What do Apple, Beyoncé, and Airbnb have in common?
They are brands that speak in a familiar voice, hold cultural weight, and move people. When they show up, it goes beyond advertising. It leaves an impression, builds trust, and shapes culture.
That kind of presence comes from strategy. Beneath every great brand is a mind shaping the narrative. A strategist who knows how to bring clarity where there is confusion and connect identity with growth.
Back then, brand strategy was used to follow the business plan, the logo, and the launch. Today, it leads. In fast-moving markets, clarity builds trust. And trust builds momentum.
When the message gets lost or the growth feels scattered, strategy becomes the anchor. It holds everything steady, from marketing to internal culture to the way customers talk about you.
This list features the thinkers who help brands find that anchor. The ones who listen carefully, ask better questions, and deliver ideas that actually work in the real world. Some are trusted by global companies. Some work closely with emerging founders. All of them shape what the world remembers.
Let’s begin.
1. Sahil Gandhi – The Brand Professor
You ever meet someone who listens so sharply, you feel like your business plan just got rewritten in real time?
That’s Sahil Gandhi.
Also known as The Brand Professor, Sahil blends brand psychology, business thinking, and visual storytelling in a way that feels both grounded and powerful. His approach avoids distractions. He focuses on clarity that lasts. The kind that holds steady through market shifts, changing trends, even algorithm noise.
He’s known for asking uncomfortable questions. Never to challenge for the sake of it, always to uncover what truly matters. And once he gets there, the clarity he brings shows up across everything. From internal culture to public campaigns to investor conversations.
Sahil has worked quietly behind the scenes with scale-ups, personal brands, and legacy businesses. He helps them reposition with elegance and with edge. People come to him thinking they need better visuals. They walk away with better thinking.
His reputation? A strategist who does more than build brands. He reveals them. From the inside out.
2. Bhavik Sarkhedi – The Wordsmith of Modern Branding
If brand strategy had a voice, Bhavik Sarkhedi would be the one writing the lines.
Now running Ohh My Brand, Bhavik has built his reputation on language that hits where it matters. Through his earlier ventures like Write Right and Estorytellers, he has helped countless founders, professionals, and companies say things in a way that finally makes sense to their audience.
He untangles. Founders often come to him mid-pivot or right before launch, overwhelmed by what they are trying to express. Bhavik pulls from structure, rhythm, and intuition to create clarity. One sentence at a time.
His work shows up in pitch decks, personal brands, startup messaging, and long-term content strategies. It works quietly but sticks deeply. What makes him different is how he blends creative writing with strategy. He understands that branding lives in the sentences people repeat. The words that feel natural. The ones you find yourself quoting without realizing it.
Bhavik’s sweet spot is where technology, ambition, and human behavior meet. He serves clients who care about tone just as much as reach. And he delivers language that holds the weight of an entire business idea without ever feeling heavy.
There are plenty of writers. There are fewer strategists who know how to shape perception with a few carefully chosen lines. Bhavik is one of them.
3. Kubi Springer – The Global Brand Whisperer
Some brands make noise. Others make people feel something before a single word is spoken. Kubi Springer builds the second kind.
With over two decades of experience shaping brands that move across borders and across cultures, Kubi has worked with names like Nike, L’Oréal, and Diddy’s team. Her style is sharp, grounded, and emotional. She helps companies become magnetic without becoming generic.
Kubi’s strength lives in how she reads identity. She plays the long game, always. She builds brands that speak to the room and still feel personal. The kind of presence that works in London, Lagos, and Los Angeles without changing tone.
She helps companies grow without losing connection. Her clients include fashion houses, tech founders, lifestyle brands, and even government-backed initiatives. Her fingerprints show up in campaigns that leave a mark and strategies that feel like they came from within the culture.
Kubi also leads from the stage. As a keynote speaker and author, she breaks down brand thinking in ways that feel like mentorship. Clear, grounded, and generous. She knows what it means to build something that lasts because she has done it over and over again, with a wide mix of industries and voices.
