and also some guidance where to look, in which direction to look to skill up or to become more competitive. So yeah, I think that the core for me, it wasn’t the question itself. It was more about how can I help others?

How can I bring more value to the whole community, the strategy bubble in general? It doesn’t mean in Europe or Asia or in States, but it’s more about how can I globally give something to others. I don’t know, maybe it’s a very selfless idea, but it felt good to me.

It felt, yeah, it gave a lot of positive feeling to me.

Well, I see in your biography, you have all these few, you created planning folklore, which was a community of practitioners, is that right? And then you built, I guess there’s their strategy pints in Berlin, another convening. And then even brand label is another way of really bringing people together around this stuff.

I mean, clearly you recognize, what makes that something that you do that is so important to you to bring people together, it seems?

Again, we can go back to Otto Scharmer. If you have read the Theory U book, or at least the core idea about Theory U, it is also about collective thinking about industry in which you are operating in, and it’s not about, and Otto Scharmer has this very clear shift. It’s not about ego, it’s about eco, and eco meaning that it’s about the collective thinking about how we all together are actually creating the reality.

Yeah. I mean, did you get a chance to read the recent piece that we talked about? We’ve assigned it to each other, and out of guilt and fear of you having read it and me not reading it, I read it this morning.

Here it is: “We may be entering a second axial age,” by Otto Scharmer in NOEMA

I have no judgment if you were not able to, but of course, it builds on everything he’s done in the past, and it’s a beautiful diagnosis that basically the first axial age was this moment when civilization discovered its interior life, and we’ve been living in this really inward focused way for a very long time, and this age, the second axial age is this moment where he’s saying we have to discover this, he called it collective interiority, but it is.

I mean, it’s the same thing we talk about, that the space between us is completely abandoned, and he uses these three words, anomie, atomie, and atrophy as being the diagnosis of we’re alienated from each other, we’re separated, and we’ve lost all these muscles of how to collect and how to connect with each other, which I just resonate with quite a bit. So maybe the question for me is when did you first discover Otto Scharmer, and what made it so significant?

I mean, he’s very popular in Latvia, his book was published in two formats, one was his original theory u-book, and then there was a smaller book, which was almost some already key ideas in a smaller version, but for myself, I think, as a person who is still coming from Latvia, or from, let’s say, Eastern Europe, I do believe this collective thinking has been embedded in us as a culture in general, as a culture, since the occupation, because we needed to be collective, we needed to collaborate together, and it wasn’t about anyone’s egocentricity, or ego, but it was more about how we can collectively create the best solution, or the best work that could possibly be out there, and I do believe that there’s some unwritten way how to look at the world is still inside of me, and it’s just something that I still want to bring in other countries, or in other cultures, where people are more focusing towards themselves, or being very individual.

For me, I don’t understand this thing, because I have never thought, or I have never believed in this idea that one person can win a war, you need to always have a team, or you need to have your supporters, which is your team, and that’s why I am, but this is my very personal belief, that I don’t think that people feel mentally good by actually living in a very individualistic environment. We are social animals at the core, or social creatures, and we need to socialize, and we need to feel that there are other people, similar, like-minded people in the room, and that’s also something that we have put at the core on Brandlingual, which is the idea about the community, even to learn, or to unlearn some things, you need to have a group of other people around you who can help you to see what are these blind spots in your way of thinking, or where you are not clearly understanding what’s going on, and yeah, and I do believe that this crowd support is super, super important, and again, it goes back to Otto Scharmer, who talks about the same thing.

I want to talk a little bit more about BRANDLingual. Can you tell me more about what does the name mean, why BRANDLingual, and yeah, and what happens there?

I think that this is the question that you need to ask Christopher, because this was his creation, that there needs to be these two words put together. We wanted to call our idea translation, but Jay-Z was the one who took this idea, so he has an agency called Translation, and that’s why we needed to find another word how to call. The idea was somehow to play around this thought about how to be bilingual inside of the marketing, brand, and creative strategy for how to talk in multiple languages, and from there came this idea, let’s put brand as a first word, and then becoming BRANDLingual, that you can understand multiple languages, and you can go in the room understanding what language your client is talking or speaking at the moment.

What are the different languages that is, I mean, not to push this metaphor to the brink, but yeah, what are the different languages that are out there? I guess maybe for me, I came up at a point where there wasn’t, I mean, I don’t recall, but I came up in a brand consultancy. There wasn’t a ton of science or rigor around stuff. I mean, I learned research practices and stuff like that, but the conversation about marketing science and rigor and theory and practice has grown quite a bit over my career. We’re in a very different position now than we have been in the past. I guess maybe what’s that been like for you, and what does it mean to be rigorous or to speak multiple languages today?

