Notes & Insights
Field notes from the studio.
Editorial, reports, research, founder essays and growth stories. No fluff — only what we'd hand a CMO on a Monday morning.
━━ EDITORIAL
Not-So-Ads News
Studio reportage on brand, demand and AI — published weekly, written by the people doing the work.
Founder essays
Long-form from founders we've worked with — how they built the brand, what broke, what they'd do differently.
Growth stories
Case-led essays from startups in the studio — the brief, the bet, the numbers, the lessons.
━━ FEATURED ARTICLES
The 95-5 Rule: why most of your buyers aren't ready today
At any moment, roughly 5% of your category is in-market. The other 95% are future buyers. Your brand investment is for them.
Your funnel sees 1 person. The actual buying committee has 11.
Gartner's research on B2B buying groups is the most important number nobody puts in their forecast model.
The 60/40 split: how to actually budget brand vs demand
Binet & Field's two decades of IPA data settled the argument. Spend 60% on long-term brand, 40% on short-term activation. Most B2B is inverted.
Founder-led marketing is the new top of the funnel
Personal pages out-reach company pages by an order of magnitude. The CEO's content calendar is now a pipeline asset.
We write what we wish existed when we were the ones building the brand from inside the company — sharp, specific, opinionated, and worth printing out.
Original research, working in the open.
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