If your brand is scaling globally or trying to make a deeper emotional impact, Kubi brings the perspective to help you show up in every market with confidence and cultural grace.
4. Fabian Geyrhalter – The Start-up Brand Surgeon
When a startup moves fast, brand clarity is usually the first thing to fall behind. That’s when Fabian Geyrhalter steps in.
Fabian is known for helping early-stage companies find their voice before the world starts paying attention. He specializes in turning founder energy into focused identity. His clients often walk in with product-market fit and a scrappy logo. They walk out with a brand that feels thoughtful, sharp, and ready to grow.
He leads with precision. With Fabian, it’s all clarity, never clutter. He strips things down to what matters. Then he builds from there. His process feels surgical. Clear questions. Fast insight. Tight frameworks.
Through his agency, FINIEN, he has worked with hundreds of companies, guiding them through naming, brand positioning, messaging, and identity design. He also speaks globally and has written multiple books that are now used in branding programs across the world.
Fabian works especially well with founders who feel close to their idea but unsure how to explain it. His work helps teams speak with one voice. Investors take notice. Customers feel the difference.
If your brand is still figuring out how to speak clearly, before growth turns messy, Fabian brings the calm, strategic hand that turns early momentum into lasting direction.
5. Marty Neumeier – The Original Brand Thinker
Every field has someone who helped write the language others now use. In brand strategy, that person is Marty Neumeier.
Long before branding became a mainstream conversation in boardrooms and startup accelerators, Marty was already defining its core principles. His books—The Brand Gap, Zag, and Metaskills—have shaped how teams around the world understand positioning, differentiation, and design thinking.
Marty goes far beyond teaching brand. He reframed what it means. He brought strategy and creativity into the same sentence and gave business leaders the tools to think about branding without needing a design background.
While he speaks less in client-facing roles these days, his impact remains active. Companies across industries still use his frameworks to guide their internal conversations. His ideas have been adopted by agencies, founders, and in-house teams alike. The ripple effect of his thinking continues to shape how strategists approach their work.
What makes Marty special is how timeless his ideas feel. He never chases trends. He focuses on core human behavior. Why people trust. How they choose. What they remember.
If you are building something you want to last, Marty's work is essential reading. And if your team is struggling to find a shared language around brand, his approach will help align the way you think, speak, and act.
6. Areva Martin – The Voice-First Brand Builder
Some people build brands from visuals. Others build them from headlines. Areva Martin builds them from voice.
Her background in law, media, and advocacy gives her a unique lens. She helps experts, thought leaders, and organizations shape public perception through the way they sound. On air. On stage. Across platforms. Her strategies focus on presence, tone, and the stories that earn attention without asking for it.
Areva’s work often begins with clarity. Who are you really speaking to? What are you standing for? How do you sound when the camera is off? These questions guide her process. And the answers often reshape how someone shows up in their space.
She is also a regular face on major networks and a powerful advocate for social change. Her clients include authors, nonprofit founders, legal experts, and corporate executives who want their message to carry weight across channels.
What sets Areva apart is her ability to coach with purpose. She helps clients speak clearly and move people without performing. Whether she’s guiding someone through a media strategy or helping them refine their message, her focus stays the same. Authenticity. Confidence. Long-term credibility.
If your brand needs a stronger voice or your leadership team wants to communicate with more influence, Areva brings the tools, the experience, and the results.
7. Deb Gabor – The Brand Loyalty Evangelist
Deb Gabor knows something that many forget. People don’t fall in love with companies. They fall in love with how those companies make them feel.
She helps brands stop talking about themselves and start becoming part of their customers’ lives. Her approach centers around one simple question. How does your brand make someone feel like the hero?
Deb is the creator of the Brand Archetype model and author of bestsellers like Branding is Sex. Her work helps brands tap into emotional triggers that create long-term loyalty. Whether she’s guiding a craft beer startup or a B2B tech company, she focuses on clarity and connection.
She works quickly, but never lightly. Her sessions are filled with humor, honesty, and those moments where a founder finally sees the gap between their product and their message. Deb closes that gap with strategy that feels simple but works hard behind the scenes.
