The strategists still getting premium rates aren't doing brand strategy.
They're doing something most people still can't name.
Let me show you what I mean.
Two weeks ago, a founder hired me. Pre-Series A startup. Strong product with zero brand clarity. They'd already run through two brand agencies, both delivered "strategic" decks full of archetypes, positioning statements, and mood boards.
Both decks sat in Notion, unused.
I didn't give them another deck.
Instead, I spent three hours in a room with their exec team asking one question in fifty different ways: "What decision does your brand need to make easier?"
Not, "What does your brand stand for?" Not, "Who is your customer?" Not, "What's your why?"
What decision does your brand make easier?
By the end, we had something no AI could generate: clarity on which opportunities to kill. Which partnerships to reject. Which customers to ignore. Which features to deprioritize.
The brand work I did wasn't organizing information. It was forcing choices.
That's what replaces brand strategy in the age of AI.
Judgment.
The ability to look at a thousand options and say "this one" with conviction. The ability to read context that isn't in the data. The ability to tell a founder their instinct is wrong and show them why. The ability to kill good ideas because they're not the right ideas.
AI can generate options. It cannot choose between them.
AI can show you patterns. It cannot tell you which patterns matter.
AI can remix brand strategy. It cannot create conviction.
The obsolete are ones who built their value on deliverables. PDFs. Decks. Guides. Templates. Things that can be productized. Things that look like strategy but are actually just organized thinking.
The surviving ones built their value on decisions. They're not hired to create brand assets. They're hired to make the hard call when everyone else is stuck. To kill the darlings. To say no to the CEO. To see what everyone else is missing.
If someone describes your work as "the brand strategy deck," you're replaceable. If they describe your work as "the person who helped us finally decide," you're not.
This isn't about having better taste or stronger opinions. It's about developing a skill most brand strategists never built because they didn't need to: forcing clarity through discomfort.
Asking the questions nobody wants to answer. Challenging the assumptions everyone's protecting. Exposing the trade-offs everyone's avoiding. Making the room face what they'd rather ignore.
AI can't do that.
Not because it's not smart enough. Because it's trained to be helpful. To give options. To avoid confrontation. To present balanced perspectives.
The most valuable branding in 2025 isn't balanced.
It's definitive.
And that’s why this 21-day brand engine course is designed to help you make those uncomfortable choices and have me at the other end of it asking questions that no one will ever ask you.
If you want to truly build a brand that doesn't get eaten by AI, take up the Brand Engine Course and thank me later. (launching next wednesday)
Tomorrow, in the last email in this series, I'll show you exactly what this looks like in practice. And why most won't make this shift even though their survival depends on it.
Reply and tell me: what's the last time you forced a client to make a decision they didn't want to make?
— Shashank
P.S.
The frameworks you learned in 2018 aren't useless. They're just table stakes now. The value isn't knowing the framework.
It's knowing when to ignore it.