There is huge chaos, and I think that the biggest problem is for a young talent who wants to join the industry, because there are a lot of terms and words that people are using in most of the cases, some buzzwords that are actually relabeled some old terms just in a new code. That’s why I do believe that Brandlingual actually is the most useful training platform for those who are joining the industry, because you will not be messed up with these buzzwords, but you can learn a clean language or to understand what is a clean way how to look at two key schools of thought, what are these two key thinking systems or schools of thought in our industry, and one of them is more intuitive one, how people are looking at the marketing from a very intuitive perspective, which is not very scientific or evidence-based, but it was the best way how to explain things if you are just trying to explain them in an intuitive way, and it’s very much anchored in the way Philip Kotler is talking about the marketing frame, how marketing should need to work through the STP framework, which is segmentation, targeting, and positioning, and nowadays we know that there is a much more accurate view how to look at these same things, and which is evidence-based view, which is more scientific, which is more researched, and that comes from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.

Yeah. What’s the relationship between these two? Do they coexist together? Do they interact with each other healthily, or are they in conflict?

I do believe that there is a conflict, and there is also some translate these thinking systems back and forth, and that’s where the brand lingo comes in, that we want, because we are basically saying that you need to, of course, speak in both languages. It’s not about one or the other. It’s actually about how to keep this duality alive at the same time by acknowledging that you can speak in one language, or you can speak in another, or even if your client speaks in intuitive way, you can translate them back and bring them to the next level, so they could start to realize that there are better ways how to grow the brand or how to improve things around the brand and the marketing.

Yeah, and how has it been going? You’ve been, how long has brand lingo been out there now?

Since December 15th, so it’s almost six months.

Congratulations. Are you enjoying yourself? What’s been the best part so far?

I think that there have been a lot of interesting moments, and there have been a lot of challenging moments. I do believe the most interesting thing is that in our podcast, we are placing a similar, it’s not the same question, but we are also having one question with which we are normally starting at every podcast episode, and that’s the question about unlearning. I do believe that we have unlearned a lot of things in our journey, because we had a lot of assumptions how things will work out, and life is a very interesting, messy thing, which makes its own corrections in our perceptions about how things could work out.

Yeah, and what’s an example of, I mean, I love that idea of unlearning. What’s an example of some things that you feel, I mean, people are listening, what’s a big assumption that everybody should try to unlearn, or it might benefit from loosening their attachment to it, at least?

I mean, we have our seminar, or webinar, however you want to call it, which is Unlearn 10 Myths in 2026, so there we are talking about things that are more closer to the marketing world and advertising world, but if you want to address this question more towards what I have unlearned while doing a brand legal thing, I do believe that that’s a maybe even more interesting question that I need to think for a moment, what are some interesting things that I have unlearned.

I think that the one thing that I have unlearned is about thinking about collaboration with people in general, that I had a little bit different way conversations, and how I was opening conversations with others. And now just because we have talked with so many people, not only through our podcast, but also with potential students, and with so many people inside of our community, that I feel like people are so different, and people are so interesting, and you never know if the word which you are saying, or the phrase that you are using will or someone will get offended, or how it is excitement and fear sometimes at the same time, whatever which side of the coin you want to look, because it’s the same feeling. It’s just that on one side if you want to look from the negative perspective, it’s fear, and it’s scary, and if you want to look from the positive side, it’s oh, it’s exciting, it’s always something new pops up, but it’s challenging, and sometimes you just get exhausted from those things, and I think it’s also very human.

Yeah, yeah, so what do you do differently as a result?

I think I try to reflect more, and I try to take some moments to just figure out what is not just the noise, or emotions, but what is actually at the core, and what is the most important thing, so that’s why I try to practice meditation, to just take all the noise out of my head, and then just I try to focus on what is the one most important thing at the center, or at the core of this whole conversation, or on this whole collaboration.

What, I’m curious if there, I hear more about the 10 myths that people need to unlearn, or maybe a teaser, what’s the top one or two of the myths in your webinar?

Yeah, yeah, I mean this was our very first webinar that we did actually in January, and this is the whole concept that has impacted how BrandLingual is talking about, how we are at BrandLingual, we are talking about certain things, and at the core of these myths are still this distinction that in a school of thought, when you are looking at the marketing from intuitive perspective, for example, you focus on the word awareness, or brand love, but when you are looking from the other school of thought, from the other perspective, from the evidence-based school of thought, you think more about the mental availability, and physical availability, and this is this new shift that you need to actually understand, that it’s not about the age-old terms, or age-old words that we are using, but it’s actually about this transition, and also this new translation that we need to bring into the room.

