Amy Van Aarle

Explorations in Branding, Purpose & AI

Author: Amy Van Aarle

  • Night Stories #2:

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    Amy Van Aarle
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    Sometimes, at the end of the day, the chair just can’t contain you. The book goes unread. The light is just a bit too bright. The energy inside you takes you to a place where nothing is quite settled.

  • You Don’t Have a Marketing Problem, You Have a Branding Void

    You Don’t Have a Marketing Problem, You Have a Branding Void

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    Amy Van Aarle
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    Your campaigns aren’t landing. Your messages feel scattered. Different teams are pulling in different directions, each trying something new, making different promises. You’re pouring resources into marketing, but nothing quite sticks. How to Know If You’re Facing a Branding Void A branding void exists when your company lacks a clear, consistent brand foundation. Signs include…

  • Night Stories #1:

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    Amy Van Aarle
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    Our beds wait for us, ready to wrap us up in warmth and comfort. A place to rest when all the world’s weariness and wanting gets to be just a bit too much. Night stories is a daily creative ritual where AI and I craft visual bedtime stories together. I write the prompts and stories,…

  • How to Collaborate with AI as a Creative Director

    How to Collaborate with AI as a Creative Director

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    Amy Van Aarle
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    Flowers sprouted out of the stapler. Not because I asked for it, but because somewhere between my rambling thoughts about “delightful creative abandon” and Mae’s (my AI illustrator) interpretation of my vision, magic happened. This was collaboration at its most surprising. When I first started playing with how to collaborate with AI as a creative…

  • The AI-Amplified Brand Strategist

    The AI-Amplified Brand Strategist

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    Amy Van Aarle
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    The best brand deck I ever created fits in a text file. No design flourishes. No gradient backgrounds. No carefully kerned typography. Just words, arranged simply, teaching an AI exactly what a brand stands for. This shift from a visual approach to knowledge-based approach represents more than a format change. I believe it’s the difference…

  • Brand Hallucinations & Knowing Who You Are

    Brand Hallucinations & Knowing Who You Are

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    Amy Van Aarle
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    So this happened: New York City launched an AI chatbot to help small business owners navigate regulations. Five months later, it was telling restaurants they could serve cheese nibbled on by rats and advising employers they could fire workers who complained about sexual harassment. What did the city do? Kept it running. This isn’t a…