Esmirada
Est. 2018
Esmirada is the studio we wished existed when we were the strategy leads handing other people's work to other people's juniors.
Strategy, identity, and digital craft for ambitious companies preparing to be repositioned, renamed, or recategorised. Built in 8 to 14 weeks by the same partners who pitched you — and shipped as an asset system, not a deck.
Senior-only model · 8-week minimum · Fixed engagement
We left Pentagram, COLLINS, and Wolff Olins in the same autumn of 2017 with a shared frustration: the work we were proudest of happened in the first six weeks of an engagement, in the rooms with the senior people, and then quietly deteriorated the moment a junior inherited the file. The strategy was correct on page one and forgotten by page forty. The identity was a beautiful cover over an empty operating manual.
We started Esmirada to make that handoff impossible. There is no junior tier. There is no offshore production desk. There is no "the A team pitches, the B team builds." The eleven people on this website are the eleven people who will be on your weekly call, drawing your positioning matrix on a whiteboard, typesetting your wordmark, and writing the implementation playbook your in-house team will live inside for the next three years.
We chose to stay sub-$200M ARR on purpose. It keeps the work complicated in the right ways and small in the wrong ones. We are not building a network. We are not chasing Cannes Metal Lions for holding-company annual reports. We are a senior studio that does one engagement at a time, charges what the engagement costs, and answers the phone for the next twenty-two months.
— The three founding partners, Brooklyn, 2018
Every engagement is led end-to-end by one of the three founders below. We do not pitch and reassign. The person in the chemistry meeting is the person on the final review call.
Previously: Strategy Lead, Pentagram London (2012–2017).
Leads the studio's positioning practice and the 7-Lens Audit. Twenty-three repositioning engagements across B2B SaaS, climate infrastructure, and specialty finance. The calmest person on any kickoff call.
Previously: Creative Director, COLLINS New York (2010–2017).
Leads identity systems and the asset-handoff playbook. Designed the Northwind Capital identity (Core77, 2022) and the Helio Analytics rebrand (Brand New Best of 2023).
Previously: Strategy Director, Wolff Olins São Paulo (2011–2017).
Leads narrative architecture and the category-entry engagements. Speaks four languages, has worked on three continents, and writes the studio's annual State of Positioning report.
A staffing pyramid is how agencies amortise senior cost onto junior hours. We removed the bottom of the pyramid. Here is what changed for the engagement.
The eleven practitioners on the studio page are the eleven who touch your engagement. We do not run a training pipeline behind a senior front. The person typesetting your typographic system is the same person who wrote the brief for it.
Every Monday review is attended by the partner who led the pitch. The average engagement has 11 partner-led working sessions — not 2 kickoffs and a final readout. This is fixed in the statement of work, not aspirational.
No offshore production, no contractor round-robin, no template decks. Final artwork, motion, and implementation assets are produced by the same practitioners who designed the strategy, sitting at the same desks, in the same two studios.
Engagements are priced as a single fixed number, billed in three milestones. If the strategy memo does not materially shift how your leadership team sees the market within 14 days of delivery, we refund the first milestone in full.
Quality, longevity, and repeat work, expressed as data. Audited annually; published every January in the State of Positioning report.
The proprietary instrument behind every Esmirada strategy memo. Used in 380+ engagements since 2018. The seven lenses, in the order we run them.
What category does the market believe you sit in today, and what category does the work actually belong in? Most repositionings start by naming the wrong shelf.
A defensible position is defined against who you actually lose to on Tuesday morning — not the four logos your board keeps mentioning in the offsite.
We interview nine to fourteen buyers in your category, on the record. We do not commission a panel; we transcribe the calls ourselves.
Why do the people who do not buy you, not buy you? The refusals are where the strategy lives.
Lenses V — VII (The Narrative, The Asset, and The Operating Lens) run in the second half of the audit and ship as part of the 90-page strategy memo. The full instrument is described in the studio's annual State of Positioning report.