We make brands
easier to buy.
The brief is simple enough.
The work is figuring out what’s getting in the way.
Sometimes your brand is easy to admire but hard to choose.
Sometimes your evidence is telling the truth about the wrong thing.
Sometimes your message is working, but your buying process isn’t.
Sometimes the issue is not what people think of your brand, but when they think of it at all.
Sometimes your organization wants new insight, when the real work is acting on what you already know.
Sometimes the answer has been in your conversations for months, but isn’t yet recognized as the thing that matters.
What we do about that.
We work with companies who’ve found the familiar explanations have stopped being useful.
We help them widen the frame, test the implications, and choose a path that makes the brand easier to buy.
That usually means looking beyond the obvious brief: at buyers, timing, access, evidence, internal assumptions, awkward constraints, and whatever else turns out to matter.
And “Planner At Large”?
Planning is the work of making possibility practical.
At Large is a distinct way of working: following the problem before the category, and looking wherever the useful clue might be found.
What our work can look like.
When fame was attracting the wrong users.
A wellness technology company used smartphone light stimulation to create effects somewhere between meditation and a psychedelic experience. The word “psychedelic” was making the product famous — but also attracting novelty-seekers who didn’t subscribe, progress, or support the business model. The work was to help the founders stop retreating from the word and reclaim its literal (and most benefit-containing) meaning: mind-revealing.
When the market was bigger than the language.
A digital privacy company was trying to build developer adoption and technical credibility. But a workshop prompt surfaced a larger conviction: owning yourself means owning your own story — and online, that story is data. The reframing shifted the opportunity from developer infrastructure to a broader fight for users to reclaim identity, agency, and value from Big Tech. In other words, fixing the web’s biggest bug.
When the hidden advantage was already inside the business.
A global automaker’s certified pre-owned offer lacked distinctiveness: standard features, weak dealer enthusiasm, little reason for buyers to care. But the company was also the world’s largest buyer of used cars. Treated strategically, that fact changed the proposition from “another used-car program” to an empathy-based way for buyers to safely navigate a market notorious for hidden risk.
We’ve worked with automakers, airlines, orchestras, payment networks, beverage brands, education platforms, retailers, healthcare brands, fintechs, wellness technologies, destination developments, public service organizations, other consultancies, and startups still figuring out what they might become.
Not because the categories are alike, but because difficult commercial questions often rhyme.
What our work can feel like.
“Best workshop we’ve ever had. I wish my leadership team had been having this kind of conversation all along.”
- CEO, technology company
“A really resilient process that leads to strong brand propositions. They work hard to get it right.”
- Marketing Director, education tech company
“Equally skilled at defining the credible stretch for a brand and turning it into a story that excites and motivates the brand’s owners.”
- Managing Director, professional services company
The ideas behind our work.
The ideas behind the work live at Swimming Downstream.
Planner At Large is how they get applied commercially.