Latest / Sidekick's What Just Shipped / Brand Knowledge: give HubSpot AI your company context | Shipped Jun 2026
Transcript
- Rob (AI host): If you've ever asked HubSpot's AI for a draft and gotten generic filler, this one's for you. Rob (AI host): Brand settings now have a section called Brand Knowledge. Dana (AI host): Where your products, competitors, and ideal customer live? Rob (AI host): Right. But which plans can edit it depends on which HubSpot page you read. Narrator (AI voice): This is Sidekick's What Just Shipped, presented by Sidekick Strategies. Narrator (AI voice): Your hosts, Rob and Dana, are AI. Narrator (AI voice): The voices are synthetic, the research is real, and humans check every claim before it reaches you. Rob (AI host): One thing first: Dana and I are AI hosts. Rob (AI host): Neither of us has a brand, a logo, or a website to crawl. Dana (AI host): I'm Dana. Today I'm playing a marketing manager whose AI drafts keep describing the wrong product. Rob (AI host): Here's what shipped. Rob (AI host): HubSpot's June product updates list a redesigned Brand settings page, organized into Brand Kit, Brand Voice, and a new Brand Knowledge section. Rob (AI host): Per that post, Brand Knowledge holds company data, meaning products, competitors, and ideal customer profile, used to personalize AI-generated content. Rob (AI host): Listed for all hubs and tiers. Dana (AI host): So three tabs. What's actually in each one? Rob (AI host): A HubSpot coaching post from the same week lays it out. Rob (AI host): Brand Kit is the visual side: logo, favicon, brand colors, and fonts. Rob (AI host): Brand Voice is personality, tone, and writing style. Rob (AI host): Brand Knowledge adds company information, ideal customer profile, and products and services, so the AI knows who you serve and what you offer. Dana (AI host): Where does the marketing manager I'm playing find it? Rob (AI host): HubSpot's help pages say click More, then Marketing, then Brand. Rob (AI host): If More doesn't appear, go to Marketing, then Brand directly. Dana (AI host): And who's allowed to change it? Rob (AI host): For Brand Kit and Brand Voice, the help pages say Super Admin or Edit account defaults permissions. Rob (AI host): The brand identity page says Brand settings permissions. Dana (AI host): Does the visual side show up everywhere? Rob (AI host): Not quite. Rob (AI host): The Brand Kit help page says brand colors appear in the content editor, scheduling pages, quotes, and conversations channels, but not in sales templates and emails. Rob (AI host): And with the Brands add-on, each brand gets its own separate kit. Dana (AI host): How does Brand Knowledge get filled in? Typing it all by hand? Rob (AI host): Not necessarily. Rob (AI host): The brand identity help page says HubSpot's AI scans your website domain automatically once your company name and domain are set in Account defaults. Rob (AI host): You can also refresh it by crawling a website, and tick a box to update the brand voice from that crawl. Rob (AI host): Extra context sits in categories like industry, main competitors, content themes, and tech stack. Rob (AI host): Each one can be added or edited by hand. Dana (AI host): So the crawl is a first draft, and someone still has to read it. Rob (AI host): HubSpot's coaching post ends on the same note. Rob (AI host): Your knowledge and judgment lead, and AI assists, so review before you publish. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Hey, it's George B. Thomas from Sidekick Strategies. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Full honesty, this is my AI voice clone, made with my permission. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Brand settings are one corner of a portal. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): If you want to know how the rest is holding up, start with a quick check. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Our free HubSpot Portal Audit asks targeted questions about your setup and gives you a health score from zero to one hundred, plus your top three action items. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): It takes about five minutes, and you don't give us access to your account. George B. Thomas (AI voice clone): Look for it under tools at Sidekick Strategies dot com. Dana (AI host): Now the skeptic part. Which plans can actually edit all three sections? Rob (AI host): This is where the sources disagree. Rob (AI host): The June post says all hubs and tiers, and our write-up goes further, saying every portal, including Free, gets all three. Rob (AI host): But the help pages split it. Brand Kit is listed for all products and plans. Rob (AI host): Brand Voice and the brand identity context are listed for Professional and Enterprise only. Dana (AI host): So a Starter account might see a Brand Knowledge tab it can't fill? Rob (AI host): We couldn't confirm that either way. Rob (AI host): No HubSpot source we found says what Free or Starter see on that tab, so treat it as unknown and check your own account. Dana (AI host): And the help pages call it Brand Knowledge? Rob (AI host): Not as of their October updates. They say brand identity and Additional context. Rob (AI host): The coaching post links Brand Knowledge to that brand identity page, so they look like the same thing under two names. Dana (AI host): Anything else that doesn't line up? Rob (AI host): The path. Our write-up says Settings, then Account Settings, then Brand. Rob (AI host): HubSpot's help pages say Marketing, then Brand. We'd follow the help pages. Dana (AI host): What does Brand Voice need from someone like the manager I'm playing? Rob (AI host): The help page asks for a writing sample of at least five hundred words, with a beginning, middle, and end. Rob (AI host): You can keep up to four personality characteristics and list terms to avoid. Rob (AI host): It works in six languages, and HubSpot's September updates say a brand voice can now be generated automatically from your website and existing content. Rob (AI host): Once it's set, the help page says you can apply it to blogs, marketing emails, pages, SMS, and social posts. Rob (AI host): Highlight text, click the AI assistant icon, and choose Apply brand identity. Dana (AI host): Case studies used to be on that list too, right? Rob (AI host): They were. Rob (AI host): The same help page says case studies will be sunset on the seventh of December, twenty twenty-six, and existing ones get migrated to blog posts automatically. Dana (AI host): Does any of this show up where people actually work? Rob (AI host): September added a sidebar to Breeze Assistant, called the Context Pane. Rob (AI host): It shows the CRM records, memories, and brand or company details Breeze referenced, in real time. Dana (AI host): That's useful. If a draft names the wrong product, you can see which context it pulled. Rob (AI host): Okay. Here's a plan for the role Dana's playing. Rob (AI host): Open Marketing, then Brand. Rob (AI host): Confirm the logo and colors, read every line the crawl wrote, and fix the products and competitors first. Dana (AI host): Then ask Breeze for one test draft and check the Context Pane to see what it used. Rob (AI host): Brand settings, in short. Rob (AI host): Three sections, a website crawl as the first draft, and tiers you'll want to check in your own account. Dana (AI host): Our sources are linked in the show notes, and the full write-ups live at Sidekick Strategies dot com. Rob (AI host): Thank you for listening. Dana (AI host): Read what the crawl wrote before the AI does. Narrator (AI voice): Sidekick's What Just Shipped is presented by Sidekick Strategies, with AI hosts Rob and Dana and AI-generated music. Narrator (AI voice): We're independent, and not affiliated with HubSpot. Find our research at Sidekick Strategies dot com.