Afton + Sebastian

We used to think building a community around your work meant getting more followers. Now we realize it means getting fewer strangers and more people who actually care. The brands winning in 2026 aren't the loudest — they're the ones that feel like a place you'd want to hang out.

A 100-year-old shirt brand. $30,000. Zero recognition. Their president gave David Ogilvy one condition: "Total creative freedom." Ogilvy stopped at a drugstore on the way to the shoot. A fifty-cent eyepatch. An iconic campaign. Full story → buthowdidyoudoit.substack.com/p/how-a-50-cen…

@contralabs_ai This. AI hasn't replaced a single decision in our studio—it's just reduced the bottlenecks that kept us from being our most creative. More time for design, strategy, and the weird little details clients actually remember. Thanks for the shoutout 🙏

@erinnhorner 💯

The AI-replaces-creatives conversation is getting old.

Your brand doesn't need a rebrand. It needs a reason to exist that you can explain in one sentence without using the word 'innovative.' The most forgettable companies in any industry are the ones with the most polished decks and the least conviction.

In 1975, Bic had a problem. Their lighters were cheap, reliable, and totally disposable. Which meant nobody cared which lighter they bought. How do you build a brand around a product that costs a dollar and gets thrown away? You give it a personality. buthowdidyoudoit.substack.com/publish/post/1…

Thank you for the mention @contralabs_ai and @contra! The idea that human creative judgment — real taste, not just accuracy — should shape how AI tools are built? That’s exactly the kind of shift we’ve been hoping to see. Excited to be in this network.

What would your brand sound like if you stopped trying to sound professional and started trying to sound like yourself? Not your LinkedIn self. Not your pitch deck self. Your actual self — the one who has opinions that don't fit neatly into a brand guidelines doc.

TikTok didn’t invent the 3-second hook. Rosser Reeves did. In 1955. For a headache medicine ad everyone hated.It tripled sales and ran for seven years unchanged. The platforms change. The principle doesn’t. open.substack.com/pub/buthowdidy…

What would you build if you couldn’t use AI? Strip away the tool—what idea keeps you up at night and fills you with excitement when you wake up? Build that.

@felixhhaas We would love to be added to the list. We’re a small studio that believes big ideas deserve great design. regentparkstudio.com

I see a lot of founders making the same mistake. They hire the wrong branding partner. Usually a big agency that takes way too long. The best brands I’ve seen don’t come from big agencies. They come from small, sharp teams with super strong taste. Teams that move fast and build with you, not for you. So I curated my go-to list of studios I’d recommend to any early-stage founder building in consumer tech. Built in Lovable. brand-studios.lovable.app

A conversation in our studio today: will everyone become an entrepreneur, or more accurately, contractors? Most people don’t start companies because they want to innovate or change the world. They do it because the traditional job system failed them.

Faking engagement just got harder. Building real community just got more valuable. Reddit is rolling out new policies that will label automated accounts and add human verification, reducing the effectiveness of bots and exposing brands relying on fake accounts.

AI isn’t one trend — it’s three shifts happening at once: 1. Control over distribution is fragmenting 2. The barrier to building is collapsing 3. Trust is becoming more personal than institutional Put that together and you don’t get a level playing field — you get a crowded one

The global freelance workforce now earns $1.5 trillion a year, and 56% of freelancers get their work through personal networks — up from 30% just two years ago. Your portfolio matters, but your relationships matter more.

Killer. Super helpful. Thanks @michal_gren.

The Yellow Pages was the original search engine. It had one simple idea—“Let Your Fingers Do the Walking,”. It turned a phone book into a daily habit and redefined how people found businesses for decades. buthowdidyoudoit.substack.com/p/how-the-yell…

Ummm yes. We need this.

Did you know you can now connect your GA data directly to LLMs like Gemini? ✨📊 By setting up the new Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, you move from manual reporting to strategic, AI-powered analysis. ▶️ Hit play to see the complete setup process → goo.gle/47CsGrA