Senior brand thinking, inside your team.

Every so often, a client brings you a problem where the obvious answers aren’t enough. Not for lack of talent, but because the question reaches beyond the category, the data, or what the client can articulate. Those briefs don’t arrive often enough to keep a specialist on staff, but they matter too much to solve with the usual answers. That’s when I come in — for a pitch, a project, or an account that has quietly stopped making sense.

Günter Soydanbay · Brand strategist · Psychotherapist for Brands · Brussels

Bring me the brief

When to bring me in

The questions I get handed

How do we get people to try milk made in a lab instead of by a cow?

How do we justify our price to a procurement team that sees our category as a commodity?

How do we make a century-old brand relevant to a new generation without losing the people who love it?

We’ve acquired three companies. Whose name goes on the door?

How do we persuade an entire neighbourhood to change its everyday energy habits?

How does a fund explain what makes it different when every competitor shows the same numbers?

These are the briefs where the obvious answers aren’t enough.

Years of brand strategy

150+

Brands and organisations

Countries, five continents

Win the work

When the pitch needs a stronger strategic point of view, I work inside your team on the thinking the client will judge you by.

Solve the hard brief

When the work is yours but the obvious answers aren’t enough, I help the team get underneath the problem, reframe it and find a way forward.

Strengthen the account

When an existing client relationship needs fresh strategic momentum, I can join for a specific challenge or stay close when senior thinking is needed.

What you get

A strategy your client can act on. A brief your creatives can run with.

And a way of seeing the problem that helps everyone move. Most of what I do is help people articulate what they already half-knew — but hadn’t yet found the words, structure or courage to say.

He can blend academy-level strategic acumen with creativity, seeing the hidden potential in every situation. His ability to connect the dots and draw analogies from mythology, physics and neuroscience is second to none.

Alper Kulak · Managing Partner, Maven Insights · Dubai

Your client stays yours. Your team gets stronger.

I join the team you already have, for as long as the brief needs me. I can work visibly with the client or entirely behind the scenes.

Either way, the principle stays the same: I strengthen the thinking without changing who owns the relationship.

What clients say afterwards

He took the idea, which was in our minds, and gave us the right shoes. He also found the right metaphor — Ensō — after which we named our company. Günter, plain and simple, put our dreams on paper.
Canan Ilter · Co-founding Partner, Ensō · Istanbul

His input, vision and guidance helped everyone within our organization to understand the mission, sacred values and the promise of Beyondtech in a way we didn’t know was possible.
Luis Cárdenas · CFO, Beyondtech · Madrid

An impressive brand strategist, who possesses deep insights into why things are the way they are. His narrative-based analysis and actionable tactics gave us results we could not even dream of.
Ben Plomion · Chief Marketing Officer, GumGum · Santa Monica

He helped us segment our customers in a way that resonated in many internal meetings long after we engaged with him.
Marcel Stephan · Director of Customer Experience, KAEC · Saudi Arabia

I have partnered with Günter on several projects over the last 8 years.
Allison Rietta · Creative Director, Diagonal Creative · Toronto

Questions you might ask

Will our client know you’re external?

That’s yours to decide. Some agencies introduce me as part of the team; others name me in the proposal. I’m comfortable with either.

Can you be named as an expert in a proposal?

Yes. I can provide a CV, biography or credentials in whatever format the proposal requires.

How are fees set?

Per project, quoted after the first call. More questions.

Where agencies bring me in most

I work most often on financial services, multi-brand and FMCG portfolios, and premium B2B businesses in manufacturing and professional services.

I’m based in Brussels and work in English and Turkish with agencies across Europe, North America, the Gulf and Turkey.

Selected work through agency partners

Diageo · Holcim · Lonza · Carvana · KingSett Capital · Papara · Doğuş Group · Sanko Holding · NATO · European Commission

See the work

About me

Trained in psychology and later in business, I’ve spent 25 years helping organisations make sense of difficult brand problems — more than 150 brands across 19 countries.

That background is why I sometimes describe myself as a Psychotherapist for Brands: I tend to look underneath the brief, question the assumptions holding it together, and help teams articulate what is really going on.

I’m based in Brussels and work in English and Turkish. More about me.

Got one of those briefs?

Bring me the brief