Helping big brands build their cultural competitive advantage
Helping big brands
build their cultural
competitive advantage
For businesses, brands and organisations, Q2 of the 21st century is seeing traditional centres of gravity shift like never before. Leaders and teams are expected to navigate and serve a landscape that has fundamentally changed.
These Culture-Led realities include:
- The Generational Shift: Managing a global, more conscious workforce and consumer base from Boomers to Gen Alpha, all with different expectations, at the same time.
- The Fandom Era: A struggle for brand relevance across noisy cross-cultural fandoms, across a fragmented media landscape and platforms shaped by power, algorithms and agendas, whilst navigating multi-country contexts and nuances, both in the country and with the diaspora.
- The Growth Opportunity: Underestimating both challenger categories and "emerging" markets as polarising geopolitics and technology once again reshapes culture(s), economies and markets.
In this time of radical transformation, brands and organisations will need to evolve and innovate across the board just to survive, let alone thrive. Yet, most organisations haven’t challenged the decision filters and processes that decide what gets made, diluted or terminated in your business and/or brand.
I call this The Corporate Algorithm - inherited internal processes built for the 20th century, designed to reward predictability, efficiency and familiarity. And in Q1 of the 21st century these rigid processes started combining with data-and-AI-filtered decision-making narrowing strategic judgement and perspective upstream even further.
The result is that brands are becoming increasingly formulaic making homogeneity standard. This isn't just hurting the bottom line, it’s driving widespread burnout and exhaustion, because it forces leaders and teams to operate in a state of permacrisis and risk-averse efficiency.
For businesses, brands and organisations, Q2 of the 21st century is seeing traditional centres of gravity shift like never before. Leaders and teams are expected to navigate and serve a landscape that has fundamentally changed.
These Culture-Led realities include:
- The Generational Shift: Managing a global, more conscious workforce and consumer base from Boomers to Gen Alpha, all with different expectations, at the same time.
- The Fandom Era: A struggle for brand relevance across noisy cross-cultural fandoms, across a fragmented media landscape and platforms shaped by power, algorithms and agendas, whilst navigating multi-country contexts and nuances, both in the country and with the diaspora.
- The Growth Opportunity: Underestimating both challenger categories and "emerging" markets as polarising geopolitics and technology once again reshapes culture(s), economies and markets.
In this time of radical transformation, brands and organisations will need to evolve and innovate across the board just to survive, let alone thrive. Yet, most organisations haven’t challenged the decision filters and processes that decide what gets made, diluted or terminated in your business and/or brand.
I call this The Corporate Algorithm - inherited internal processes built for the 20th century, designed to reward predictability, efficiency and familiarity. And in Q1 of the 21st century these rigid processes started combining with data-and-AI-filtered decision-making narrowing strategic judgement and perspective upstream even further.
The result is that brands are becoming increasingly formulaic making homogeneity standard. This isn't just hurting the bottom line, it’s driving widespread burnout and exhaustion, because it forces leaders and teams to operate in a state of permacrisis and risk-averse efficiency.
For businesses, brands and organisations, Q2 of the 21st century is seeing traditional centres of gravity shift like never before. Leaders and teams are expected to navigate and serve a landscape that has fundamentally changed.
These Culture-Led realities include:
- The Generational Shift: Managing a global, more conscious workforce and consumer base from Boomers to Gen Alpha, all with different expectations, at the same time.
- The Fandom Era: A struggle for brand relevance across noisy cross-cultural fandoms, across a fragmented media landscape and platforms shaped by power, algorithms and agendas, whilst navigating multi-country contexts and nuances, both in the country and with the diaspora.
- The Growth Opportunity: Underestimating both challenger categories and "emerging" markets as polarising geopolitics and technology once again reshapes culture(s), economies and markets.
In this time of radical transformation, brands and organisations will need to evolve and innovate across the board just to survive, let alone thrive. Yet, most organisations haven’t challenged the decision filters and processes that decide what gets made, diluted or terminated in your business and/or brand.
I call this The Corporate Algorithm - inherited internal processes built for the 20th century, designed to reward predictability, efficiency and familiarity. And in Q1 of the 21st century these rigid processes started combining with data-and-AI-filtered decision-making narrowing strategic judgement and perspective upstream even further.
The result is that brands are becoming increasingly formulaic making homogeneity standard. This isn't just hurting the bottom line, it’s driving widespread burnout and exhaustion, because it forces leaders and teams to operate in a state of permacrisis and risk-averse efficiency.
Staying static is a growth, relevance, resilience and organisational risk.
Successful organisations and brands win from earlier and upstream clarity and decision making driven by culturally informed leaders using adaptive resilient business ecosystems with diverse high performing teams. This ensures true resonance with audiences (internal & external) and, ultimately, sustainable and long term business growth.
Alongside Platform13, I separately and confidentially support Leadership (VPs and transformation leaders) and Brand Teams (Marketing, Growth, Innovation, Product, Insight, and Creative) upstream to unlock cultural relevance as a business growth engine and innovation catalyst. This is designed to bring Cultural Agility - the essential cultural fluency capability for brands to survive and thrive in an uncertain, complex, and transformational era by understanding multiple global and local cultural contexts and how to operate successfully within them - into business and brand behaviours and operations.
_ Senior Strategic Advisory: Embedded, ongoing partnership at business critical moments of decision making and strategic direction. I say the things others won’t, delivering cultural truth, commercial sharpness, and 30 years of hard-won experience.