And what does BrandLingual say about research in terms of practice, both qual and quant, of course, I’m always selfishly really interested in the role of qualitative, and how you argue for qualitative, but what does BrandLingual say about how to learn qualitatively and quantitatively?

I think that this was a question that we discussed, Peter, before in this call, and I think we also had a very interesting chat that you said that, why do you guys are putting this shift on memory? What is so important about memory? That’s nothing new.

Well, I did, and just to interrupt a little bit, I felt this is the experience of getting old, I think, and what I think what you guys are doing really effectively is you’re packaging these first principles in a way where, I mean, was it memory-first branding or something? And I was my gosh, it’s just clear communication, but it struck me that you were saying the thing that I feel I learned right away.

Thank you. But yeah, at the core, it is about this shift that marketing and advertising industry has focused on how to change the consumer behavior for a very, very long time. And it has been, I don’t know, since the 1930s, I would say, that it’s okay, we need to have some very persuasive message.

And with this message, we will make people to buy our product or buy more of our products. And that’s actually, if we look at scientific evidence, it’s not actually how people are convinced to buy one product towards the other product, or why they choose one brand towards the other brand. And I think that a lot of people hasn’t noticed the shift yet.

So that’s why we are emphasizing this new way how to look not only at the research that you need to start to think about from the mental perspective, how people make decisions, how they store the memories, how do they create the memories, how do they remember the brand. There is some brand that will come in your mind that you potentially normally are buying and using. But then when you are in the store, and this brand is not on the shelf, what do you do?

And that’s interesting. Not the message oh, rational or emotional message, how to convince someone to change the behavior, which is, as I said, it’s not possible. And yeah, we are placing the shift at the center.

Also, in Brandlingual, when we are not only talking about the research, but when we are also talking about the creative strategy and advertising, that advertising in general should need to focus on how to build new memories about the brand. And so that shift, just to be really explicit, the shift to memory first is a shift from what to what?

From focusing on, from focusing in research process to analyze the consumer behavior, when they buy the product, how did they buy the product, what was some need when they bought the product. Now it’s more about what came into their mind, what kind of thing, or I need to solve some problem. Suddenly, I broke something, I need to buy a new, I don’t know, some thing in my home or in my office to, I don’t know, replace this broken, I don’t know, chair or whatever.

And that problem won’t be solved by some emotional or rational message, nobody will go back. I saw the ad, there was a commercial about the chair. And now I will be checking some website.

Normally, it goes more into the very fast mental process inside of the human brain, where the person is just quickly trying to remember, hey, what was, what is this brand that I have broken? How can I replace with the same product or object or the thing that is, in this particular example, broken. But normally, it’s just that you go back into your memories, and you try to figure out what was the last brand.

Was I happy about it? Was my experience satisfying? And then if it wasn’t, you will start to think about, okay, what are some alternatives?

Because my last experience wasn’t happy, or I wasn’t happy with my last experience by, I don’t know, buying some certain brand or by having an experience with certain brand. So it’s not about behavior, because when we analyze behavior, we can never understand the question, why people are actually doing something. It’s more about everything that is happening around.

But when we are starting to figure out what is this mental pathway since the problem arise? And until the solution until the product is bought, that’s something more interesting and more valuable for the marketing and marketers and also for the advertising world to build campaign.

Yeah. So what would you say, I guess I’m curious, what’s the role of qualitative research of face to face research in in this in the shift that you’re talking about? And how is it different than how it’s been in the past?

I mean, according to Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s way, how they explain how to do a qualitative research, to figure out what are some memories that people have in mind about particular category, it goes through three phases. First is when the problem arise, what happened in the background? Why do you have this problem?

Why is the situation now happening? I don’t know, you don’t have a mill or something is broken, whatever you need to as a researcher or as a strategist, you need to understand this context. Then you go into the next phase where you start to where you with your questions, you need to understand, okay, okay, first, we understand why you have a problem.

What was your feelings? What was other things that was happening in the background? Did you need someone else with whom to go to buy this stuff or you were alone?

All of these things are, again, super important for the research process. Then you go into the next stage, which is the second phase. And you start to ask the questions to understand, okay, what did you do to solve this problem or to fix this problem.

And again, you try to understand what happened in the context? What was the mood? What kind of emotions person was feeling?

