Strategy
Research first. Opinions after.
Rumi K. is a brand strategist who starts from research and ends at decision. The work helps clients understand who they are before they try to say it — and gives the creative team a brief short enough to remember.
A background in social research, then a decade of brand and campaign strategy. Rumi still does the interviews personally, on the grounds that the useful sentence is never the one that makes it into the summary.
The Botanist — Campaign Strategy, 2024
Strategy for a skincare launch outspent ten to one. The finding that shaped everything: buyers didn't lack awareness, they lacked conviction — so the campaign sold the process, not the promise.
The Gannet — Brand Strategy, 2024
Positioning for a fourteen-room harbour hotel, written mostly as a list of refusals — not boutique, not retro, no spa language — until what remained was simple: a hotel that belongs to its harbour.
Independent Work — Published Report, 2024
A research report on what shoppers actually mean by the word "local", built on two hundred interviews. Commissioned by a food retailers' association and cited in the trade press since.
Independent Work — Conference Keynote, 2025
A keynote on interviewing, given to eight hundred people at a brand strategy conference. The first answer is what people think they should say; the work starts with the second.
Within the Collective
Rumi typically leads the first phase of an engagement — research, positioning and the brief — and stays on through the work to keep it honest. Rumi works with V. to turn findings into a single decision the whole team can design from, and with the collective's writers, who inherit the strategy and have to make it sound like something a person would say.
All project enquiries are handled by Creative Director V. through Influence Design Studio.
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