I'm David Brier—the guy CEOs call when they've burned so much cash on marketing, their spouses think they have a coke habit. I'm like rehab for your brand, except instead of getting you clean, I get you profitable. Think of me as the Betty Ford Clinic of branding, but with better ROI and no group hugs. (Explains why I wrote the bestseller Brand Intervention that Daymond John calls "Genius.")
Special Bonus: National Book Lover's Day
Most people treat books like information delivery systems. A book is a decision tree disguised as chapters. This is why I am celebrating National Book Lover's Day, August 9thBecause every page in a book is a fork (and every chapter is a knife). You either walk away asking better questions, or you wasted your weekend. AI can summarize a book in 90 seconds. But AI cannot replicate what happens when a single paragraph makes you question something you've believed for years, or even decades. That's the part nobody talks about. I wrote two bestsellers. Each hit #1 on Amazon. More importantly, they changed how founders, CEOs and their companies do business, helping to drive millions in growth nd impact. The first was Brand Intervention. Foreword by Daymond John. The sequel was Rich Brand Poor Brand: How to Unleash Your David in a World of Goliaths. Foreword by Claude Silver, Chief Heart Officer at VaynerMedia. Two very different people. Two very different worlds. Daymond built FUBU from nothing. Came from Brooklyn and Queens like me. Became a household name with Shark Tank. Claude built the human operating system inside one of the most driven agencies on the planet. Each wrote the foreword for the same reason. Not because the books were about branding theory. Because both books made people think. Asking questions that nobody else in the room was. That's what a real book does. It doesn't hand you a framework. It changes what you question. When AI hands every competitor the same playbook, the only brands that still surprise us are the ones asking questions the playbook never thought to ask. That is the last advantage. The one that cannot be prompted. Your competitors are reading the same threads, saving the same carousels, prompting the same tools. The brands that read books are the ones asking better questions than their competitors. Grab these books if you don't have them. If you do have them, buy copies for team members and partners to make an even bigger splash in your world. David
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The Saturday email your competitors hope you never find. (One coffee. Zero fluff.)
I'm David Brier—the guy CEOs call when they've burned so much cash on marketing, their spouses think they have a coke habit. I'm like rehab for your brand, except instead of getting you clean, I get you profitable. Think of me as the Betty Ford Clinic of branding, but with better ROI and no group hugs. (Explains why I wrote the bestseller Brand Intervention that Daymond John calls "Genius.")
Issue #170 Reader Frank Zappa once described improvising a guitar solo like this: He didn't know what he'd play. He knew how long he had to do it. In his words, "You have a piece of time, and you get to decorate it." That's branding, in one line. Except instead of a piece of time, I'm handed an opportunity for change. The first thing I do is question everything we've been told that opportunity is supposed to look like. Which is exactly the move that separates a brand people remember from a...
Four rebrands that grew revenue, from symptom to outcome, explained. Issue #169 Reader Rebranding Gets a Lot Easier When You Stop Thinking in Logos During a recent session with Mark Schaefer’s community, Matt Wilkinson, author of The Buyer in the Loop, asked a great question: "What's your favorite brand intervention you've done recently?" I couldn't answer immediately. Not because I don't love the work. Because there isn't one favorite. A handful have floored me well after the discovery...
Today's edition is completely different. Issue #168 Reader Ten questions. Ten minutes. One point each, no partial credit. Score yourself honestly, because nobody else is watching, and the market already knows your number. 1 THE AI TEST (20 seconds, do it before you read item 2). Want to see your brand exactly the way a buyer sees it? Open ChatGPT. Type: “What makes [your company] different from its competitors?” Read what comes back. Generic, wrong, or could describe three of your rivals?...