How To Make People Care About Your Brand | Jay Acunzo

About this episode

Jay Acunzo discusses the importance of brand resonance over reach in marketing and shares strategies for making brands irreplaceable.

Early-stage marketing is often a race for reach, but Jay Acunzo argues that resonance is the only metric that actually moves the needle in 2026. Jay is the former Head of Content at HubSpot and Google, a world-renowned keynote speaker, and an expert in storytelling. He has helped countless brands find their "Premise"—the distinct point of view that makes them irreplaceable in a sea of commodities. In this episode, Jay breaks down why "being the best" is a losing game and why "being their favorite" is the ultimate competitive advantage. Here's what you'll learn: (00:00) Intro (01:24) Why "Marketing More" is a trap in the AI era (04:16) Why 100 fans beat 100,000 followers (07:36) The Disney Strategy: Why you should stop trying to be "The Best" (09:52) Using Unsolicited Response Rate (URR) to measure resonance (13:50) How to close deals faster by making people care (16:21) Why generic content is dead (and how to find your "Premise") (24:13) Why brands need personalities to survive (28:55) 5 steps to differentiate your brand (34:38) The Wistia Example: Why your homepage copy isn't your message (41:55) Future-proofing your content for 2026 (51:09) The right way to use LLMs in creative…

People in this episode

Host: Tim Soulo

Guest: Jay Acunzo

Topics covered

• early-stage marketing
• brand resonance
• storytelling
• competitive advantage
• content strategy
• differentiation

Keywords

• marketing
• resonance
• storytelling
• content strategy
• brand differentiation
• AI era
• Unsolicited Response Rate

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: HubSpot, Google

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