Thinking
The obvious explanation is usually where I start looking.
Most brand challenges come with an answer already hiding inside the question.
I’m interested in the ones where that answer is wrong, incomplete or simply too convenient.
This is where I write about brand strategy, psychology, culture and the patterns underneath difficult business problems — mostly to understand why the obvious explanation so often isn’t the useful one.
Work shows what I’ve done. This is where you can see how I think.
Featured thinking
A few pieces that best reflect how I approach a difficult question.
What clients say — and what the strategist should hear underneath it
The presenting problem is rarely the real one. Twelve familiar statements, and what they may actually be telling you.
September 2025
The Shipbuilder’s Trap
The most common B2B brand problem: a company that knows exactly what it builds, and cannot say why anyone should care.
May 2025
Not every product that grows becomes a brand
Growth and brand are not the same asset. What happens when a company mistakes one for the other.
July 2025
Brand identity vs. brand image
What you show isn’t always what they see, and the gap between the two is usually where the work is.
June 2025
Who, or what, is your brand’s nemesis?
Most brands can name their competitors. Fewer can name what they are actually up against.
September 2025
Tone of voice as a competitive weapon
How a brand sounds does more strategic work than most companies ask of it.
September 2025
The secret geometry of brand strategy
The underlying structure most brand strategies share, once you know where to look.
April 2025
What the Hello Kitty airport tells us
What a piece of cultural branding reveals about meaning, licensing and attention.
August 2025
Different or distinctive?
Two words used interchangeably in most briefs, which point at entirely different strategies.
May 2023
Daddy, where do archetypes come from?
Where the patterns come from, why they recur, and what they’re actually useful for in brand work.
April 2023
Themes I keep returning to
The problem under the problem
Why organisations often solve the symptom because it is easier to discuss than the underlying tension.
Brands as living systems
How brands change as organisations grow, fragment, accumulate history and become constrained by their own success.
Psychology and culture
What people believe, fear, value and signal — and why those forces often explain behaviour better than the rational story.
Language and meaning
How words frame choices, reveal assumptions and sometimes prevent organisations from seeing what is actually happening.
Collective identity
What changes when a brand belongs to a city, institution, family, nation or community rather than a single owner.
Archive
Twenty-five years of writing about brands. Some older pieces belong to earlier moments in the discipline; I keep them because intellectual history is more useful when it stays visible.
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What MacGyver Can Teach You About How People See Your Brand
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Who, or What, is Your Brand’s Nemesis?
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How Your Tone of Voice Can Be Your Brand’s Secret Weapon
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Twelve Things Brand Owners Say When the Brand Is in Trouble
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What the Hello Kitty Airport Tells Us?
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Not Every Product That Grows Becomes a Brand
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Brand Identity vs. Brand Image: What You Show Isn’t Always What They See
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The Shipbuilder’s Trap: The Most Common B2B Brand Strategy Problem
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The Secret Geometry of Brand Strategy
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You Are Where You Visit: A Psychological Guide to Destination Preferences
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Why One Size Does Not Fit All in Place Branding?
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Show, Don’t Tell: The Key to Effective Communication for Places
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Overcoming the Logo Tunnel Vision in Place Branding: Lessons from Failed Projects
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Will AI steal your job?
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Different or Distinctive: Which Should Your Brand Be?
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Daddy, where do archetypes come from?
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I love my job. But I (used to) hate explaining it to others.
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Cultural Evolution: How Institutions Can Adapt and Thrive in the 21st Century
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Profit is essential for your company’s existence, yet not the reason for it
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The righter we do the wrong thing, the wronger we become.
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Kültürel Miras mı? O da ne?
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Başkanla Asansör’de Konuşacaklar İçin Bir Tüyo
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Kemeraltı’nı ayağa kaldıracak üç unsur
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Kemeraltı Nasıl Algılanıyor?
Got a brand challenge that looks simple but isn’t?
That is usually where I’m most useful.