Setting the right course for brand

Paul Croxton, executive creative director at Ascend Studio, uses his agency’s work with Crosstide as an example of strategy truly proving its value.

Branding is often treated like a final layer. Something applied once the real work is done. A way to sharpen perception or bring everything together.

In reality, it’s closer to navigation.

A business can have strong fundamentals – a solid product, capable people and real demand – but without a clear sense of direction, it can still drift. Not always dramatically, but enough to lose impact. Enough to create doubt.

That’s usually where the issue lies. Not in what a business does, but in how clearly it understands where it’s heading and how that direction is communicated.

The instinct is often to move quickly. Rename. Redesign. Refresh. But without first establishing a clear course, those decisions lack cohesion. They become reactive, driven by preference rather than purpose.

The more effective approach is slower at the outset, but far more decisive overall. It’s collaborative. It involves getting close to the business, understanding the conditions it’s operating in, and agreeing on the direction it needs to take.

In our work with Crosstide, a company delivering data and AI transformation, this became clear early on. The capability was there: deep technical expertise and a strong delivery record. But the brand didn’t reflect it. It sat below the level of the business itself.

Through close collaboration with the leadership team, a clearer course began to emerge. Not something imposed, but something already present: engineering excellence, speed of transformation, and a genuinely supportive way of working. Once surfaced and aligned around, these became the coordinates for everything that followed.

Just as important was understanding the environment the brand needed to move through. In sectors like financial services, where Crosstide was increasingly focused, trust is hard won. Buyers are cautious. Decisions are measured. The brand needed to signal control and credibility, without losing the sense of movement that defines a modern technology business.

That tension proved useful. It gave the work direction.

From there, the idea of “The Energy of Change” emerged. Not as a slogan, but as a way of articulating the role Crosstide plays: guiding organisations forward, navigating complexity and connecting technology, people and outcomes. Once that was clear, the creative work followed with greater intent.

This is where strategy proves its value. Not as a document, but as a way of setting direction and making decisions easier along the way.

It’s also where the current conversation around AI often misses the point. AI can generate routes quickly. It can map options, test variations and accelerate exploration. But it doesn’t choose the destination.

It doesn’t read between the lines of a brief, or understand the nuance of internal dynamics and decision-making. It isn’t part of the quiet, offhand conversations, the quick chat on the stairs after a presentation – often where real opinions, preferences and expectations tend to surface. It doesn’t anticipate risk. And it doesn’t know when a course needs correcting.

That still requires judgement.

Human judgement brings the ability to read context, to connect ideas laterally and to recognise when something feels right – or when it doesn’t. In that sense, strategy becomes even more important. It provides the bearings that allow tools like AI to be genuinely useful, rather than just prolific.

Once the course is set, design has a different role to play. It’s not about creating something that looks impressive in isolation, but something that works in practice. Across teams, across channels, under pressure.

A system that people can actually use.

A brand shouldn’t be judged at the point of launch. It’s judged by how well it holds its course over time.