We are a collective of creatively strategic and strategically creative professionals partnering with executive search and recruitment firms, as well as other knowledge-intensive business service organizations, to develop impactful, transformative solutions that make the complex simple.
…about the true essence of an organization — the core values and culture that set every organization apart. Immersing ourselves to ensure we bring the firm’s unique and distinct brand voice and character to life in a way that is clear, credible, and relevant to every audience. This ensures we can together craft a brand that resonates and strengthens brand loyalty and drives engagement.
…expresses the distinctive soul of an organization. We bring thoughts and ideas to life though innovative and memorable experiences that engage audiences, inspire action, and drive preference.
We work closely with executive search and recruitment firms to define and implement business and brand strategies, recruit and elevate leadership talent, and prepare for future capital events — whether that means acquisition, merger, or other exit strategies.
Our team brings years of experience crafting world-class business, brand, and marketing strategies for a wide range of industries, including brands you know and interact with every day. Today, our focus is sharply on the executive search and recruitment sector where our team has decades of experience transforming businesses to accelerate growth, future-proof operations, and build long-term value. From clarity in strategic business intent to crafting powerful brands, shaping distinctive marketing campaigns, and supporting talent acquisition and development, succession planning, we think > we create > we transform.
We partner with firms to guide them through their strategy journey, which involves discovery, definition, and deployment.
A clear business strategy is essential for both short- and long-term success, guiding teams with focus and direction. According to Barclays, 47% of professional services business owners lack a formal growth plan, with 25% relying on informal plans and 23% having none.
The executive search and recruitment sector fares even worse, as growing firms often overlook strategic planning due to time constraints, especially during tough market conditions.
Our bespoke and hands-on approach ensures that a firm’s strategy is actionable and aligned with the unique goals and culture of that organization, setting us apart from typical consulting solutions.
Brand strategy and branding have been relatively recent topics in professional service firms, and within executive search, they have been even more recently embraced.
Yet every organization and company has a brand, whether they actively manage it or not.
When not actively defined and managed, we call these passive or accidental brands. These are brands shaped by external perceptions rather than internal intent and actions by the firm and its team. If a firm does not actively communicate it brand voice, outside audiences will form their own — sometimes inaccurate — impressions.
Don’t let the market define your unique proposition for you! Take control of the only part of your business you have complete and total control over — your firm’s brand!
Developing a resonant brand voice starts with introspection — defining personality — yes organizations have a personality just as people do —, promise, and key messages that align with both the firm’s ambitions and its culture. This voice should be carried consistently through every aspect of the brand from visuals elements and language to tone and behaviors.
A compelling brand voice is the heartbeat of any organization. From corporate identity, to design, to messages. Each shapes not only how an organization is perceived but also how it acts, communicates, grows and evolves.
// Corporate Identity Design
Your brand’s visual identity — logo, color palette, typography, and imagery — should encapsulate and support your unique story. More than aesthetics, these elements must reinforce the brand strategy and evoke and resonate key stakeholders — reinforcing clarity and trust in every interaction. Aligning design choices with your brand’s personality conveys who the organization is — authoritative and timeless, or innovative and approachable? These choices guide your creative direction.
// Messaging
Messaging is where your brand voice finds its true momentum. Crafting clear, authentic, and memorable messages that support the brand personality and reinforce your value proposition, vision, and what sets you apart. Ensure that every statement — whether a headline, social post, or internal communication — echoes your brand’s voice. Every word must foster connection, credibility, and recognition.
// Living the Brand
A brand is not simply communicated; it is lived. Everyone in your organization must embody the brand voice in daily actions and decision-making. Empowering your team with the brand and its core elements and what they mean daily is critical to any brand strategy initiative. When your firm’s brand is authentically lived from the inside-out, it resonates powerfully with all audiences — clients, potential clients, potential recruits, media, social audiences, etc.
A marketing strategy involves identifying the target market, understanding their preferences, and establishing effective methods to reach them.
Marketing implementation translates strategic planning into tactical activities through selected initiatives and communication channels that engage the intended audience.
Both strategy and implementation are integral to an organization’s success, providing a foundation for business and brand objectives to be realized and communicated effectively across all stakeholder groups.
