Episode 1
Why Great Software Brands Don’t Need Simpler Stories
Most rebrands don’t fail because the design is bad.
Watch on YouTube→Shallow DeepDive
A deep-ish dive into the shallow world of branding, advertising and creative.
Short videos with Joe Qualls on the parts of brand, web and advertising worth thinking about twice. New episodes join the series as we make them.
Episode 2
How Do You Rebrand a 130-Year-Old Organisation?
A lot of organisations tell us the same thing.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 3
People Don’t Buy Technology. They Buy Relationships.
Technology companies love talking about features.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 4
Should You Build Your Own Website? (Sometimes, Yes.)
DIY website builders have never been better.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 5
The website as the first meeting
Most professional-services websites read like the same brochure. That's a choice, and it can be unmade.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 6
Strategy first, or you pay for it twice
Skip strategy and you don't skip the decisions. You just move them somewhere more expensive.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 7
Our position on AI should be boringly clear
The strongest thing an agency can say about AI is also the most boring: here's what we use it for, here's what we don't, and here's who stays responsible.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 8
Your brand has to be legible to people and machines
Your website used to have one reader: a person. Now search systems and AI assistants read the same pages, pull your claims, and answer questions about you before anyone clicks.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 9
The faster the tool, the better the brief needs to be
AI didn't kill the brief. It just made a bad one fail faster, and in public. A loose brief used to make a slow problem; now it makes twenty wrong things before lunch, and that looks like speed right up until the review starts.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 10
Brand guidelines need an AI chapter
Most brand guidelines explain how to use the logo. Almost none explain how to use the brand inside the AI tools your team already has open.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 11
AI content still needs a point of view
AI made it easy to publish. It never made it easy to say something worth publishing.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 12
NASA had 3,000 websites. The lesson fits your one.
NASA spent two years rebuilding more than 3,000 websites. The ideas that made it work were cheap, and they scale down to a five-page site.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 13
Ads inside the answer
Ads have arrived inside the AI answer: a sponsored card, right under the reply you trusted. The question most brands are asking is the small one. The one worth asking is underneath it.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 14
The safest brand in the room
Marketing teams now score their work for "backlash exposure": how likely it is to draw a pile-on. It's a sensible tool. It's also sanding brands down to nothing.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 15
We're editors now
Clients don't arrive with a blank page anymore. They come in prepared: references gathered, competitors read, a rough draft already on screen. So what are we being paid for?
Watch on YouTube→Episode 16
We're an OpenAI Select Partner. The badge isn't the point.
Qualls has been named a Select Partner in the OpenAI Partner Network. That's one sentence of news, and the least interesting part. This episode is about the rest.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 17
We love Craft CMS. We built Kanvas anyway.
We build on Craft CMS and we still recommend it. We also built our own CMS this year. Both of those are true, and the reason why has less to do with software than with a decision most clients never get told is being made for them.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 18
The Coke rebrand is a rulebook, not a logo
Coca-Cola just rebranded across two hundred markets, and almost nothing changed. Same script, same red, same ribbon, same square. The internet spent a week arguing about whether the cans look like cigarettes.
Watch on YouTube→Episode 19
Loyalty is built in the recovery
Steve Jobs asked the man who built the Apple Store for a service philosophy in four words or fewer. The answer was "love customers," and Jobs wouldn't let them say it.
Watch on YouTube→Got a project?