Five minutes with Sonal Patel

Why did you decide to lead with the name Investor Brand, rather than positioning it as ‘Brunswick’s Investor Brand’?  

Investor Brand names a shift in how companies earn belief and confidence in capital markets today. We are leading that conversation because this is where our experience runs deepest. We are very deliberately Brunswick’s Investor Brand practice. What sits behind it is the full breadth of Brunswick: colleagues across the world with decades of experience advising at the sharpest moments of investor scrutiny, and a deep bench of creative and strategic talent. That combination is what makes the practice both credible and distinctive. 

Leading with Investor Brand allows us to put the idea first. Clients are increasingly asking us to help them navigate how credibility is formed, tested and sustained in capital markets today – not just through individual moments, but over time. Investor Brand is our response to that challenge and a framework for addressing it, with the Brunswick name standing firmly behind it as a source of judgement, experience and trust. 

Some may interpret Investor Brand as a specific service rather than a standalone operation. How should clients understand its role and status within Brunswick? 

Investor Brand is neither a standalone operation nor a discrete service. It is a practice – a strategic discipline we have developed that brings creative intelligence and advisory judgement together in a more deliberate way. Clients are not coming to us asking for “an Investor Brand product”. They are coming to us for help navigating increasingly complex, high-stakes moments with investors, and for confidence that their story will be told consistently over time. 

Investor Brand is our answer to that challenge. It is the firm working more closely across reporting, results, strategy moments, leadership communications and events – understanding clients deeply, and supporting them at every point where investor scrutiny is highest. We named it because it matters, and because clients were asking us to make this thinking more explicit.   

Given your work across wider stakeholder communications, including internal and employer branding, how does that activity sit alongside the Investor Brand positioning? 

Investor Brand builds on the same foundation that underpins all of our creative work. 

We are still thinkers, makers and creatives. Creativity remains at the heart of what we do. What Investor Brand reflects is how deliberately we now apply creative intelligence in capital markets contexts where audiences are highly sophisticated, comparison is constant, and credibility is tested relentlessly. 

We bring the same ability to shape corporate brand, narrative and leadership presence across the wider stakeholder ecosystem. What differentiates Investor Brand is that it recognises investors and analysts as a distinct audience and applies the full force of our creative and advisory capability to meet them on their terms. 

Creative and digital capability sit at the core of our work across Brunswick and Investor Brand is one of the spaces where that creative intelligence is now being applied most deliberately, under the highest levels of scrutiny. 

It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean we’re stepping away from wider stakeholder communications. Employee engagement projects and corporate branding remain core competencies, and we’ll continue to deliver work in these areas.  

To what extent is this evolution a response to how the market has historically understood the Brunswick Creative name? What impact did the shift from MerchantCantos to Brunswick Creative have on this decision? 

This exciting evolution reflects how we have always worked: moving with the market, anticipating what clients need next, and leading where the stakes are highest. The transition from MerchantCantos to Brunswick Creative was about integration – bringing creative capability closer to Brunswick’s advisory core. Investor Brand is the next step in that journey, shaped by what clients are asking for now. 

Increasingly, clients are looking for judgement: how to decide what matters, how to sustain belief across moments, and how to show up with conviction when scrutiny intensifies. Investor Brand gives shape to expertise we have been building for years and allows us to lead more explicitly in a space where we have always played the most defining role. 

Is Investor Brand being introduced globally, or will it sit alongside Brunswick Creative in certain markets, including the US? 

Investor Brand is a global practice. 

It reflects a shared challenge faced by companies everywhere, even if regulatory and market contexts differ. The practice sits within Brunswick’s global capability and works hand-in-hand with Advisory teams around the world. 

That combination – global reach, local judgement, creative intelligence and advisory depth – is what makes this moment so meaningful. Investor Brand brings the full strength of the firm together to support clients wherever belief is tested. 

Investor Brand is about recognising, defining and naming something the market has been moving towards for some time: the need to build belief deliberately under investor scrutiny. What’s new is how clearly and confidently we are leading in this space, bringing Brunswick’s creative intelligence and advisory judgement together in one practice. 

Does this rebrand signal a narrowing of focus, or is Investor Brand intended as a lens through which all stakeholder communications are approached? 

This is not about narrowing focus. It is about sharpening it. 

Investor Brand is a lens focused on the areas where scrutiny is most intense and investor confidence is shaped early. By leaning into that reality, we are reinforcing something that strengthens the entire system of communications around a business. 

The thinking behind Investor Brand – clarity, coherence, conviction – applies across stakeholders. Capital markets simply expose whether those qualities genuinely hold. Far from limiting our work, this sharpens how we bring creative intelligence to everything we do.