Why I Shut Down My Dream Again Marketing Brand – and pivoted to Saga Brand in 2024
—Now with a 2025 update!
It’s been a whole year since Saga Brand began with a blaze of burning bisons. I kept moving fast, and just made stuff to get it out there. You can read the 2024 update below.
After a year, the brand evolved to be less about me building epic brands, and more about the fact that other people believed they were doing the same thing. And I want to work with them.
So I changed it up. The logo is now a rebel red banner, which captures more of the feel of taking a stand, drawing a line in the sand, and leading the charge into the wild yonder.
People lead and create sagas.
I did love the bison, though.
This past week I made a decision to close down my Dream Again Marketing brand. It was bittersweet - my wife’s immediate reaction was: “So the dream died?”
Ok, that’s kinda funny too.
No, the dream didn’t die. But there were a couple of reasons.
One was my work with Dream Again still feels meaningful, but it was also a brand I threw together early in the pandemic. So it was a passionate, panicked response to needing more work.
And I struggled to follow my own playbook, and offer a specific service to a specific audience.
Heck, not my playbook. Just branding and marketing 101.
So this past month, I gave myself the freedom to drop it all. To stop fighting. To start again.
And that opened up a new insight.
I really like building epic brands.
And when I mean, epic, I mean 'burning bison' epic.
Because its scroll-stopping, head-turning amazing.
And I know it's not just me saying that.
Out of the clients I serve, or the brands that I build for myself on the side, one thing routinely stands out. I've grown to love finding that edge, that epic turn that makes them (and me) feel like summer kids crossing a hill and finding... well, a bison on fire.
They are bold, unapologetic, focused, and epic.
I'm trying to go for a 'hate-love' response, because when I get the lean-in and oh-my-gosh-I-love-this response, that's magic right there.
In the last four years, I've built and branded three of my own communities, and helped my nonprofit job trailblaze a new brand.
It's taken years to figure out how to focus on an audience, pick the right words, find the right visuals. But each year, as I launch a new project, I get faster. Until the spinup time is down to a few days. Like learning a skill. Something you can only do by failing forward 1000 times... which is what the last four years have felt like.
Not every brand will be an epic brand.
That's perfectly fine. They don't need to be.
But some do dream of standing head-and-shoulders over the rest.
If you're looking for that kind of attention, then maybe you're in a different realm. You're in the realm of saga.
And that’s why I’ve renamed to Saga Brand.
And honed my offerings down to a few things:
Saga Brand teams up with visionary founders to breathe new life into your brand. Ask us today about our seamless process to streamline your message, create visually stunning design, and help you stand out.
I’m making plans to partner up with a friend to test my playbook as a YouTube series, and talk through all the mistakes I keep making while building my communities.
It’s hilarious how time has flown since my last post - I got a promotion at work that just blew me and my attention away. And all that work and grind has been insanely valuable.
I’m beginning to realize that I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve not shared it anywhere, or written it down.
This substack will be a great place to do that. It’s a saga, and you’re invited.
If you would like to continue following my journey, I’d love to have you stick around!
Tell me what you’re up to!