Recruiting and nurturing high-impact team members elevates the capacity of executive search and recruitment firms to exceed client expectations, innovate in their field, sustain a distinctive brand identity, and achieve long-term growth objectives.
But recruiting high-impact team members is only the beginning. To maximize their potential and ensure long-term success, firms must invest in robust talent development initiatives. Our professionals have created platforms and initiatives for successful onboarding, team integration and coaching, continuous learning programs and other performance enhancing initiatives.
By combining strategic recruitment with focused talent and team development, firms lay the groundwork for lasting success in an ever-evolving industry.
Exit strategies are crucial for executive search and recruitment firms to ensure business continuity and maximize value. Founders typically choose between succession planning, mergers or acquisitions, and outright sales.
Succession planning prepares future leaders internally for smooth leadership transitions. Mergers and acquisitions offer growth, diversification, and market entry opportunities, but require thorough due diligence and clear communication to maintain the firm’s values.
Selling the firm involves assessing its worth, considering buyers ranging from large companies to internal partners, and presenting the strengths and prospects of the business. Successful sales protect the firm’s legacy and enable sustained growth under new ownership.
Ultimately, a well-designed exit strategy helps these firms adapt to industry changes, protect stakeholders, and secure their organizational legacy. Thinkativity has vast expertise in supporting firm owners and founders in determining the best strategy to exit.
Beaumont Group is a leadership and talent advisory firm based in Europe and with affiliations in Asia Pacific and the Americas. The firm’s leadership engaged with Thinkativity to evolve the brand strategy at a critical tipping point in the firm’s journey.
Beaumont Group’s culture is driven by a leadership team and partners who are a group of highly creative and dynamic individuals who solve client leadership needs with bold leadership solutions. Our process of taking a deep dive learning process and immersion into the firm, we developed a unique strategy focused on the firm’s personality that clearly differentiates the firm in a crowded marketplace. The brand platform is modular in its expression and execution as a BOLD, CREATIVE & DYNAMIC organization.
Resulting from the brand strategy we undertook a review of the firms corporate identity that resulted in an evolved logo to be more contemporary and visually interesting. At the same time, it represents the bold and creative aspect of the brand. We drove the creation of a new website encompassing the brand personality and partnered with leadership in implementing their social media and thought leadership marketing initiatives.
Founded in 1946 by Sydney Boyden, Boyden was the first firm to focus entirely on retained executive search. Boyden has over 70 offices in more than 40 countries, led by resident professionals adept at working in a global economy and remaining a world leader in the field.
Thinkativity leadership served as Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer for the firm charged by the Board of Directors with the mandate to revive a storied brand that had suffered from neglect. We undertook an in-depth review of the firm and its brand heritage. Engaging with partners across the globe, reviewing business goals and objectives, understanding the global market for talent acquisition, and crafting a unique proposition that embraced the local market nuances while establishing a global platform for driving preference with key target markets.
The culmination of this work was an articulation of the firm’s business strategy and an evolved brand strategy expressed as “The Right Leadership. Worldwise.” To fill the vacuum resulting from a lack of a coherent strategy and the distributed nature of the firm across the globe, essentially there existed thirty-plus unique brand expressions across the firm. We created a platform for unification of the brand globally that could easily be implemented across the firm — resulting in “speaking with one voice”. We simplified the visual style of the firm with a new logo that is a contemporary, elegant logotype, with visual punctuation of the ‘o’, representative of the ‘world of Boyden’ and their ongoing relationships with their clients and people. We then created a comprehensive identity system for all of their brand communications.
We implemented a global knowledge sharing and collaboration platform enabling partners, practices, and offices across the globe to access a marketing toolkits, customize communications that addressed the cultural nuances of each market, and share knowledge and successes effectively.
Our team was contacted by Metin Mitchell & Company initially to update their web presence. Critical to an effective web development initiative was to establish a brand platform that would drive an evolved identity for the firm.