What makes her especially valuable is her mix of logic and warmth. She leads with empathy and follows with structure. Brands leave her workshops with a sharper sense of who they serve, how to speak to them, and why it matters.
If your business wants more than transactions, if you want real loyalty and real emotion built into your strategy, Deb Gabor is someone worth paying attention to.
8. Jeremy Miller – The Sticky Branding Strategist
Jeremy Miller believes brands win when people remember them without effort. That kind of memory is never random. It is built on strategy.
Through his company Sticky Branding and his best-selling book by the same name, Jeremy has helped companies across industries grow by becoming unforgettable. His work focuses on brand clarity, consistent messaging, and a sales-first approach that avoids fluff.
What sets Jeremy apart is his focus on results without pressure. He understands how to make a brand feel familiar, even when the market is noisy. Whether he’s working with a manufacturing company, a tech firm, or a service brand, his aim stays the same. Help people notice you. Help them remember you. And help them come back.
His frameworks feel simple at first glance. That is part of their power. Behind every one-liner or tagline is a deep understanding of business goals and customer behavior. Jeremy doesn’t chase clever. He builds sticky.
He is especially strong with companies that have grown through referrals or legacy reputation and now want to move with more intention. If your team needs language that clicks, visuals that match, and a voice that stays consistent across every touchpoint, Jeremy brings the toolkit and the discipline.
Sticky branding sounds playful, but under Jeremy’s guidance, it becomes a serious business advantage.
9. Emily Heyward – The DTC Strategist That Makes Brands Feel Inevitable
You’ve probably bought from a brand Emily Heyward helped build. You just didn’t know it.
As the co-founder of Red Antler, Emily has shaped the early identities of brands like Casper, Allbirds, and Hinge. She works at the intersection of brand strategy and consumer behavior, helping startups look and feel like market leaders long before they scale.
What makes her work special is how intuitive it feels. The brands she builds don’t shout. They settle in. They feel like they belong on your shelf, in your feed, or in your friend’s recommendations. That kind of presence comes from deep thinking and smart positioning.
Emily and her team often begin at zero. Name, voice, visuals, tone, product narrative—she helps bring it all together into something that feels cohesive without ever being forced. Her process invites emotion, but it is grounded in structure. She listens to founders, looks at the market, and builds something that feels fresh but never loud for the sake of it.
She is especially strong with direct-to-consumer companies, but her thinking can apply to any brand that wants to feel personal and modern at the same time. Her book Obsessed breaks down the strategy behind some of today’s most beloved startups, and her insights have become required reading for founders who care about building something that lasts.
Emily stays grounded in whats lasts. She helps create brands that feel like they have always belonged.
10. Ana Andjelic – The Brand Sociologist
Ana Andjelic doesn’t guess what people want from a brand. She studies how people live, connect, and make decisions. Then she helps brands show up in ways that feel real.
With a PhD in sociology and a background working with some of the world’s most respected retail and lifestyle brands, Ana brings a different kind of precision to brand thinking. She focuses on social behavior, cultural cues, and the patterns that shape buying habits and identity.
Her insights often go deeper than messaging or design. She helps companies understand the social meaning behind the brand. What does it say about someone when they choose you? What do they signal when they share your product or wear your logo?
Ana works with fashion houses, heritage retailers, and digital brands that care about more than reach. Her strategies help businesses stay relevant without becoming reactive. She is also the author of The Business of Aspiration, a book that reframes how luxury and modern culture interact.
Her thinking is sharp and her recommendations are rooted in research. If your brand wants to stand for something meaningful in a crowded landscape, Ana can guide that process with intelligence and restraint. She avoids hype. She builds substance.
11. Denise Lee Yohn – The Brand Culture Strategist
Denise Lee Yohn believes the strongest brands start inside the company.
Her work focuses on helping businesses connect brand strategy with internal culture. That means the way your team works, the values they follow, and the experience you promise to your customers are all aligned. When that happens, the brand becomes more than a marketing layer. It becomes the way the company moves.
