The ad nobody remembere

Pop quiz: Name the top Super Bowl ad from 2026.

You can't. Neither can I.

Budweiser won USA Today's 38th annual Ad Meter for Super Bowl LX (2026) with its commercial titled "American Icons". In case you forgot, like me, the ad featured the brand's signature Clydesdales alongside a soaring American bald eagle, set to the song "Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd.

This forgettable ad is the whole story.

Brand marketing was built for a world of mass broadcast — radio, television, billboards — where a handful of vehicles reached millions of people and repetition could lodge an idea inside a skull. Volvo means safety. Coke means happiness. It worked because the environment enabled it.

That environment is gone.

The internet was not built to sell ads. It was built for people, and people have rewired the communications environment to serve themselves. What cuts through now is funny, useful, beautiful, or inspiring content — preferably all four, delivered in ways that feel personal rather than broadcast. The research backs this up. So does common sense.

Most organizations have not caught up. They still communicate like it's a Sunday church service. Single message. Single emotion. Infrequent contact. They're running a brand marketing playbook inside a direct marketing world and wondering why nothing sticks.

The founders and leaders I respect most have figured out that surprise beats consistency, emotion beats fact, and useful beats sales. They've stopped trying to hammer a single idea and started telling stories worth repeating.

Which raises the question I keep returning to: If the brands spending the most on visibility are the ones we remember least, what does that tell us about where we're actually spending our own attention and credibility?

-Marc

You can always reach me @ marc@brigadoon.live.

+ Brigadoon organizes gatherings for founders, investors, journalists, doctors, designers, architects, and civic leaders. No PowerPoints, no panels, no name tags. Just a deliberately varied group in conversation, with radical curiosity as the only agenda, and an honest acknowledgment that the ROI is unknown, and that is exactly the point. More @ www.brigadoon.live.

March 30, 2026

What a Year Inside Brigadoon Actually Looks Like

I've been asked what Brigadoon Professional actually delivers — not in the abstract, but practically. What does a year look like?

Here's the honest answer.

Every two weeks, you receive a newsletter. Not a recap of things you already read on LinkedIn. Analysis — drawn from my work with Caracal Global on geopolitics, commerce, and culture — on the forces shaping the world in ways that most professional coverage misses. Twenty-six issues a year.

Ten times a year, you join a live call — forty-five minutes with a subject matter expert on something that matters: cybersecurity, behavioral economics, urban development, supply chain risk, creative leadership, whatever is most relevant to how the world is actually moving. Fully archived if you can't make it live.

Twice a year, if you're a Participant or above, you receive a curated hardcover book — one in June, one in December. Not the book everyone is talking about. The book that's actually worth your time.

Once a year, Brigadoon Utah. Three days in February at Sundance Mountain Resort. Forty or so people, Chatham House Rule, no slides, no panels, no posturing. You know what happens there. If you don't — that's the point of coming.

Once or twice a year, a Salon Dinner. Twelve people around a table in a city — Detroit, Washington D.C., wherever the community is gathering. Intimate by design. One of the highest-signal professional experiences I know how to create.

And for Explorers and Patrons: Brigadoon Scotland. Five days in November in a rented house in the Scottish countryside with a private chef and ten people. If I'm being honest, this is the most concentrated version of what Brigadoon is. No schedule. No sessions. Just five days where the conversation is the point.

What I've tried to do with Brigadoon Professional is create a rhythm — a year-long cadence that keeps you intellectually sharp, builds relationships that compound over time, and guarantees you a seat at the gatherings that actually move the needle.

The founding member offer closes March 31, 2026, and your tier pricing is locked for two years — no increases at renewal.

After March 31, pricing is what it is.

Four tiers. Twelve months. One conversation, extended.

If this is your kind of room, you already know it.

— Marc A. Ross

Founder, Brigadoon | marc@brigadoon.live

Introducing Brigadoon Professional

Thirteen years ago, I asked a simple question: What would happen if I put forty smart people in a room and took away everything that usually gets in the way of actual conversation?

No panels. No slides. No name tags. No agenda designed to make everyone feel comfortable and leave having learned nothing.

The answer, repeated year after year at Sundance Mountain Resort in the Utah mountains, is that something genuinely useful happens. People think out loud. Unexpected connections form. Ideas that were stuck get unstuck. The kind of conversation you'll still be turning over in your head six months later.