Based in Dubai, the firm focuses on providing talent advisory solutions to Middle Eastern businesses and organizations. Indeed, the firm transforms its clients’ businesses by recruiting leaders and developing leadership and leadership teams professionally. We developed a brand strategy built upon the idea of helping build nations through the commercial environment that has been burgeoning for the last 30 years in the region. “We help build companies. We help build nations.”
The culmination of this work was a new website that meets the needs and expectations of the region the firm serves as “Leaders in executive search for the Middle East.”
We are partnered with leadership at McCormack + Kristel, a leading diversity-focused retained search firm supporting nonprofit and philanthropic organizations to build leadership teams that seek justice for the communities they serve.
Thinkativity works with the firm to develop strategies and tactics that will support growth and scale and further position it as the leading firm in its unique sector. We are currently developing an evolved brand and messaging strategy to clarify its valuable solutions in the market while also positioning for future growth and recruitment. As the firm continues to grow and expand, we are excited to continue supporting the team at McCormack + Kristel in these challenging times that require strong leadership solutions that deliver support, representation, and critical services to our communities under significant pressure from various sources.
Thinker: Creative Strategy
Gray has worked with private, public, government, and non-profit organizations to define, implement, and manage business, brand, and marketing strategies that achieve growth objectives while future-proofing for what lies ahead.
As a founder of two successful brand and marketing consultancies, Managing Director at two others, and most recently as Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer for a world-class professional services organization, Gray brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm to building and leading teams across distributed and diverse international organizations.
He is a cultural anthropologist by training, which gives Gray a unique ability to understand and integrate an organization’s cultural nuances into clear, credible, and relevant business, brand, and marketing strategies that drive preference.
Gray is passionate about sailing, playing ice hockey, and traveling. Gray resides in the US and Spain.
Thinker: Strategic Creative
Always thinking creatively, Gerald is our head of Strategic Creative. For over 25 years, he has led teams as a senior creative executive at a number of the world’s leading brand consultancies, such as Wolff Olins and Interbrand. He was also the worldwide creative director for Boyden World Corporation for fourteen years.
Gerald has an innate understanding of the importance of creating strategically-driven, relevant, and credible brand experiences that drive an organization’s ability to connect and engage with their audiences, ensuring that their brand identity becomes far more than just a cosmetic exercise, but one with depth and meaning reinforcing and supporting an organization’s strategic positioning and reason for being.
Thinker: Technology Strategist
Breck is a key member of the 17Oranges team and a technology leader with nearly 20 years of experience spearheading large-scale initiatives as a CIO within the executive search, interim management, and leadership consulting industries. He collaborates with teams across functions and borders, bringing strategic alignment, clarity on matters of scalability, and a focus on optimising the client’s technology ROI. As the leader of our US team, he is an invaluable source of technical expertise and strategic vision.
An extensive track record of digital project leadership evidences Breck’s comprehensive experience in digital transformation and fluency in emerging technologies. He has been integral to the success of cloud migration, ERP implementation, CRM enhancement, process automation, IT architecture planning, and many other transformative undertakings. He has also managed over 50 M&A integrations, aligning business processes, onboarding new teams, and integrating complex IT infrastructures.
His ability to ensure clients have the most effective tools to derive value from technology is rooted in a broad IT background. As a managing consultant and director, Breck honed his exceptional skills in digital strategy, digital product development, business application design, and other areas while developing digital solutions for Fortune 100 companies in various industries.
Thinker: Content Strategy
Isabella provides consulting services to support organizations in their marketing communication strategies. She focuses on messaging strategies that consistently engage key audiences, ensuring objectives and goals are met.
With experience writing for many different sectors, coupled with a background in consulting and account management, Isabella is able to translate and align brand strategy and client ideas and goals into captivating and easy to understand concepts, that benefit both the client and customer. Her expertise has been to support organizational and personal brands and implementing in today’s omnichannel environment.
She has lived and worked around the globe, which means she understands the nuances needed for successful marketing communication initiatives across different cultures as well as in multicultural organizations. She is a published writer in various magazines and online platforms.
Isabella is an avid collector of vintage clothing and antiques! In her spare time you can find her travelling the globe searching for forgotten treasures from the past.”
17Oranges is a technology consultancy specialising in the executive search, recruitment, and HR industry. With a broad range of services and a global presence, we bring vision, people, and technology into alignment.