What is coming in mind when they need to start to go in this solution phase? And then the third phase in the research process is to understand how did the purchase process actually happen? Did the person in the end bought the same product that they thought about at the very beginning or they change their choice or and choose another product?

Or what happened and if the process was successful? And what was the experience again with the product or with the, I don’t know, service when this purchase was made? Because all of these things, almost a mental pathway through three phases, are incredibly important to understand how people think about products and also how do they choose the brand?

You have a problem and then which brand you will choose? What is your decision making process? This is basically the pathway that you can take as a researcher to figure out what is going on in the consumer’s mind or buyer’s mind.

And then you do multiple, of course, conversations and then you try to figure out what are some most common patterns, how people think about the category.

Yeah. I’m curious, you’re spending time with young people, I imagine. Who’s signing up or who are you finding, that’s an assumption, who’s signing up so far?

For us, it’s not that much as young people because I do believe that industry has this problem for a very long time and it’s before AI was launched or something that agencies just in general don’t train young strategists and young strategists or new talent need to find a way how to find this information by themselves. And as we know, the people who are entering the industry, they are not also paid very well, so they don’t have a chance to take a very expensive course program and scale up. So it’s more about trying to figure out, can I find a mentor on LinkedIn or in my team who can help me to understand the strategy or can I find some free resources and then get a little bit lost because still you need the guidance.

So for us, it’s more about more senior practitioners, which is brands, creative strategies, brand strategists, also people who are working on the client side who are more in the process of unlearning because they are in a business, I don’t know, for 10, maybe 15 years, they have learned a lot of things, they have practiced a lot of things, but now they have came to a realization or conclusion that maybe I should need to double think what I know because I’m seeing a lot of problems.

For example, yeah, there is some messiness around the language, but I have never thought about how to put these terms and all these key concepts in a place, what is actually this, what terms are coming from the intuitive school of thought or what terms are coming from the evidence-based school of thought, it’s just for a lot of people, a lot of mess in their heads.

And then we are trying to make some clarity, we are trying to help to see that, hey, there are some patterns, there is a way how to see things more clearer, and we are, of course, Nice.

How would you describe, we’re coming near the end of our time together, but how would you describe where we are right now? I mean, you talked about so much of the stuff that you, we’ve talked about, it came out of your reaction to the pandemic and then the arrival of AI and we’re, how do you describe where we are now? Do you have thoughts about, you know, where are we now when it comes to the state of marketing and the state of brand given everything that’s going on?

It’s a really big question, you definitely don’t have to.

It is a very big question, but I still believe that you need to be first an expert, you need to have a solid understanding about key principles around how things are operating, and then you can use AI to actually expand your way of thinking, but you can’t do vice versa, because as I said earlier also in this conversation, if you don’t have a solid understanding about what you are doing, you will believe that fool’s gold is something important, or it’s a treasure that you have found with the help of AI, but I do believe that a lot of people will make a lot of mistakes, and the ones who will pay about it, of course, will be the business owners or stakeholders who are investing the money into these companies, and I do believe there will be some financial collapse after some time, because even this idea that you can replace a junior strategist with AI, I do believe it’s completely false. It’s a wrong way how to look at the things, because I still believe that you need to give to any junior strategist a good understanding about the fundamental principles, give them a clear understanding what a strategy, what a creative strategist or brand strategist should need to do, how to actually help a marketer or a brand to become more successful, and then you can give the AI tool or a bunch of them, so they could speed up their work, but at the core, they still need to have a good understanding about the fundamental principles.

I feel like my tongue is moving around and saying the same things, but yeah, I do believe it’s about good junior strategist who is eager to learn plus the AI, and then some magic can happen.

Yeah, it’s beautiful. I really appreciate and admire what you and Christopher are doing with Brandlingual, and in this word of atrophy, which is a word that Sharma uses in that piece, and I think it’s true across the board that we’ve put of the digital world we just fell out of the habit of using so many of these muscles in some way, that it’s not just that we don’t know them, it’s that we forgot how to use them, you know what I mean? We just, and the only real answer is to practice them is to get back into the work of doing it, and that seems to be what you do naturally. So, congratulations on what you’ve done, and I appreciate you joining me here.

Thank you very much for the invitation. It was my pleasure to have a conversation with you, and I hope I said something interesting, and that at least this was also a meaningful one hour for you, because I always say to everyone with whom I have a coffee chat, hey, just be mindful, we are still spending each other’s time, and life is short.

That’s right, that’s right. Well, it certainly was, it was all interesting and very meaningful, and I’m glad to have gotten to know you a little bit better, so thank you.

Thank you very much.

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