_ The Reset: These real world cultural immersions are experiential learning interventions to rewire company culture, shifting how leaders and teams think, work and lead, fit for today and tomorrow. It's where personal growth drives business and performance growth. But it's on the return when reality hits, as an embedded strategic advisor, I continue to support this clarity becoming the cultural fluency capability that can drive both brand output and business outcomes.
LEADERSHIP SUPPORT
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Strategic Advisor
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The Leadership Reset
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Strategic Advisor
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The Leadership Reset
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Strategic Advisor
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The Leadership Reset
BRAND SUPPORT
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Strategic Advisor
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Strategic Advisor
01
Strategic Advisor
02
The Cultural Reset
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The Cultural Reset
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The Cultural Reset
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The Cultural Reset
AN OUTSIDER APPROACH WITH INSIDER KNOW-HOW
I bring over 30 years of global, hands-on experience working across lifestyle, FMCG and sportswear, both inside major global organisations and through building and leading my own independent companies.
My career has been shaped by operating at the intersection of corporate systems, cultural reality and entrepreneurial thinking and being able to translate between them when it matters most.
After founding and running one of the earliest integrated (traditional, digital social) boutique youth agencies, Spin for a decade, I was headhunted into senior leadership roles at adidas and Diageo. In both, I was brought in as an internal change agent: to help brands navigate cultural relevance externally, while reshaping internal thinking, processes and decision-making to support that ambition. In 2017, I recognised the need for a new type of big brand partner and founded Platform13.
Leaders usually ask HOW I work? The answer isn’t a single framework or model. It’s an ability to read what’s emerging before it becomes consensus, combined with lived experience of how decisions actually get made inside complex organisations.
I bring over 30 years of global, hands-on experience working across lifestyle, FMCG and sportswear, both inside major global organisations and through building and leading my own independent companies.
My career has been shaped by operating at the intersection of corporate systems, cultural reality and entrepreneurial thinking and being able to translate between them when it matters most.
After founding and running one of the earliest integrated (traditional, digital social) boutique youth agencies, Spin for a decade, I was headhunted into senior leadership roles at adidas and Diageo. In both, I was brought in as an internal change agent: to help brands navigate cultural relevance externally, while reshaping internal thinking, processes and decision-making to support that ambition. In 2017, I recognised the need for a new type of big brand partner and founded Platform13.
Leaders usually ask HOW I work? The answer isn’t a single framework or model. It’s an ability to read what’s emerging before it becomes consensus, combined with lived experience of how decisions actually get made inside complex organisations.
Across three decades, my work has consistently balanced commercial performance, long-term brand equity and cultural resonance across markets, categories and moments , particularly in periods of change.
That perspective has led to ongoing commentary, profiles and thought leadership in global industry and trend publications such as WARC, Business of Fashion, Digiday, Adweek, Highsnobiety, The Drum and Campaign. I’ve delivered main-stage keynotes at D&AD, Apple Today, Eurobest and Hyper Island, appeared as a challenger voice at Cannes Lions and Advertising Week, and served as a judge for D&AD New Blood and multiple industry awards.
In 2025, I authored Culture-Led Brands, which delves into the 'how' by empowering executives and professionals with a deeper understanding of the 'why’. This not only speaks to the unprecedented time we are living in, but how it can be shaped better for us all.
2025 also saw the launch of my POD on Youtube, Cultural Voices, exploring the perspectives and experiences that have shaped extraordinary careers, while sharing insights and expertise across corporate, cultural, and creative spaces.
Across three decades, my work has consistently balanced commercial performance, long-term brand equity and cultural resonance across markets, categories and moments , particularly in periods of change.
That perspective has led to ongoing commentary, profiles and thought leadership in global industry and trend publications such as WARC, Business of Fashion, Digiday, Adweek, Highsnobiety, The Drum and Campaign. I’ve delivered main-stage keynotes at D&AD, Apple Today, Eurobest and Hyper Island, appeared as a challenger voice at Cannes Lions and Advertising Week, and served as a judge for D&AD New Blood and multiple industry awards.
In 2025, I authored Culture-Led Brands, which delves into the 'how' by empowering executives and professionals with a deeper understanding of the 'why’. This not only speaks to the unprecedented time we are living in, but how it can be shaped better for us all.
2025 also saw the launch of my POD on Youtube, Cultural Voices, exploring the perspectives and experiences that have shaped extraordinary careers, while sharing insights and expertise across corporate, cultural, and creative spaces.
Across three decades, my work has consistently balanced commercial performance, long-term brand equity and cultural resonance across markets, categories and moments , particularly in periods of change.
That perspective has led to ongoing commentary, profiles and thought leadership in global industry and trend publications such as WARC, Business of Fashion, Digiday, Adweek, Highsnobiety, The Drum and Campaign. I’ve delivered main-stage keynotes at D&AD, Apple Today, Eurobest and Hyper Island, appeared as a challenger voice at Cannes Lions and Advertising Week, and served as a judge for D&AD New Blood and multiple industry awards.
In 2025, I authored Culture-Led Brands, which delves into the 'how' by empowering executives and professionals with a deeper understanding of the 'why’. This not only speaks to the unprecedented time we are living in, but how it can be shaped better for us all.
2025 also saw the launch of my POD on Youtube, Cultural Voices, exploring the perspectives and experiences that have shaped extraordinary careers, while sharing insights and expertise across corporate, cultural, and creative spaces.