Relevance Formula: Building An Emerging Brand In 2026
We've spent the last ten years inside the machine. Testing tools. Building systems. Watching what works and—more importantly—what makes people cringe and scroll past at light speed. Here's what we've learned about staying relevant when the playing field has never been more level and never more crowded.
Marketers & entrepreneurs all have the same tools now—Claude. Midjourney. Apollo. Clay. The list goes on. These tools make us more capable individually. The question isn't what we got better at, but how that innovation affects the market at large. The answer's simple: a level playing field is still a playing field—you still have to play, and you still have to be good. The tools didn't end competition; they opened the floodgates and raised the bar.
Defining Relevance
Right now, "relevance" gets waved around like incense. Let's pin down the meaning.
We use a simple working formula: Relevance = Signal × Specificity × Consistency.
Signal: How your brand is leveraging culture, novelty, and taste to connect with people organically.
Specificity: The content & context through which you speak with your audience.
Consistency: Your cadence and follow-through on platforms (posts, engagement, messaging).
If any term is ~0, your relevance rounds to 0. Most brands ship volume (consistency) without signal or specificity—which only creates noise.
Human Touch: Your Unfair Advantage
We are living through what we call the ChatGPT Flyer Epidemic. You've seen them. The AI-generated event flyer with that unmistakable sheen & horrible type. The cold email that name-drops your company but clearly has no idea what you actually do. The customer service chatbot that loops you through seven irrelevant options before you scream "AGENT" into the abyss. It's ambient yet uncanny—and audiences are developing AI slop antibodies.
The prime opportunity in 2026? BEING SHAMELESSLY AUTHENTIC. Tell people about your messy day-to-day. Show people the beauty of running a difficult business. Show off those mediocre design skills. Edit an imperfect day-in-the-life vlog. Write that blog post you know isn’t perfect. People aren’t looking for perfection. They’re looking for audacious effort, contextual value, and a break from the norm. In a world where everything is beginning to look & sound the same, the feelings you create become the final indefensible moat for your brand.
Inspiration Is Everywhere. Style Still Has to Be Earned.
If you're stuck, open your feed. Scroll for thirty seconds. You'll find something you like—a visual approach, a narrative structure, or a content format. Borrow inspiration. Not plagiarize. Borrow. Study what works. Reverse-engineer why it landed. Use it as training wheels until you find your own style—then strip down to a two-wheeler and ride with your own style.
But here's what hasn't changed: a system is only as good as the thinking behind it. AI can personalize, automate, and scale. It can't decide who you are, what you stand for, or why anyone should care. That still takes a human making the right call.
