Brand as relationship, not broadcast

Hey there,

Here's a truth that makes many marketing leaders uncomfortable: You're not the one who gets to dictate your brand's story in the world. The market does.

Gulp. I know…

Competitors, customers, investors, analysts, they’re all shaping it in real time through their interactions, perceptions, and commentary.

That can feel uncomfortable. Sometimes very uncomfortable. But it’s also where the real power sits. Because the brands that lead their categories today aren’t fighting to control the narrative, they’re building the systems that inform it.

At Villain, we see it every day in enterprise companies navigating major inflection points — IPOs, acquisitions, GTM shifts, or category creation. The brands that gain momentum are the ones that treat brand not as a broadcast, but as a relationship. They listen, adapt, and translate what they hear into sharper stories that travel farther and faster.

When you build that kind of feedback loop, a few things happen:

• Customers start telling your story for you and doing it more convincingly than your marketing ever could.

• Your differentiation becomes lived, not claimed, built through how people experience you, not just how you describe yourself.

• You stay in sync with the market’s evolution, so your relevance compounds instead of decaying.

If you’re still running brand like a controlled comms exercise, you’re missing the shift that’s already happening in your category. The opportunity now is to create brand systems that invite participation — ones that evolve through customer voice, analyst insight, and employee behavior, not just quarterly messaging reviews.

You don’t need to agree with everything your audience says. But you do need to be in conversation with them. Because the story is being written either way — better that you help shape it.

How are you building that dialogue into your brand system today?

— Lauryn

P.S. If you’re building a listening strategy to strengthen your brand’s feedback loop, reply with LISTEN and I’ll send a short framework that covers who to engage, what to ask, and how to decide what signals to act on.