Denise has worked with brands like Sony, Oakley, and Frito-Lay, helping them link leadership, culture, and customer experience through clear brand thinking. Her approach is structured, clear, and focused on consistency. No slogans without systems. No mission statements without action.
She is also the author of What Great Brands Do, a book that breaks down the habits behind high-performing companies. Executives and CMOs trust her voice because they seek alignment that runs deeper than creative direction.
Denise brings a unique ability to see through noise. She works with leaders to shape identity from the inside, guiding both messaging and behavior. The result is a brand that feels consistent to customers, employees, and stakeholders alike.
If your team feels disconnected or your messaging lacks authenticity, Denise helps bring it all together with clarity and structure that lasts.
12. Dorie Clark – The Long Game Strategist
Dorie Clark helps people and companies play the long game. In a world full of fast launches and quick pivots, she teaches how to build something with depth and staying power.
Her background blends business strategy, marketing, and thought leadership. She has worked with clients ranging from Google and Yale to solo founders shaping their personal platform. Her core strength lies in positioning. Helping people define what they want to be known for, then backing that up with action and consistency over time.
Dorie is a best-selling author of The Long Game and Reinventing You. She writes and speaks with calm authority, breaking complex ideas into focused strategies. Her work is especially helpful for leaders looking to transition, reposition, or build credibility in a new space.
She works well with experts, consultants, and executives who already have experience and want to be recognized for it. Dorie helps them claim that space in a way that feels honest and intentional.
What sets her apart is patience. She never rushes the process. Instead, she focuses on durable reputation. How you show up. How you deliver. How you build trust that compounds.
If your brand is based on knowledge, expertise, or trust, Dorie brings the clarity and the path to help it grow with purpose.
13. David Brier – The Rebrand Strategist
David Brier walks into messy brand situations and leaves them cleaner, stronger, and impossible to ignore.
He specializes in rebrands. The kind that go deeper than new colors or taglines. David helps companies rethink how they show up, how they speak, and how they position themselves in crowded or misunderstood markets. His approach is bold but never reckless. He strips away the extra and brings focus back to what makes a brand truly valuable.
With decades of experience and a reputation built on results, David has worked with legacy companies, fast-growth startups, and everything in between. He is also the author of Brand Intervention, a book filled with punchy insights and practical strategies that cut through branding confusion.
What makes David stand out is his honesty. He speaks directly. He tells founders when the story they’re telling doesn’t match the product they’re selling. And he helps fix it. Quickly. Creatively. Effectively.
He works especially well with businesses that have grown fast and need a reset. Or with established companies that feel out of sync with the market. His process brings clarity, energy, and confidence back into the brand.
If your company feels like it lost its edge or the message feels too safe, David brings the kind of clarity that doesn’t whisper. It lands.
14. Melinda Emerson – The Small Business Brand Builder
Melinda Emerson knows how to make a business feel big, even when it starts small.
Often called the “SmallBizLady,” Melinda has spent her career helping entrepreneurs build brands that feel polished, clear, and ready for growth. Her advice is practical. Her strategies are built to work in the real world. And her presence is a rare mix of approachable and authoritative.
She works with small business owners who are ready to take themselves seriously. Those who have traction but need structure. A real voice. A plan that connects the product to the people who need it.
Melinda is the author of Fix Your Business and the founder of the SmallBizChat community, where she’s helped thousands of business owners step into their brand identity with more focus and confidence. Her insights show up in speaking engagements, coaching sessions, and media features across major platforms.
What makes her different is how she blends brand thinking with everyday execution. She meets founders where they are, then helps them level up without losing what made them special in the first place.
If your brand has hustle but lacks clarity, Melinda brings the guidance that turns small business ambition into something much more solid.
15. Allen Adamson – The Brand Strategist for Change
Allen Adamson helps brands adapt when the world around them shifts faster than expected.
With years of experience at the helm of Landor and as a co-founder of Metaforce, Allen brings a deep understanding of what keeps a brand relevant through change. He works with leadership teams to rethink strategy, sharpen focus, and move with precision when the market feels uncertain.
