My creative journey – from ikigai to Brandad

Bill Wallsgrove explains his fascination and passion for a precise set of carefully honed skills that benefit and even ‘make’ brands.

I am a brand strategy, design and communications consultant with over 30 years’ experience and I’m still fascinated by brands and branding. I love this business and know that I have found my raison d’être or ikigai* – I will explain this later.

Although brands are a driving force of the economy people still ask me the question – “what is it?” – when simply confusing a brand with just a logo or product. It is so much more complex than that. It is the bridge between business strategy and creative delivery – the unique story and bespoke visual language for creating success.

Before a business goes to market it has to apply the first building blocks of branding.

Why do you exist? What do you do? How do you do it? Who is it for? Who are the competitors? What makes you different? These answers define the promise, purpose, personality, values and delivery. This brand strategy creates the brief for everything from the brand name to the brand identity and the means of communication.

Branding is really about building a reputation. It is not about what you say it is what people say about you. “A brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room” as Jeff Bezos smartly observed.

I have worked with hundreds of companies – large, medium and small – in a wide variety of categories across products and services, including consumer brands, retailers, professions, charities, museums, art galleries and personal brands.

This has been a fascinating journey that has taken me around the world working for Nestle in Mexico, Benetton in Italy, Diageo in Thailand, launching B&Q in China and Korea, creating and launching a vodka in Russia – even branding an electronics company in Kazakhstan – and so much more

In a recent conversation with Sam Thomas at BBBC he asked me how I got here. It’s a great question and I guess the simple answer is the combination of nature + nurture + serendipity.

In reality making your own luck with the right people through positive networking.

This is how it all started. I loved drawing as a kid and would studiously copy images out of books and paint from life. My greatest fascination was comics and particularly American DC comic books this led to a fascination for the work of the Pop Artists Andy Warhol and Peter Blake who incorporate iconic images and household brands into their compositions and screen prints. This appreciation led me to art school where I studied graphic design.

I left after 3 years of inspirational study with some great mentors and visiting lecturers including Saul Bass and Milton Glaser – the American design pioneers. I first got a job in advertising but quickly realised that it wasn’t for me. I wanted to work at the point of origin of brand creation not simply promoting brands created by others.

A friend recommended a new brand design company and I was delighted to get a job working for Andrew McCall at SMS. He is more famous as Davina’s father – she was the precocious schoolgirl with oodles of character running around the studio at the end of the day. My first project for the agency was to help on the creation of a brand for a range of savoury snacks inspired by global destinations. The senior team struck on a genius idea inspired by Jules Verne’s adventurous traveller around the world. Thus, Phileas Fogg was re-born and re-imagined as the discoverer of these exotic and delicious premium snacking treats.

The blue touchpaper was lit – the cat was out of the bag – Pandoras box was open – and the metaphors were mixed. I just loved the combination of business vision and ambition driving creative strategy and execution. The magic of imaginative design, storytelling and illustration skills combined with packaging innovation for a smart market launch. This was my happy place to be.

I worked in London for a few decades first as a creative director at Coley Porter Bell (McCoys & Hob Nobs) which was acquired by WPP and then as a director at Planet Design which we sold to Interpublic where it became a founding creative team in Futurebrand. I realised that big agency life was not for me and that I could achieve the same creative results with a hub and spoke network of creative talent using emerging digital technologies.

I formed a boutique agency Big Idea (B&Q) and later Brand Voice. I was an early adopter of the internet (2.0) and saw social platforms as a new way to create content and drive brands.

I was lucky to meet an emerging young and hugely talented team at Studio Blup and became their mentor and non-exec. I was hugely excited by their unique vision and creative flair – I still am. They joined the Lab Group in 2020 where they continue to thrive with insight, imagination and passion.

I love London and Soho creative life (and still do occasionally) but decided I wanted a refreshing change. I moved to Brighton, well Hove actually, to be closer to the sea and the beautiful countryside. Just the perfect place to walk my wonderful dog and find relaxation and wellbeing on the beach.

Once here I discovered a hotbed of creative and digital talent and a real spirit of collaboration the perfect patch to become an independent and media neutral consultant. I now combine big agency vision with the personal touch of an experienced and trusted advisor to help companies align their core purpose and positioning with their brand identity and communications at every stage of their development. I see branding as a critical component capable of transforming businesses and the way people experience and interact with them.

I integrate business and brand strategy, creativity and technology to help businesses define their brand purpose, express their vision and voice to fulfil their promise.

My role is to help clients reimagine, recreate and realise the best brand approach for their businesses. Brands are about ideas, about the interactions between ambition, purpose, culture, spirit and design. I’ve seen how brands have changed and evolved over the years, becoming more sophisticated and more purposeful. They are now less about image and more about the whole customer experience.

I now specialise in delivering brand workshops with selected partners. These are media neutral because until I get under the bonnet I don’t know where the creative journey leads and what talent to introduce from my network where required. These sessions are strategic health checks and creative MOTs for refreshing existing brands or the launchpads for creating and building new brands. I combine a number of bespoke questions and exercises with key stakeholders to define the forward-thinking creative and communication briefs.

One of my favourite exercises is mapping out a brand Ikigai* – your reason for getting up in the morning. What are you good at? What do you love doing? What does the world need? How can you be rewarded for it? The brand as a satisfied personality.

So, what is my personal brand? I have recently been working with the smart young entrepreneurs at Plus X, the innovation workspace, to help them define and launch their own brands. A couple of my talented and satisfied customers there named this grey-haired creative strategy and mentoring service – BRANDAD – my reputation outside the room.

I was not insulted, very much, but laughed and immediately registered the URL of course.

My fascinating journey continues under a new moniker. My elevator pitch? Decades of brand creation experience.

Young at heart – now with added AI (Artificial Intelligence).

07831 659487

bill.wallsgrove@gmail.com