Helping clients tap into the power of technology and embark on a transformation.
Berliner Creative draws on many disciplines, including brand strategy, brand identity creation, brand communication systems.
We craft tailored communications and design solutions that meet the specific business goals of our clients.
Ready to turbocharge your brand and make it work for your firm, whether to increase revenue, scale, or plan for an exit strategy?
Connect with us today. Our team is here to answer your questions, spark new ideas, and partner with you to chart your next steps. Be sure to check out the Thinkativity Brand Evaluator below — it’s the essential tool for uncovering your brand’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities to increase its impact.
If you would like to schedule a brief chat about how we can support you and your firm in achieving your goals and objectives, click on the Calendly link below or fill out the form below. We will respond within 24 hours.
Assessing Your Firm’s Website, Social Media Presence, and Competitive Set.
To help executive search and recruitment firms get an understanding of their current brand voice, we offer a comprehensive Brand Evaluator product — a tool designed to give you actionable insights into your brand’s impact across key digital touchpoints:
The brand evaluator accesses our team’s collective decades of experience crafting some of the world’s best-known brands and delivers a detailed report with actionable recommendations — all for a nominal initial investment.
Interested? If so, either fill out out the form below or schedule a Calendly meeting so we can begin thinking together about these mission-critical components.
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EU: Barcelona, Spain; Vienna, Austria
UK: London
AsiaPac: Sydney, Australia
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Founded in 1946 by Sydney Boyden, Boyden global executive search was the first firm to focus entirely on retained executive search. Boyden has over 70 offices in more than 40 countries, led by resident professionals adept at working in a global economy and remaining a world leader in the field.
Since 2006 we have been Boyden’s agency of record, handling all aspects of their brand communications. In 2016 we were commissioned to work with them to create a new identity to align with their new brand strategy and positioning; ‘The Right Leadership. Worldwise.’
The new logo is a contemporary, elegant logotype, with visual punctuation of the ‘o’, representative of the ‘world of Boyden’ and their ongoing relationships with their clients and people. We then created a comprehensive identity system for all of their brand communications.
Identity Launch Video
Brand Communications System
Always thinking creatively, Gerald is our head of Strategic Creative. For over 25 years, he has led teams as a senior creative executive at a number of the world’s leading brand consultancies, such as Wolff Olins and Interbrand. He was also the worldwide creative director for Boyden World Corporation for fourteen years.
Gerald has an innate understanding of the importance of creating strategically-driven, relevant, and credible brand experiences that drive an organization’s ability to connect and engage with their audiences, ensuring that their brand identity becomes far more than just a cosmetic exercise, but one with depth and meaning reinforcing and supporting an organization’s strategic positioning and reason for being.
For over 25 years, Gray has led teams that have created and transformed some of the world’s most iconic brands across both the B2B and B2C sectors. In recent years he has focused on the professional services space as it is unique and challenging. Business and brand strategies in the professional services sector are pretty complex compared to b2b or b2c strategy development and implementation. Balancing the power of the corporate brand with the critically important partner or individual brand presents unique challenges and opportunities.
For 14 years, he led the global business strategy, brand, and marketing initiatives at Boyden World Corporation as Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer, working across disciplines and reviving a storied brand in the executive search sector. He led the firm through a massive transformation from a forgotten search and leadership consulting firm to a powerhouse in the global executive search business. In addition, Gray was the driver in expanding revenue opportunities for local offices and focusing practice groups on developing deeper and richer client relationships.
Gray splits his time between Europe and North America, residing in the New York area and Barcelona, Spain.
Job Title
For over 25 years, Gray has been a leader or a member of teams that have either created or transformed some of the world’s most iconic brands across both the B2B and B2C sectors.In that time, his experience and interest have been focused on the evolution and future-proofing of professional service brands.
For 14 years, he led the global business strategy, brand, and marketing initiatives at Boyden World Corporation as Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer, working across disciplines and critically reviving a storied brand in the executive search sector whilst supporting nearly 800 Partners, Researchers, and other staff with team building, business process implementation, and growing local group and global revenues.
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