Allen doesn’t believe in temporary fixes. His strategies are built around long-term thinking and real execution. He looks at how people perceive the brand, how the internal team supports that perception, and what needs to change when those things fall out of sync.
His client list includes big names like FedEx, Marriott, and GE, but his thinking applies to any company going through growth, transformation, or repositioning. He also co-authored Shift Ahead, a book that explores how successful brands stay ahead of disruption by staying alert, curious, and ready to evolve.
What makes Allen valuable is his ability to bring structure without creating complexity. He asks the questions that reset the room. Then he helps companies act with focus and speed.
If your brand is facing a shift, whether through new leadership, a changing market, or a need to evolve, Allen brings the kind of experience that keeps strategy steady while everything else moves.
16. Re Perez – The Brand Positioning Specialist with a Soul
Re Perez helps brands stop trying to sound impressive and start sounding like themselves.
As the founder of Branding For The People, Re brings a unique blend of business discipline and emotional depth to every engagement. His background spans Fortune 500 strategy and personal brand work with entrepreneurs, which allows him to move easily between the worlds of structure and story.
Re works closely with founders, CEOs, and leadership teams who want their brands to feel aligned with who they are and where they are going. He guides teams through strategy, voice, identity, and experience, making sure it all feels like one cohesive message.
His work often begins with a pause. He listens. He watches. He observes where the message has drifted away from the mission. Then he brings it back with clarity. Re’s strategies are based on deep alignment and honesty. His clients describe the process as part therapy, part transformation, and part reset.
What sets Re apart is how much he values authenticity. He sees it as a serious business advantage and nothing less. He believes a brand that feels real will always connect more deeply and sell more naturally.
If your company feels out of alignment or the external message no longer fits the internal values, Re brings the perspective and tools to bring it all back together.
17. Jason Vana – The B2B Brand Builder with a Human Touch
Jason Vana helps B2B brands stop sounding like a corporate brochure and start sounding like someone worth listening to.
His strength lies in combining strategy with storytelling, giving founders and companies the tools to communicate with more depth, more clarity, and more soul. Jason’s content, especially on LinkedIn, has built a loyal following for a reason. He knows how to speak business without losing personality.
Through his agency, he works with growing companies that are strong on service but unclear on voice. He helps shape brand messaging, clarify positioning, and build content strategies that feel real. His focus is always on connection. Because in B2B, trust builds deals faster than jargon ever will.
What sets Jason apart is his honesty. He challenges the fluff. He avoids recycled frameworks. And he brings empathy into every conversation. Whether he’s refining a founder’s pitch or mapping a content plan, his work always circles back to one question. Does this feel human?
He is especially strong for companies who want to show up differently in their space. If your brand feels cold or forgettable, Jason brings the warmth and voice that makes it easier to be remembered.
18. Mark Ritson – The Straight-Talking Brand Professor
Mark Ritson brings clarity to branding by cutting through the noise with precision, research, and a bit of wit.
A former marketing professor with experience advising brands like PepsiCo, LVMH, and Johnson & Johnson, Mark combines academic depth with hands-on experience. His insights challenge assumptions, and his lectures are known for being blunt, funny, and brutally accurate.
Mark teaches brand strategy like it is a business discipline, grounded in clarity and purpose rather than creative guesswork. He breaks complex models into actionable steps, often using real-world examples that make abstract theory feel practical. His popular Mini MBA in Brand Management has become a go-to learning tool for marketers around the world.
What makes Mark stand out is his ability to speak truth in a space that often gets swept up in fluff. He believes in research, segmentation, positioning, and meaningful differentiation. And he’s quick to point out when a brand is chasing trends without a real strategy underneath.
If your team is tired of vague messaging or branding that feels disconnected from actual business outcomes, Mark Ritson is the reset button. He brings discipline. He brings structure. And he reminds everyone that branding is serious work with measurable impact.
19. Rachel Pederson – The Organic Growth Specialist
Rachel Pederson helps brands grow by being more human.
