Mike Drysdale

Creative Strategist

Brand Intelligence Empowering Creativity

Enhance your insights

Creative strategy that builds lasting brands

A great strategy is an engine - a creative epicentre that spurs on stories and inspires ideas.

Great strategies help us define our uniqueness, providing clarity and certainty on who we seek to serve, how to authentically join the conversations they're participating in, and how to speak when we get there.

My strategies aim to be the shoulders that influential brands stand on, with insights and perspectives that power countless executions. They're built on ideas that have both life and legs - not just for one campaign; but the next one, and the next one, and the one after that.

The Process

From perfect strangers, to knowing you better than you know yourself

I'm here to investigate and articulate what makes you remarkable, not invent it. That means conducting deep research to understand how you've gotten to this point, and creating a strategy built from your company's DNA. The magic happens when we take those remarkable qualities and weave them into your customers worldview, influencing the story they tell themselves about your product, brand, business, industry etc.

Week One

Discovery Phase

Through discovery workshops and stakeholder interviews, I map out the playing field - understanding not just what you do, but the unspoken rules of engagement in your market, the psychological patterns of your audience, and the cultural dynamics that actually drive behavior.

Three Weeks

Developing your Strategy

More than a plan, this is your brand's evolution architecture. Mapping the journey from who your customers are today to who they're trying to become. With rich useable copy to help position your brand as their trusted guide in that transformation.

One Week

Presentation and Tweaks

Great strategy is like great game design - every element works together toward an inevitable, satisfying outcome. This is where that crescendo arrives and we unveil the story and essence that makes your brand impossible to ignore.

Philosophy

My strategic philosophy is built around understanding attention, identifying the systems that impact your brand, working with them effectively, and predicting which levers we can pull to increase the surface area of luck.

Cultural Fluency

Pattern recognition across cultural conversations - identifying which conversations your brand has permission to join, how to add genuine value rather than interrupt, and the difference between lasting cultural shifts and fleeting trends.

Brand Intelligence

Your brand needs to be mentally available when decisions are made - building consistent systems of recognition that compound over time, ensuring every touchpoint reinforces your strategic positioning rather than diluting it.

Anti-Ad Creative

Most advertising interrupts; great branded content gets invited in - that's why our strategies focus on developing an entertainment-first approach that make your audience choose to engage, creating brand experiences people actively seek out, rather than endure.