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Brand & Business Architect

Brand & Business Architect

Cultural relevance is not simply a brand metric, its a business growth driver.

Brands with high cultural relevance grow nearly six times faster than brands without it (Kantar). But relevance does not happen because a brand decides it wants to be more culturally relevant. It comes from the decisions a business makes about its brand, its audiences, its markets and the way the organisation is set up to respond.

The conditions businesses are operating in have changed. The only certainty is uncertainty, and it is changing more than the way brands communicate.

Brands and businesses are having to navigate changes in culture, consumer behaviour, markets, technology and organisations at the same time. The question is no longer simply how a brand responds to these changes. It is whether the business is able to see them early enough, make the right decisions and organise itself to act.

How do brands and businesses build resilience when the market around them is becoming harder to predict?

How do organisations understand the different generations, communities and cultural worlds they are trying to serve without reducing them to consumer segments?

How do global businesses make scale work with the very different cultural realities of the markets in which they operate?

How do businesses identify new growth opportunities and change what needs to change internally to pursue them?

Staying static is a growth, resilience and organisational risk.

I work with businesses at the point where something needs to change, whether that is the brand, the business model, the market opportunity or the organisation itself.

Cultural relevance is not simply a brand metric, its a business growth driver.

Brands with high cultural relevance grow nearly six times faster than brands without it (Kantar). But relevance does not happen because a brand decides it wants to be more culturally relevant. It comes from the decisions a business makes about its brand, its audiences, its markets and the way the organisation is set up to respond.

The conditions businesses are operating in have changed. The only certainty is uncertainty, and it is changing more than the way brands communicate.

Brands and businesses are having to navigate changes in culture, consumer behaviour, markets, technology and organisations at the same time. The question is no longer simply how a brand responds to these changes. It is whether the business is able to see them early enough, make the right decisions and organise itself to act.

How do brands and businesses build resilience when the market around them is becoming harder to predict?

How do organisations understand the different generations, communities and cultural worlds they are trying to serve without reducing them to consumer segments?

How do global businesses make scale work with the very different cultural realities of the markets in which they operate?

How do businesses identify new growth opportunities and change what needs to change internally to pursue them?

Staying static is a growth, resilience and organisational risk.

I work with businesses at the point where something needs to change, whether that is the brand, the business model, the market opportunity or the organisation itself.

Cultural relevance is not simply a brand metric, its a business growth driver.

Brands with high cultural relevance grow nearly six times faster than brands without it (Kantar). But relevance does not happen because a brand decides it wants to be more culturally relevant. It comes from the decisions a business makes about its brand, its audiences, its markets and the way the organisation is set up to respond.

The conditions businesses are operating in have changed. The only certainty is uncertainty, and it is changing more than the way brands communicate.

Brands and businesses are having to navigate changes in culture, consumer behaviour, markets, technology and organisations at the same time. The question is no longer simply how a brand responds to these changes. It is whether the business is able to see them early enough, make the right decisions and organise itself to act.

How do brands and businesses build resilience when the market around them is becoming harder to predict?

How do organisations understand the different generations, communities and cultural worlds they are trying to serve without reducing them to consumer segments?

How do global businesses make scale work with the very different cultural realities of the markets in which they operate?

How do businesses identify new growth opportunities and change what needs to change internally to pursue them?

Staying static is a growth, resilience and organisational risk.

I work with businesses at the point where something needs to change, whether that is the brand, the business model, the market opportunity or the organisation itself.

I help leaders understand what needs to change, why it matters and what needs to happen to make it work. The work often focuses on:

• Growth strategy and portfolio direction
• Brand and business evolution
• Market expansion and new growth opportunities
• Organisational friction that is getting in the way
• Relevance erosion before it shows up in performance
• Building the leadership perspective and capability needed to respond

I work with the leaders making the decisions that determine what a brand and business becomes next.

Sometimes the challenge is growth. Sometimes it is a brand that needs to evolve, a market opportunity that has not yet been fully understood, or an organisation that has become difficult to move. Often, these are not separate problems. The brand, the business and the organisation are connected, and the decision about what happens next needs to take all three into account.

Whether the problem is The Corporate Algorithm that's filtering difference out of everything it produces in large scale organisations, a Challenger brand whose Cultural Authority is eroding as it scales via investment and/or acquisition, or a Cultural brand navigating what mainstream visibility does to the relationship the culture built, the upstream decision is ultimately the leader’s to make.

