OK, I have to admit it, strategists are weird. We like things that most people hate.

Strategists love the world’s most impossible questions

Brand strategy is about deciding what’s important, then focusing resources and action on that objective. That means asking questions, sometimes existential ones.
Who are we? Why are we here? What do we believe in? Who needs to know? Why should they care? How will they respond?
I reckon strategists must have been quite irritating children: “Why?… Why?… Why?” .

We love ‘change management’

The phrase makes most people’s hearts sink. For a strategist, though, it’s ripe with the promise of a new brief. Change is the reason we exist – our job is about visualising an alternative future for our client, their people and their customers.
Admittedly, change can be terrifying: “Our brand architecture is out of control” or “We look different in every territory” or “Help! All our customers are giving up alcohol, caffeine and carbohydrates.”
But the process of refreshing identities, embedding principles and building reputations is one we’re thrilled by.

We love a Crime Scene Investigation

When I work with NB Studio, CSI is our affectionate name for a brand audit. This often involves intricate work, analysing channels and audiences, comparing competitors and finding an uncontested space.
We like it best when the studio resembles AC-12 – wallpapered in post-its and print-outs, entangled in Blu Tack, magnets and string. That’s when we know we’re on the verge of discovering a crime against design. Or, better still, a killer insight.
Our aim is to reveal the ‘one brave truth’ that will anchor our client’s long-term creative brand development..

We love a one-to-one with the CEO

Or a maize-grower in Burkina Faso, and the entire value chain of stakeholders in between them. The pleasure of a job like our brand refresh for Farmerline is getting inside a culture and hearing a range of perspectives.
The benefits of being listened to and heard cannot be underestimated, and once an enterprise understands its own brand it gives direction to everyone.

We love becoming world experts in, say, technical brushes or seal-safe dog frisbees

We’re driven by the need to understand the world around us. There’s something especially satisfying about getting to grips with a whole new bank of knowledge in a short time-frame. As strategists, it makes us better translators for designers and more useful allies for our clients. We’re also quite handy in a pub quiz.

We love to break the rules

We believe bold creativity solves business problems. So, when working with NB, we use opposite thinking to challenge assumptions, confound expectations and find fresh answers. This is method not madness: we’re constantly looking for which conventions and clichés of branding or marketing we can overturn.
Sometimes, the greatest enemy of creative thinking is the human brain. So, alongside our creative colleagues, we do everything we can to surprise it and get in its way.

We love a pitch

And it’s not just about the adrenaline rush and the thrill of the contest. Our prospective clients get a sneak preview of the special rapport between strategists and NB’s designers.
We introduce elements of rapid creative prototyping into our early thinking to quicken the pace, make our theories more tangible and gain agreement around a winning idea. The win for both parties is a relationship where we articulate a clear promise then design an identity that delivers on that promise.

We love ideas that make us nervous

I’m particularly proud of our recent work for Vineyard Theatre. The new strategy, Fearlessly Made In New York, positions Vineyard as a place where daring art is cultivated. Conventional wisdom says that brands should be consistent. Instead, Vineyard gets a bespoke, limited edition logo for every show, creating the expectation of something different every time.

I’m with the filmmaker John Waters, who told a gathering of grads, “Go out in the world and fuck it up beautifully. Horrify us with new ideas. Outrage outdated critics. Use technology for transgression, not lazy social living. Make me nervous!”