Where Is Your Audience, Really? Brand Discovery in a Post-Reach World (Member only, online event)
The feed is full. The ads are everywhere. And increasingly, neither humans nor algorithms can tell the difference between signal and noise.
A shift is emerging — and we are all feeling it, even if we can't quite articulate it yet. Niche communities, private groups, and walled gardens are emerging as safe spaces for people to connect, becoming the new primary avenues where opinions form, trends emerge, and purchasing decisions get made.
For brands trying to grow in this environment, the old playbook is expensive and increasingly ineffective. But the alternative isn't obvious either — if the conversations that matter are happening behind closed doors, how do you listen? How do you show up without being the brand that crashed the dinner party?
In this session, I'll draw on my work across growth marketing, community building, and AI to explore what brand discovery actually looks like in a post-reach world — and share the work I've been doing on how smart brands find their people without competing with the noise.
During this session, Kate will explore:
Why mass reach is losing its value — and what's replacing it
How walled gardens and niche communities are becoming the new trend and taste drivers
What it means for brands when the conversations that matter are happening out of sight
How AI can help surface those conversations and turn them into growth
This conversation is designed for:
Brand founders and operators
Marketing leads navigating a post-social media world
Community builders and members club operators
Anyone rethinking how discovery and growth work in 2025
Come with questions and your own experience.
About Kate
Kate is a senior brand and growth strategist with over a decade of experience — from big brand work spanning Disney and P&G to emerging entertainment and e-commerce to boutique hospitality, longevity clinics, and member-led brands.
Her approach is built around growth loops that connect multiple layers simultaneously: personal brand, performance advertising, and community — each feeding the others. She's applied this model across client work and in building AOMA, her own eco-positive coliving venture in Ericeira, where community fundraising, brand storytelling, and paid acquisition have had to work as a single integrated system rather than separate channels.
Drawing on real-world marketing experience across industries and growth stages, she builds proprietary AI tools for brand intelligence — including an audit that maps where and how brands are being discovered, or missed, across the new landscape of AI-generated conversation.
Kate is a member of PKF Hospitality's Future of Hospitality Institute — a think tank tracking emerging trends across the industry — where she has spoken at gatherings in Lisbon and Hamburg on the future of living and on how hospitality brands can use AI to reduce dependency on OTAs.
Hosted by RedBridge Lisbon — connecting Lisbon to Silicon Valley through meaningful conversations with founders, innovators, and investors.