About - The Blog Social

The Blog Social

Candice Natalya

Reformed corporate sellout. Anti-beige activist. Abuela's favorite. Will talk you into buying the shoes and out of "being more professional."

Blog Strategy & Creative for Kickass Brands

I wasn’t always the creative strategist handing out megaphones on the spicy underdogs. I was the drone writing brand bibles for companies with unlimited budgets and nothing to say.

I grew up in Guadalajara watching my grandmother run her little mercado like a one-woman circus — loud, colourful, personal, and impossible to ignore. People went to shop, but they really came to see her. That was my first experience with "branding."

By my twenties, I'd traded the mercado for Manhattan and was writing brand strategy for companies with eight-figure budgets and zero personality. And I was damn good at it.

But somewhere between the corporate style guides and the stakeholder decks, I noticed the brands that moved people weren't the biggest ones.

They were the weird ones. The specific ones. The kind with a voice. The ones that knew exactly who they were and refused to apologize for it.

So I left the agency world with a new obsession: what if small brands stopped shrinking themselves to seem "professional?" The thing they thought was their weakness — too human, too niche, too 'unscalable' — was the thing I knew to be their strength.

A one-woman soap company in Santa Fe was my first real client. She wanted to clean up her brand to sound more "legit." I talked her out of it. She sold out in 48 hours. And I was all in.

Since then I’ve helped 200+ founders stop shrinking themselves to fit some idea of what a "real brand" looks like — and start showing up in their weirdest, most creative form. (And in the process, often 10x their revenue.)

Because you don’t want a brand that looks good in a deck and disappears in a feed.

You want one people remember. Spend their $$$ with. Obsess over. Tell their friends about.I’m the strategist who’ll help you get your brand’s voice back, then add just enough spice to make it impossible to forget.

Street tacos from places with zero Yelp reviews, Writing copy that makes people say “Damn” out loud, Giving unsolicited advice, The color orange, Salsa (both dance and food), Fiction with spicy female main characters*

*Ask me for the list and do not judge.

Take it from Them

“I wouldn’t trust Candice to keep my plants alive but I’d let her design my Pinterest templates.”

— My brother Antonio

At a Glance

Ask Me About

Travel hacking, the best taco spots in any major city, why I'm rewatching Schitt's Creek again, and how it feels to quit your $$$ job with zero plans.

Unpopular
Opinion(s)

Brunch is a scam. Working from home is overrated. Participation in the group text should be mandatory. Charcuterie boards have the best PR in the business.

In my Spare Time

Starting a new book before I've finished the last one, hosting taco night, salsa dancing, ordering for the table. Fun fact: I'm annoyingly good at pickleball.

An Ideal Evening Looks Like

5:00pm reservation, bottomless chips in salsa, home by 8, Korean facemask and reading in bed or a needlepoint project Asleep by 10. Bury me in my bedsheets.