When things are a bit more difficult to explain.
When the market needs building before it can be won.
Some categories are structurally harder than others. The science is complex, the experience needs explaining, the consumer needs educating, the proposition is unfamiliar, the category itself is often still being mapped. Functional health and nutraceuticals. Premium food and drink. Plant-based and alt-protein. Genetic and personalised health. Specialty consumer goods. Cultural and arts organisations. In categories like these, the standard marketing playbook fails. Shouting louder than the competition doesn't help when the problem is understanding, not awareness. The task is to translate complexity into something real people can understand and care about.
Use us if
Sales are flat because the proposition isn't translating to a sceptical or new audience.
A regulatory or category shift is changing how the story has to be told.
Your category is new, finding its shape in real time, and you want to chart the route rather than follow it.
You’re relying on an acquisition model trying to reach customers that don’t really exist yet.
Investors or partners are struggling to articulate what you do when they talk about you to others.
What we do
Translating complexity is at the heart of much of our most rewarding work. We've built positioning for plant-based food brands entering markets where the category was barely understood. We've helped genetic and personalised health businesses build education led acquisition models that withstand both clinical and consumer scrutiny. We've worked with premium drinks brands on the signalling logic of category leadership and with arts and cultural organisations on the experiential complexity of what they offer. The work typically involves a deep audit of how the proposition currently works, structured stakeholder and consumer research to understand where the market is, where it's heading, and where your brand needs to be when it gets there and a brand strategy that often involves shaping the whole business model. And the operational discipline to make sure the strategy lives in the small decisions: product, packaging, communications, sales conversations, not just the positioning document.
How it works
Most engagements begin with a focused foundation phase: Research, audit, positioning, narrative development and continue as an ongoing partnership through the rollout of the new positioning and developing market and thought leadership around an emerging area.
What we bring
An unusually deep practitioner and academic combination. Twenty-five years of brand strategy across complex categories, alongside active academic research in consumption, identity, and the marketing of high complexity propositions. We don't just do this work we study it. That depth shows up in the ideas, the frameworks, and the willingness to think harder than most.