●   Intelligence · /intelligence three things we publish

Read us
before you
hire us.

Why this page exists

Most prospects decide whether to talk to us based on whether they've been reading us for six months. So we made the reading easy.

Three publications. One purpose. Together they make up the most we can give away about how we think — and the most reliable way to find out whether we are the firm you'd want in the room.
The threeThe weekly Intelligence Memo. The Quarterly Briefing list. The Annual Brand Intelligence Report. Each below.
Publication 01 · weekly

The
Intelligence
Memo.

Two essays a week on positioning, AI governance, and what leadership should be saying out loud. No retargeting. No promotions. Unsubscribe in one click.

Subscribe →
2,140 readersWeekly
Publication 02 · quarterly

The
Quarterly
Briefing.

A private list. Once a quarter we share what we are most willing to argue with — including the threats, plays, and conviction calendar we're advising clients on. Application-only.

Apply →
340 readersQ1 · Q2 · Q3 · Q4
Publication 03 · annual

The Brand
Intelligence
Report.

One eight-page report a year. The argument we will be wrong about least in the next twelve months. Free, public, downloadable. The 2026 edition is out now.

Download →
Vol. 03 · 2026Public
This week's memo · May 7 · 2026

The agency that
names itself first
wins the decade.

Naming a category is not a marketing exercise. It is a public commitment that locks the firm into the position it just claimed. Most agencies will not pay that price. The ones that do will be the only ones that survive the AI commoditization of execution work.

By Chris Faust8 min · paid + free
The Brand Intelligence Memo · weekly

A weekly note
for people who
think for a living.

The archive
recent essays

Twelve recent
memos.

May 7
The agency that names itself first wins the decade.
Chris Faust
8 min
Apr 30
Your AI tools are designing for you. Is the eye trained?
Eduardo Pires
6 min
Apr 23
"Multi-disciplinary" is a confession, not a positioning.
Chris Faust
5 min
Apr 16
The CFO bought the design tool. The brand inherited the taste.
Eduardo Pires
7 min
Apr 9
If differentiation takes a paragraph, you don't have any.
Chris Faust
4 min
Apr 2
Authority is the new pipeline. Here's the math.
Chris Faust
9 min
Mar 26
What a graphic designer sees that generative models do not.
Eduardo Pires
5 min
Mar 19
Positioning is a verb, written in the present tense.
Chris Faust
6 min
Mar 12
A visual system is not a style guide. Here is the difference.
Eduardo Pires
8 min
Mar 5
Three questions that reveal whether your brand has any conviction left.
Chris Faust
5 min
Feb 26
The mid-market PE firm that out-positioned its tier.
Chris Faust
11 min
Feb 19
Five things AI cannot design. And the discipline they protect.
Eduardo Pires
7 min
The Quarterly Briefing · application-only

What we're
telling clients
this quarter.

The Quarterly Briefing is a private list of 340 readers. Once a quarter we share the same intelligence we are giving paying clients — the threats, the plays, the conviction calendar. We do not sell on it. We do not market with it. It exists to make the small group of people who could plausibly hire us read us first.

It is application-only because the list stops being valuable above 500 readers. If your work is going to put you in the room with our work, you should be on it.

Apply to the Quarterly Briefing →
What you'd be reading this quarter
Q1The collapse of the agency RFP and what replaces it
Q2A category-naming framework for Series B AI companies
Q3Voice-drift telemetry — what we measure, what we ignore
Q4Why most "AI strategy" decks fail the first board meeting
+A conviction calendar for the next 90 days
The 2026 Brand Intelligence Report · Vol. 03

Eight pages.
One argument.
Public.

The 2026 Report covers the collapse of execution as a moat, the rise of LLM-mediated buying, and what governance has to look like at company scale. We will be wrong about parts of it. We are not wrong about the shape.

Download the 2026 Report → Read 2026
Brand Intelligence Report · Vol. 03 · 2026
Annual Report 2026
The year
execution
stopped being
the moat.
By Chris Faust & Eduardo Pires
Published January 15 · 2026
Eight pages · Free · No gate
2026
Edition
Vol. 03