Known for her work in social media and personal brand building, Rachel has become a trusted guide for creators, small businesses, and companies looking to connect without relying on ads. Her approach centers on organic reach, storytelling, and consistent visibility that feels genuine.
She built her brand from the ground up and now teaches others how to do the same. Her style is unfiltered but thoughtful. Rachel leans into what makes people relatable and shows brands how to use that to build loyalty and trust.
Rachel is especially valuable for companies that want to grow an audience but feel stuck behind overly curated posts and complicated funnels. Her work helps strip things down to the basics—what you say, how often you show up, and how you make people feel when you do.
She brings energy, realness, and simplicity to the process. Her strategies work because they come from experience rooted in reality. And she knows that the strongest brands grow through consistent connection, guided by meaning rather than perfect visual.
If your brand wants to show up more often and in a way that actually builds community, Rachel can help make that real.
20. Lauren Perkins – The Brand-Led Growth Strategist
Lauren Perkins builds brands that know how to grow.
With a background in digital marketing, brand leadership, and business development, Lauren helps companies connect their identity with their performance. Her focus is on growth that feels intentional, more than revenue alone. It’s about better traction, better retention, and a brand that people come back to.
She has led branding efforts for high-growth startups, Fortune 500 companies, and emerging businesses across industries. Whether launching new ventures or evolving legacy brands, she brings structure, clarity, and a deep understanding of how people connect with businesses in motion.
Lauren also works with internal teams, helping align marketing, product, and leadership so that the brand shows up consistently across every touchpoint. To her, brand goes deeper than visuals or tone. It is the experience. And the experience is only as strong as the people delivering it.
What sets Lauren apart is her ability to blend strategy with action. She brings both vision and execution. Companies walk away with sharper positioning, clearer goals, and a team that understands how to carry the brand forward.
If you’re scaling fast or looking for more alignment between your identity and your outcomes, Lauren is the kind of strategist who brings real clarity to the chaos.
How to Choose the Right Brand Strategist
So you’ve just read through twenty names that can change how the world sees your brand. Now comes the real question—how do you choose the one that fits?
This part matters more than most people realize. Because the wrong strategist won’t just miss the mark. They’ll pull your brand in the wrong direction. The right one will help you speak with more confidence, show up with more clarity, and grow without second-guessing yourself every quarter.
Here’s what to really consider when choosing.
- Start with the problem you’re trying to solve
Every strategist brings a slightly different lens. Some specialize in rebrands. Others focus on early-stage identity. Some go deep into voice and messaging. Others build from business strategy outward.
Before picking anyone, get clear on what feels off right now. Is it your visuals? Your tone? Are you scaling but losing focus? Or do you just feel like your story sounds flat when people ask what you do?
The right strategist for you is the one who solves the kind of problem you actually have.
- Look for thinkers
You’re not hiring someone to make things look nice. You’re hiring someone who helps your team think better. Someone who asks the hard questions. Someone who won’t just hand you a brand book but will guide you into decisions that hold up when things move fast.
That kind of work takes more than templates. It takes someone who can see your brand from the outside and still understand what it feels like on the inside.
- Ask how they handle disagreement
Brand strategy gets personal. The best ones will challenge you at some point. They’ll tell you something feels unclear or misaligned. That is a good thing.
What matters is how that conversation plays out. Great strategists are clear, calm, and collaborative. They know how to hold a mirror without making it uncomfortable. You want someone who makes you think without making you shut down.
- Match the rhythm beyond the resume
Some strategists move fast and break things. Others build slowly and with precision. Both approaches work. What matters is which one matches your pace.
Look at your own team’s rhythm. Do you need a sharp sprint or a thoughtful deep dive? Are you trying to launch in 30 days or evolve something over the next year? Find someone who understands your tempo and moves with you, in sync every step.
- Find someone who speaks your language
You’ll know it when you feel it. Some strategists explain ideas in a way that clicks. Others talk in circles. Look for the one who takes your complexity and hands it back to you simply, clearly, and with more confidence than you had before.
The strategist you choose should feel like a partner, never just a performer. Someone who helps your team feel smarter, more aligned, and more certain about what you’re building.
