WHO IS IN YOUR BRRAND ORBIT?

With choices spinning around consumers’ heads like cosmic dust, just how do brands stay relevant to the right people? 

‘In your orbit’ captures the idea of being within someone’s sphere of influence, attention or social circle. For brands, truly understanding the people in your obit has never been more important. 

Building communities of advocates, from customers to employees, partners and stakeholders to orbit around your brand has never been more important, as platform algorithms and AI prioritise highly engaged communities over broad reach and passive follower numbers. Additionally, whilst retention is now much more affordable than acquisition, keeping the right people engaged in the right conversations is now a key goal for any marketing team in 2026. 

Why your Orbit matters  

• Audiences follow people, not logos – who are your voices at the centre? 

• Culture is shaped by communities, not campaigns – who are your closest collaborators? 

• Brands that earn influence through creativity get talked about, shared and embedded – who is in your outer circle? 

Let’s break down what this means 

For a business-to-business (B2B) brand, the focus should be on building a tight ecosystem of stakeholders and advocates in places like peer circles, industry membership groups, LinkedIn and relevant sector forums. It’s not about your business shouting the loudest – the aim in this game is not to be the host, but the partner.  

Decision-makers want to feel part of your future rather than be sold to, so engaging them early through partnership content and events such as podcasts, roundtables, thought leadership and innovation discussions helps co-create authority and grow a deeper understanding of your business and its values. 

Brand partnerships and working with influencers are not the sole prevail of the consumer product, as they work just as well in the B2B world. Building out your Creator Strategy allows your business to build influencer and creator matrices based on belief, audience, and creative fit – and that can happen just as easily in technology, education, science or property sectors as it can in lifestyle arenas. 

Brand partnerships in practice 

A great example of this was a recent project we did for a leading property technology business to build a Brand Partnerships strategy around thought leaders outside of its core sector. To help IamProperty launch its new CRM product, we reframed the role of data through the world of Formula 1 and partnered with F1 strategist Neil Martin whose experience driving digital transformation at Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull provided a powerful analogy for how data-driven decisions can transform performance in any industry. Promoted through a blend of digital channels the event attracted over 10,000 impressions, engaged high value prospects and generated warm leads for the sales team to nurture. 

Following this, we shifted to an industry-first thought leadership event in partnership with expert futurist and CEO of Futuremade, Tracey Follows, exploring the evolving expectations of tomorrow’s property consumers, from their relationship with agents to their expectation of the buying and selling journey when it comes to the role of technology.  

Back in the consumer brand world, there’s a shift happening as expensive and hard to measure mass influencer marketing has begun to lose consumer trust. Community activations, fandom strategies, always-on engagement programmes for real-life customer UGC and working with niche influencers in a much deeper way are all emerging as better ways to attract and keep the right people in your brand orbit. 

Turning passive consumers into active brand fan communities can be done via loyalty clubs or behind-the-scenes access to unveil deeper storytelling layers, or it can be dialled up with IRL activations that translate into digital content.  

In our work with Dr. Martens as they rolled out their owned & operated store network across the UK, we didn’t need to position the brand as a lifestyle, because its customers do that already. Instead, we wanted to recruit the right people to help turn that understanding into communities of highly engaged hyperlocal fans. 

Using our Orbit strategy’s “Influence Architecture” approach, we took our in-depth cultural knowledge of each specific UK city to layer talent, timing and territory for maximum cultural momentum. Firstly, we identified people that reflected the movements, microcultures, and values Dr. Martens stand for such as self-expression and rebellion and then we gave them a local twist for more resonance on the streets. 

Emerging local bands, DJs, barbers, tattoo artists, parkour runners, street artists all became part of a growing community of Dr. Martens advocates. Everywhere from Belfast to Brighton, we invited these micro-creators to preview the latest collections, wear the latest product drops, be part of customer in-store events and star in our social media campaigns. 

If you want to build brand communities in 2026, ask yourself these questions: 

1. Relevance: Are you showing up where it matters and mixing in the right circles? 

2. Credibility: Are you co-creating with the right voices? 

3. Cultural Value: Are you adding something meaningful to the space? 

Our Orbit strategy is built on these 3 strategic pillars and is made for brands that want to collaborate with new faces and are ready to shift from influencer marketing to authentic cultural influence.  

To find out more check out our Original Thinking methodology here