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\n Transcript (Auto-Generated) \n

Hello, and welcome to JUST Branding. Today, we\u2019re thrilled to have Richie Meldrum on the show. Richie is a brand strategist, consultant and educator with extensive experience in bridging the worlds of strategy and design.

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From his beginnings in creative agencies as a copywriter to his current role, Richie\u2019s work has consistently emphasized how thoughtful strategy and inspired design can combine to create cohesive, impactful brands. I\u2019ve personally followed Richie for a number of years. I\u2019ve recently met him up in Brisbane and Australia at the Design Conference.

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And subsequently, I invited him to be a speaker at the first Brand Build Summit held back in August. And I\u2019ve also just finished his BEAR Brand Strat program, which is a program that teaches all about brand strategy. It\u2019s a live learning experience.

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And it\u2019s all about Richie\u2019s approach to brand strategy. The point here is that Richie\u2019s awesome and that you\u2019re in an info treat for this episode.

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So welcome, welcome Richie.

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Thanks guys. Thanks. Nice to be here.

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Long time listener, first time caller.

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Good to have you on Richie.

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Cool man. Well, let\u2019s start from the beginning. Well, not all the way in the beginning, but a little bit about your journey, like how you got into brand in strategy and what drew you to these fields.

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Yeah. Well, it\u2019s like a typical swervy path into brand strategy or the world of brand strategy, which I think is kind of typical of a lot of brand strategists, to be honest. It\u2019s not like a linear career, really, is it?

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It\u2019s not like you kind of go come out of uni and come out of school and go, I want to be a brand strategist, study brand strategy, junior brand strategist, senior brand strategist. It\u2019s kind of like can start anywhere and go anywhere, involve like a whole range of different stuff. So mine was probably words, like words and writing was probably like the first kind of, I don\u2019t know, jumping off point, I reckon.

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It was like the only thing that I was semi decent at at school or the one thing that was kind of really into at school. So creative writing, short stories, that kind of stuff. Poems sometimes.

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I was, so I studied English lit at uni. So again, like more words, not so much writing, but books and literature, all the classics, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth, all of that kind of stuff. And then when I left uni, one of the first jobs I had was journalism, so freelance journalism.

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So I was writing for publications, mostly doing music stuff, to be honest, like music reviews, gig reviews, features on artists, that kind of stuff. And then carrying on that writing kind of vein, I had, well, there was a chance in carrying on. When I moved out to Australia, my girlfriend at the time was working in a shop.

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And I was doing the typical, like, you know, newly arrived in Australia, bar work, landscape gardening, like anything I could to kind of fund my escapades up and down the coast. But she met this woman in a shop that she was working in that said that they were looking for a copywriter. And my girlfriend at the time, being the legend that she was, she was like, oh, my boyfriend\u2019s a copywriter.

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Never done any copywriting in my life at all, but she just kind of bullshitted my way into a job. So I landed a job as a copywriter. That was probably my first, I don\u2019t know, introduction into the world of studios, agencies, marketing, design, brand, that kind of stuff.

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And I stayed there for a while, a long time, like kind of three or four years, like being a copywriter. So like long copy, short copy, web copy, digital messaging, all that kind of stuff. And gradually that kind of moved into more, I don\u2019t know, like maybe conceptual writing, scripts, concepts, that kind of stuff.

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And I moved from being a copywriter eventually to a creative director. So I worked in a brand and digital design studio as a creative director, like leading a design team, building brands, doing a lot of campaigns, websites, that kind of stuff. But because I hadn\u2019t come from a design background, like no skills or ability in design, I wasn\u2019t one of those creative directors that was able to jump on the tools or kind of talk to the design team about the basic fundamentals of design, like grids, layouts, types, all that kind of stuff.

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I had an opinion on it, obviously, but my contribution to those projects was much more from a messaging background, I suppose. Like what\u2019s the story? What\u2019s the message?

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How are we going to write the narratives behind these brands? And I guess eventually it was more like, well, then you start questioning, how do you come up with those stories and that messaging? Why is it this messaging?

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Why should it be that way that we articulate this brand? Which kind of led me naturally into strategy. And I\u2019ve been running my own strategy consultancy since 2002.

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So I work with a whole range of different businesses and organizations, really everything from like philanthropy to finance to fashion to technology, kind of doing strategies and narratives for them that span brand business and communication. And then as you said as well, I obviously I run their brand strap, which is the online brand strategy learning program. So four week, well actually six weeks, but there\u2019s one at the end.

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So I live four week online brand strategy learning program, really trying to kind of teach a very practical hands-on approach to brand strategy, how to sell it, how to pitch it, how to do it, how to kind of pick it up and put it into whatever it is that you\u2019re doing. So yeah, it\u2019s only been running for a year. We\u2019ve had like about 120 people go through it and I love doing those. I\u2019ve always done workshops like for many, many years. They normally were just like kind of in-person hour-long workshops.

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And then like, yeah, last year I decided to, or I was asked to kind of build it out into something more substantial. And that\