The problem — and it has always been the problem — is that it only lasts a weekend.

Brigadoon Professional is my attempt to solve that.

It is a twelve-month membership organized around four tiers, each designed for a different level of engagement with the Brigadoon idea:

Ranger ($500/year) is built for the intellectually curious professional who wants to stay ahead of the ideas shaping commerce and culture. It includes a biweekly newsletter — twenty-six issues a year — plus ten live expert calls with subject matter experts, each forty-five minutes and fully archived. Open enrollment. No capacity limit.

Participant ($2,500/year) is for the professional ready to show up in the room. Limited to seventy-five members. It adds two curated hardcover books delivered in June and December, a guaranteed spot at Brigadoon Utah each February, one Salon Dinner per year, and the Brigadoon vest — a signature piece that marks you as part of the community.

Explorer ($5,000/year) goes further — geographically and intellectually. Limited to ten members. It adds Brigadoon Scotland in November: five days in a rented house in the Scottish countryside, private chef, ten people. If you've been, you know. If you haven't, it's the most intense version of Brigadoon. Two Salon Dinners a year, a transferable guest pass, and the full Brigadoon kit — vest and hoodie.

Patron ($7,500/year) is for the rare professional who doesn't just attend Brigadoon — they sustain it. Limited to six members. Patrons bring a guest to Utah and all Salon Dinners, join a private Patron Dinner in December or January, and have two dedicated strategic conversations with me each year.

Each tier is built on the tier below it. The philosophy is consistent across all four: that the most valuable professional development isn't passive consumption — it's being put in proximity to people and ideas that challenge how you think.

The founding member offer is open through March 31, 2026, and your tier pricing is locked for two full years.

No price increases at renewal. No up-sells. No noise.

Just the conversation, extended.

Email me @ marc@brigadoon.live if you are interested and want to get involved.

— Marc A. Ross

The Conference Is Broken. Here's What I Did About It.

I have sat through too many conferences. You probably have too.

You know the format. A keynote speaker who wrote a book three years ago delivers insights you could have absorbed in a forty-five-minute podcast on your walk. A panel of four people who mostly agree with each other politely debate the margins. Heads tucked into screens. Networking happens in a lobby, between people who are already connected on LinkedIn, exchanging business cards that neither will look at again.

You fly home knowing roughly what you knew when you left. Maybe you have a notebook with three bullet points. Maybe you don't even have that.

I stopped going to those conferences in my late thirties. Not because I stopped being curious — but because I started valuing my curiosity more.

What I wanted was something different: a room where people actually disagree, where expertise comes from living something rather than studying it, where the format doesn't protect anyone from having to think in real time.

I built that room. I called it Brigadoon.

Since 2013, Brigadoon has gathered at Sundance Mountain Resort for three days each February — forty or so founders, investors, journalists, architects, doctors, civic leaders, and thinkers from across disciplines and geographies. No PowerPoint slides. No panels. No name tags. Chatham House Rule throughout.

The format is simple: a speaker takes the stage with an idea, a question, or a problem. Not a polished presentation — often something they're working through in real time. The room responds. Actual conversation happens. Sometimes it's uncomfortable. It's almost always useful.

What defines the quality of a Brigadoon gathering isn't the speakers' credentials. It's the willingness of everyone in the room to think out loud — to say the thing they actually think rather than the thing they're supposed to think.

That's rare. And it turns out it's replicable, if you're deliberate about who you invite and how you design the experience.

Thirteen years in, I wanted to see if the same philosophy could work year-round — not just for a weekend in the Utah mountains, but across twelve months, for a broader community of people who believe that conversation is still the most underrated tool in professional life.

Brigadoon Professional is the answer to that question.

It's a membership program that keeps the conversation going between gatherings — through biweekly analysis and essays, live expert calls on topics shaping commerce and culture, curated books, and guaranteed access to the gatherings themselves.

The four tiers range from $500 to $7,500 per year, with capacity limits at the upper levels that mirror the gathering's own design logic: the room only works if it stays small enough that everyone is accountable to each other.

Conferences have been broken for a long time. Most people keep going anyway, out of habit or obligation.

You don't have to.

— Marc A. Ross

Founder, Brigadoon