When the work needs deeper cultural intelligence, market understanding or live application, I bring in Platform13.

Platform13 is the company I founded in 2017 to help brands turn cultural intelligence into better decisions, stronger brand work and new opportunities in market.

WITH LEADERS

Brand & Business Architect

The Leadership Reset

Brand & Business Architect

The Leadership Reset

Brand & Business Architect

The Leadership Reset

WITH THE BRAND

Culture Advisor

Culture Advisor

AN OUTSIDER APPROACH WITH INSIDER KNOW-HOW

AN OUTSIDER APPROACH WITH INSIDER KNOW-HOW

I have spent three decades moving between the corporate, entrepreneurial and cultural worlds. I have built businesses, led teams inside global organisations and worked alongside the people responsible for changing them.

That matters because the work is rarely just about finding the right strategy. It is about understanding how a business actually works, where it gets stuck and what needs to change for the strategy to have a chance of succeeding.

After founding and leading Spin - one of the earliest integrated youth agencies for a decade - working with cultural brands like Carhartt WIP and VICE magazine. I was headhunted into senior leadership, global at adidas, then on the European Leadership Team at Diageo. In both, I was brought in to do something no one inside could: build cultural relevance and authority externally while launching newly formed departments and changing the internal systems needed to sustain it. That combination of understanding what brands, businesses and cultures require, and being able to reshape the organisation to deliver it, is what I've built my career around ever since.

I founded Platform13 in 2017 because, while in-house, I recognised that big brands needed a different kind of partner - one that understood culture as a business driver, not a marketing nice to have, and that had been inside these organisations and knew exactly where the system breaks down.

And I bring a perspective structurally different from the voices most senior leaders are already surrounded by. Born and raised in the Global South, I moved to London at 22, honing my experience from the ground up, and spent the next thirty years reading cultural shifts across markets and fandoms before they hit the mainstream. Growing up where you can't buy the solution teaches you to see what others don't, move where others wait, and build what doesn't exist. That's not a perspective, it's my operating system.

I have spent three decades moving between the corporate, entrepreneurial and cultural worlds. I have built businesses, led teams inside global organisations and worked alongside the people responsible for changing them.

That matters because the work is rarely just about finding the right strategy. It is about understanding how a business actually works, where it gets stuck and what needs to change for the strategy to have a chance of succeeding.

After founding and leading Spin - one of the earliest integrated youth agencies for a decade - working with cultural brands like Carhartt WIP and VICE magazine. I was headhunted into senior leadership, global at adidas, then on the European Leadership Team at Diageo. In both, I was brought in to do something no one inside could: build cultural relevance and authority externally while launching newly formed departments and changing the internal systems needed to sustain it. That combination of understanding what brands, businesses and cultures require, and being able to reshape the organisation to deliver it, is what I've built my career around ever since.

I founded Platform13 in 2017 because, while in-house, I recognised that big brands needed a different kind of partner - one that understood culture as a business driver, not a marketing nice to have, and that had been inside these organisations and knew exactly where the system breaks down.

And I bring a perspective structurally different from the voices most senior leaders are already surrounded by. Born and raised in the Global South, I moved to London at 22, honing my experience from the ground up, and spent the next thirty years reading cultural shifts across markets and fandoms before they hit the mainstream. Growing up where you can't buy the solution teaches you to see what others don't, move where others wait, and build what doesn't exist. That's not a perspective, it's my operating system.

I have never seen brand and business as separate disciplines.

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.

This has led to my opinion and commentary being sought out by global industry heavyweights 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 published Culture-Led Brands (Kogan Page), setting out the thinking behind my approach to cultural intelligence, brand relevance and business growth. The book is the cultural foundation of the work; my practice today takes that thinking further upstream, into the decisions that shape the brand and the business. Thirty years of experience, distilled into something practical for the people making the decisions that matter.

"The MUST READ of 2025 for all CEOs, CMOs and growth leaders. THE comprehensive guide to what, why and how to build Culture-Led Brands." Julie Bramham, Managing Director, Diageo Luxury Group

"This book holds the key to unlock how to credibly use culture to your financial benefit inside and outside the boardroom." Rachel Muscat, Co-Founder Humanrace with Pharrell, formerly adidas.

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Mind

Leila Fataar

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Leila Fataar

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Leila Fataar

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