REMEMBER WHEN TALKS

felt worth it?

let's get back to that.

15,000+ CMOs, board execs, founders, VCs, and creative leaders subscribe to GOOD THINKING—our weekly newsletter breaking down the best-of-the-best on culture, trends, and marketing.

That lens? We bring it to rooms, off-sites, and stages. Through keynotes, workshops and custom talks. For brands who want to think more clearly. And, have a real, relevant and distinctive lens on the future.

From drugs to silvers, wellness to sport, retail to AI—GOOD THINKING curates the smartest cultural signals and sharpest marketing moves. It’s what we’re sharing in Slack threads, referencing in brand meetings, and building talks around.

“The most interesting and relevant read on brands and culture right now.”

"What I love is I read things that I don’t see in other places. Nice sweet spot of bubbling-up yet weighty enough to have larger implications."

“I have pretty much unsubscribed from everything else at this point.”

TALK & WORKSHOP OFFERINGS

(of course, adapted to your brand & what you're tackling)

1.

10 trends.

20 minutes.

The cultural cheat sheet your team needs.

This is the download you’ll be quoting all quarter.

This talk is for brand teams, leadership off-sites, and anyone tired of trend decks with no traction. 

10 categories, in 20 minutes. No fluff. No filler. Just the good stuff from GOOD THINKING—the newsletter read by 15,000+ CMOs, VCs, and creative leads who like their insights with the dots connected.

You’ll get:

+ What’s breaking through. 
+ Quick yet deep cross-category landscape. 
+ Implications you can act on today.

Perfect for:
Team kickoffs · Brand off-sites · Quarterly/Monthly inspiration drops 

2.

great brands evolve

Staying still is the biggest risk of all.

What happens when your brand positioning outlasts the culture it was built for?
You lose relevance. Growth stalls. And every decision is harder than it needs to be.

This talk introduces Active Positioning. This is our way of looking at brand strategy and positioning. A method that’s built to flex, evolve, and stay relevant in a world that doesn’t sit still.

You’ll get:

+ Why traditional positioning is no match for today’s market velocity.
+ The framework for building an Active Position.
+ Examples from fast-moving brands that are staying distinct without standing still.
+ How to use positioning to drive content, campaigns, and decisions without rebranding every 6 months

Perfect for:
Brand strategy offsites · CMO summits · Challenger brand teams · Post-reorg resets

3.

how to think

Because your smartest people are under-leveraged. And over-polished.

In a world where AI can polish anything, the edge is not perfection. It’s perspective. This talk helps brand leaders unlock their most critical skill: the ability to think.

We cover how to get curious and collect a distinct perspective. We talk about building your centers of expertise and growing conviction. Thinking is much more than curiosity, but most teams don't know how to move beyond the first step. And the fear of cringe is holding them back from the rest. 

You’ll get:

+ The new rules of authority in the era of Substacks, podcasts, and GPT.
+ How to encourage idea-sharing over output perfection.
+ Why your next breakthrough is not found in a deck.

Perfect for:
Creative departments · Leadership offsites · Brand founders · In-house teams 

4.

The New Gatekeeper

Who's controlling your brand experience is changing.

In the very near future (and already today) your customer’s first purchase is not happening on your site, your social, or even Google. It’s happening inside a model—ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude.  The difference? These models are trained to recommend, not just retrieve.

On top of this, the niche is over. The persona is dead. The algorithm doesn’t care how old your customer is or what they do for work. It cares what they watch, what they buy, who they follow, and what it all means.

Technically, AI calls this semantic understanding.
But let’s be real: it’s pattern recognition.

Brands today need to focus on three things: 1) Behaviors. 2) Cultural relevance. 3) Brand clarity in chaos. The future is all about the context. But is your brand relevant enough to show up?

You’ll get:

+ The difference between behaviors and personas and why brand books are outdated.
+ Cultural relevance across categories. Snapshots of the world, through your brand's lens. 
+ Why your brands needs more clarity, not more noise.

Perfect for:
Brand off-sites · CMOs · Anyone tasked with future-proofing the brand

5.

The Arena Shift

The best brands don’t own categories. They own arenas.

Rhode isn’t in beauty. It’s in identity.
Liquid Death isn’t in water. It’s in rebellion.
Stanley isn’t in thermoses. It’s in status.

Today, the smartest brands aren’t fighting for market share inside a narrow category. They’re stepping into cultural arenas and claiming emotional and behavioral spaces that give them more relevance, more range, and way more room to play.

This talk helps you and your team break out of small-brand thinking and see what business you’re really in.

