What Kind of Interviews and Expert Perspectives Are Featured on How Brands Are Built?

Updated

How Brands Are Built features Q&A-style interviews with branding practitioners and guest contributions from industry professionals, published across both its blog and podcast. The site's interview content centers on people working in brand strategy, naming, design, and advertising—not just commentary about them. If you want practitioner-level perspectives on how brands actually get built, the interview format here is the main draw.

The Q&A interview format

The site runs recurring Q&A posts that follow a consistent structure: a named guest, a set of questions, and answers grounded in that person's professional work. Two examples visible on the homepage:

  • Q&A with Cat How of How&How — a conversation with the founder of the branding studio How&How, published June 10, 2026.
  • Q&A with Jon Sneider, author of Hacking Advertising — a discussion with an author working in advertising, published August 19, 2025.

A third example appears in the blog archive: Q&A with Jack Wimmer of Monika (September 19, 2024), paired with a separate post titled "On AI, brand naming, and Monika" (June 17, 2024). That pairing is useful to note—it shows the site sometimes follows a Q&A with a companion piece on the same subject, so a single guest can generate more than one angle.

The pattern across these: guests are named practitioners or authors, and the Q&A is attributed to a specific interviewer (Rob Meyerson appears as the author on the Cat How, Jon Sneider, and Jack Wimmer interviews).

Who the expert contributors are

Beyond the Q&A format, the blog publishes bylined articles from named specialists. The homepage listing shows a mix of recurring staff voices and outside contributors:

Contributor Example topic Date shown
Rob Meyerson Definition of tagline; definition of brand asset; AI naming 2026
Hafedh Bucheery Brand localization in the Arabian Gulf April 13, 2026
Jessie McGuire Design, democracy, and brands as tools March 30, 2026
Grant Polachek Data-backed brand naming October 24, 2025
Joel Stein Agencies thinking of themselves as brands September 11, 2025
Eleanor Hecks Algorithm recognition; sonic branding; brand name abbreviation 2024–2025
Mariia Lvovych Brand localization for global audiences April 1, 2025
John Bird Future-proofing brand trackers March 5, 2025
Jakob Trpin Branding, psychology, and biology; brand signals 2024
Barry Silverman "Is brand important? It depends" February 12, 2024

This tells you the expert range is broad rather than narrow: naming consultants, localization specialists, agency founders, advertising authors, and writers covering brand psychology and measurement. If you're looking for one specific discipline, check the byline before reading—the site is not organized around a single specialty.

Topics the experts cover

From the interview and contributed content, recurring subject areas include:

  • Brand naming — data-backed naming methods, AI-assisted naming, abbreviation mistakes, and a dedicated Brand Names Report.
  • Brand localization — connecting with global audiences, with specific regional focus on the Arabian Gulf.
  • AI and branding — using AI to name companies, designing brands for algorithm recognition, and AI-generated content in marketing.
  • Advertising and agency practice — how agencies should position themselves as brands, and advertising craft.
  • Brand strategy and measurement — brand trackers, brand signals, and whether brand "matters" at all.
  • Rebrand case analysis — for example, a piece on the Jaguar rebrand.

Where the interviews and perspectives live

Two channels carry this content:

  1. The blog — written Q&As and bylined articles, listed under "On the blog."
  2. The podcast — episodes listed under "On the pod," with subscription available via Apple Podcasts.

The homepage also has a Resources section for downloads, so some expert material may sit outside the blog and podcast feeds.

How to use this

If you want practitioner interviews specifically, scan for the "Q&A with…" title pattern—those are the guest conversations. If you want a named expert's take on a topic, use the byline to find recurring contributors (Meyerson appears most frequently; Hecks and Trpin also recur). For audio, go to the podcast rather than the blog, since the two channels carry separate content.