The Distinctive Brand Masterclass — 7 Days to a Brand People Actually Choose

ON APRIL 1ST 2024, I POSTED A JOKE. IT BECAME A RUM BRAND WITH A £100K SEED ROUND.

I thought I was pranking the internet: Marmalade Collective launching a plantain-infused brandy. By midnight I had tens of thousands of engagements and hundreds of DMs asking the same question — where can I buy this?

Six months later DÒDÒ was real. Premium plantain-infused rum, handcrafted in Scotland. Batches 001 and 002 — 2,750 bottles — sold out with zero marketing spend. Batch 003 is on pre-order now, shipping mid-September, backed by a £100K seed round, in a £1.17 billion UK rum market where almost every other bottle is still selling pirates.

People keep asking me how. So I spent three months mapping every decision against the playbook Eric Ryan used to build Method, OLLY, and Welly — billion-dollar brands in categories everyone called boring. Almost every principle matched what we'd done instinctively. That told me something: the principles of building a distinctive brand are universal, and they can be taught.

This masterclass is that playbook. Not theory from a lecture hall — a live case study you can check against real shelves, taught by the founder who's still running it.

HOW IT WORKS

One day, one principle, for seven days. Each day gives you the theory, the DÒDÒ receipts, and a workshop exercise in your fillable workbook:

Day 1 — The Opportunity in Sameness. Find the gap between what your category keeps repeating and where culture has moved.

Day 2 — The Remix Method. Borrow brilliance from industries nothing like yours.

Day 3 — The Power of One. Find your plantain: the single stroke of differentiation everything else supports.

Day 4 — Name It, Own It. Naming, and building a visual world you can own completely.

Day 5 — Let the Market Speak. Consumer auditions — testing with behaviour, not opinions.

Day 6 — Hustle, Speed, and Wow. Execution as competitive advantage.

Day 7 — The Artisan Operator. Balancing creativity with discipline, then writing your one-page brand playbook.

By Day 7 you have a completed strategic playbook for your brand — in your handwriting, not mine.

WHO THIS IS FOR

Founders and brand builders in crowded consumer categories — food and drink, beauty, fashion, wellness, or any market where you're watching your product disappear into the shelf. It's especially built for culture-first founders who know their heritage is an asset but haven't found the bridge from cultural insight to commercial positioning.

It's not for you if you want someone to do the thinking for you. Seven days of real exercises. You do the work; the work is the point.

WHAT YOU GET

• The Distinctive Brand Masterclass (7 modules, designed PDF)
• The Distinctive Brand Workbook (fillable, printable)
• The DÒDÒ Report Card — the grading framework I use on my own brand every quarter
• Lifetime access to all updates

14-day guarantee: do the exercises, and if it hasn't sharpened how you see your brand, reply to your receipt for a full refund.