You’ll get:

+ A framework for identifying your brand’s cultural arena (hint: it’s not your product).
+ How to use arena-thinking to drive new formats, collabs, and creative.
+ Cross-category understanding that show how (and why) this shift works.
+ The real reason challenger brands stretch while legacy ones shrink.

Perfect for:
Brand off-sites · Challenger brands · Legacy players that need new life

6.

The New Gatekeeper

AI isn’t searching. It’s deciding. The gatekeeper has changed.

In the very near future (and already today) your customer’s first purchase is not happening on your site, your social, or even Google. It’s happening inside a model—ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude.  The difference? These models are trained to recommend, not just retrieve.

On top of this, the niche is over. The persona is dead. The algorithm doesn’t care how old your customer is or what they do for work. It cares what they watch, what they buy, who they follow, and what it all means.

Technically, AI calls this semantic understanding.
But let’s be real: it’s pattern recognition.

Brands today need to focus on three things: 1) Behaviors. 2) Cultural relevance. 3) Brand clarity in chaos. The future is all about the context. But is your brand relevant enough to show up?

You’ll get:

+ The difference between behaviors and personas and why brand books are outdated.
+ Cultural relevance across categories. Snapshots of the world, through your brand's lens. 
+ Why your brands needs more clarity, not more noise.

Perfect for:
Brand off-sites · CMOs · Anyone tasked with future-proofing the brand

7.

FRICTION IS THE NEW FLEX

When everything is fast and easy, friction is a flex.

For years, the gold standard was frictionless. Streamline it. Smooth it. Automate it.
But something’s shifting. Today, the most magnetic, high-trust, culture-shaping brands aren’t making things easier. They’re making them richer—by asking us to participate, show up, and earn it.

This talk unpacks why friction is becoming a status symbol, why participation builds deeper brand equity than performance, and how to design for it without losing relevance.

You’ll get:

+ The rise of intentional friction: what’s signaling luxury, care, and culture today.
+ Why participation builds ownership. And why ownership builds obsession.
+ Examples of brands using friction.

Perfect for:
Brand builders · Culture teams · Innovation and strategy off-sites

8.

ACTION AUDIT LIVE

Bring us into your world, and we'll tell you where opportunity lives.

It's hard to see the forest through the trees. Harder still to connect the dots you're seeing when you're (rightfully) drinking the brand Kool-Aid. Most teams can identify something is wrong. Thinking outside the box for how to solve it is an entirely different story.

This talk is paired with our Action Audits. We come in, do the audit, provide the actionable opportunities and connect the dots across 10 areas. This isn't about having all the answers, it's about showing you how to move beyond what's keeping you stuck.

Once the audit is complete, let's make it live! This is an inspirational, action-packed (literally things your team can put into action) talk ready to reignite and realign your team.

You’ll get:

+ The Action Audit.
+ 10 areas for improvement with actionable ideas to spark your team's own.
+ A keynote on it all.

Perfect for:
Brand offsites · Leadership teams · Brands that are stuck in a rut

CHRIS DANTON

Futurist. Strategist. Mama. Tastemaker.

Chris Danton is the Chief of Ideas and Co-founder of IN GOOD CO a global brand consultancy igniting challenger brands with fearless positioning.

With a background in brand building, Chris and IN GOOD CO work with funded start-ups and Fortune 500 brands to ensure they stand out.  She builds brands that actively grow and evolve, without hitting pause.

Her clients include Nike, Mars, Starbucks, Pinterest, Uniqlo, Psycho Bunny, Amass, 710Labs, SLMD, Sex With Emily, Zappos, and more.

Chris is also the author of, the highly successful Substack, GOOD THINKING which is read by +15K C-Suite executives, venture capitalists, and creatives globally.

You've seen her on stage at SXSW, Brands & Culture and in-closed from for Mars, P&G, and more. 

KIRSTEN LUDWIG

Optimist. Leader. Surfer. 

Kirsten Ludwig is the Chief Clarity Officer and Co-Founder of IN GOOD CO, a global brand consultancy igniting challenger brands with fearless positioning.

With a background in brand building, Kirsten and IN GOOD CO work with funded start-ups and Fortune 500 brands to ensure they stand out. Her clients include Pinterest, Psycho Bunny, Amass, 710Labs, SLMD, Sex With Emily, Zappos, and more. Prior, Kirsten was Chief Creative Officer at SET and led the agency to a successful acquisition by WPP.

Kirsten commands at LinkedIn following of over 20K of the world's biggest marekting and creative execs. She writes regularly for Forbes. And is an active member of THE BOARD.