Three months after joining Of Note, our Brand Strategist, Lani Weston, has already become a valued part of our process and the way we work with clients. Here, Lani shares her thoughts on the role brand strategy plays in shaping strong brands and businesses, and why the most valuable strategy is both practically useful and deeply human.
Brand strategy can sometimes be misunderstood as the abstract part of the process – the thinking layer where the value feels harder to quantify. In reality, its impact is often felt across every part of a business.
To me, strategy is the work of helping a business understand itself more clearly – what is driving it, what makes it distinct, who it needs to connect with and where the opportunity lies. Done well, it gives a business something solid to return to when making decisions, while laying the foundations for a brand with real depth, character and emotional resonance. In that sense, strategy is both highly commercial and deeply emotional: it helps create clarity, alignment and consistency, while also laying the groundwork for a rich brand world that earns trust, loyalty and genuine affection over time.
I’ve long been influenced by the thinking behind Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles, and later by Will Guidara’s Unreasonable Hospitality. Both speak to the idea that loyalty is built over time – earned through a thousand small moments of clarity, care, delight and surprise. That has stayed with me because it captures something essential about brand building: people don’t connect through one grand gesture, but through a consistent experience of being understood, considered and delighted.
A shared appreciation for thoughtful brand development is a big part of what drew me to Of Note. I first partnered with the team over six years ago as a client, when I was working at Curtin University. What stayed with me was not only the quality of the work, but the quality of the relationship. There was a real respect for the client and a genuine willingness to listen and understand challenges without ego or predetermined outcomes. That way of working felt rare, and it aligned closely with my approach.
When I joined Of Note three months ago, I did so with an intent to bring even greater depth to a creative process that was already strong, and to help clients access strategy in a way that feels clear, grounded and genuinely valuable.
As a studio, we make the commitment to listen more than we speak, and that could not be more true for how I approach strategy work. Our clients know their business better than anyone. They know what matters to them, what they are trying to build, what feels right and what does not. Often, they simply have not had the time, structure or language to fully articulate those instincts. My role is to help draw that out through research, conversation and careful thinking, then shape it into something useful.
My background spans more than 15 years across local and global brands, in both consulting and in-house roles, and across both design and integrated brand, marketing and communications strategy. That breadth of experience has shaped the way I think about the value of strategy. I don’t see it as something that only exists to inform design. I see it as something a business should be able to return to when it is making decisions more broadly – across communications, customer experience, partnerships, culture, growth and the many moments that shape how a brand is experienced.
Over the past three months, I’ve already had the privilege of working with a number of our clients across new business identities, rebrands and project-specific strategy work, and one of the most rewarding parts has been seeing how naturally strategy and creative come together within the studio. There is a real openness in the process, a lot of trust, and a shared desire to create work that feels beautiful and deeply considered, while also genuinely reflecting the client’s aims, instincts and ambitions.
Great brands are shaped over years. The role of strategy is to create the foundations that make that kind of impact and connection possible – foundations that are strong enough to guide the business practically, while also creating the conditions for something memorable, magnetic and lasting. I feel genuinely honoured by the trust clients have already placed in us, and excited for what is still to come.
Read more about how we approach strategy below.
