But for me, I felt there had to be more. I wanted to not just advise clients as an outsider but help them grow their businesses from the inside. I took a risk and jumped ship into the commercial world.
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There, I got a real taste of business and – after a few years of bluster and bravado – I decided to get serious about it. I undertook an MBA from a B-school that charged me a small fortune and cost me most of my hair. But I loved it; it opened up my world.
I leveraged it to get an interview at a global brand agency that changed my life forever. For the first time in my career, I found myself doing work that was both strategic and creative. It was profoundly interesting and deeply satisfying. I never looked back.
WHAT WE DO
We are an independent strategy consultancy specialising in Brand and Business Strategy.
We marry the best of business analytics and rigour with the best of brand insights and creativity.
After years of consulting experience across many sectors, we know this approach can unlock greater value than more traditional approaches.
This requires a different mindset and a new way of working than what is typically found at big strategy firms, or advertising and media agencies.
Click 'Our Story' link below to see our background and why we believe this is a better and more sustainable way to create value.
OUR DIFFERENCE
One of our clients told us we were “business strategy consultants with hipster haircuts and wardrobes.”
We love that image, but we don’t think that’s the whole story. Sure, we rarely wear ties and some of us sport beards, but the only thing ‘hipster’ about us is our penchant for great coffee.
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What gives us an edge? We’ve built our business on four core philosophies:
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We are independent
Our measure of success is not about the size of our office or our revenue line, but whether we have the freedom to put our clients’ best interest first and do what is right for them.
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We think strategically
We use strategy to navigate a world that is increasingly short-term focused and overloaded with information. Great strategy helps our clients know the right moves to make and when to make them.
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We integrate several disciplines
Our unique backgrounds in Brand, Business, Advertising and Media helps us navigate different specialisms and connect the dots to help our clients play to win.
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We create better together
For us, it's all about the work so we don't 'own' clients and we love working with other firms and agencies when prototyping, testing and refining solutions. The end outcome is much better and everyone shares in the win.
SERVICES
We don't believe in a unecessarily long menu of products and services. We prefer focusing on the few types of problems we know we can solve well.
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We specialise in getting to the heart of an organisation's problems involving their purpose, identity or value proposition. Solving these types of challenges for our clients is both transformative and incredibly powerful for their long-term success.
At ThinkAhead Consulting, we work with our clients to dig deeper, integrate different perspectives, and prototype solutions together.
Before each project, we make sure our client is clear about what they are getting and how we go about doing it.
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Everything we develop is bespoke to each client, so no two outputs are ever the same.
What do we stand for? What is our value proposition? How do we increase the value of our brand?
BRAND STRATEGY
What is our bigger ambition beyond making money? What is our role in society? How do we galvanise and transform the whole organisation?
ORGANISATIONAL PURPOSE
How do we create and extract value? What is our edge? How do we ensure our long-term viability?
BUSINESS STRATEGY
What is the value of working at our organisation, beyond a salary? How do we improve employee attraction and engagement?
EMPLOYEE VALUE PROPOSITION
We don't 'own' clients or insist on contractual retainers. Our worth is not determined by the number of clients we have, but by the value we've created for them on each project.
Here are some of our projects where we've worked either directly with clients or in collaboration with their incumbent firms and agencies.
Projects direct with clients:
Projects in collaboration with Vizeum:
Projects in collaboration with PUSH Collective:
Projects in collaboration with McCann:
Project in collaboration with Place Brand Agency:
