Honest
thinking.
Better
brands.

The Poultry Industry Association had the right technical content. What they didn't have was a clear way to get it in front of the right people at the right moment. Standards, disposal guides, decision trees, response plans: all of it sat in documents that were dense, disconnected, and written for specialists, not for a farmer at 6am trying to figure out what to do next. The window to build something fit for purpose was narrow, and the budget was fixed.

We worked upstream of the technical advisors, which meant we could focus entirely on the human end of the problem: who actually needs this information, what state are they in when they need it, and what do they need to do next? We ran a full needs assessment, defined user personas across commercial operators, small producers, vets, and contractors, and documented the functional and technical architecture requirements for the platform.

Then we managed the complete vendor procurement process, writing the RFP, evaluating proposals, and giving PIANZ a clear recommendation on who to build with and what to build first.

PIANZ has a clear, costed roadmap for a centralised digital response tool, structured around three operational modes: preparedness, active response, and recovery. The procurement process was clean and competitive, and the strategy keeps the whole build within a strict GIA-funded budget. The sector now has a platform designed for the people who need it most, built to work when it matters.

The existing website was quietly failing on multiple fronts. Navigation that made no sense to outsiders, an online shop that didn't work, templates that buried content rather than surfacing it, and a tone that no longer matched where the organisation had landed. The organisation serves four very different audiences: the general public, industry and regulators, customers buying product, and media. A one-size-fits-all site was never going to cut it, and any agency coming in without a clear brief would have wasted everyone's time and money.

Before a single agency was briefed, we did the thinking. We built a reverse brief that forced clarity on every major decision upfront: audience architecture, content priorities, CMS requirements, success metrics, and what good actually looked like in measurable terms. We set specific targets — a 20% lift in online shop revenue, a 25% increase in traffic to the careers page — so the brief had teeth, not just intentions.

We defined the technical requirements for a scalable, flexible CMS that the internal team could run without calling a developer every time they wanted to update a page.

Seafood New Zealand went into their RFP process with a document that agencies could actually respond to precisely. The strategic foundation is in place for a platform that serves all four audience groups clearly, fixes the broken functionality, and gives the internal team genuine control over their own content. No bloat, no guesswork, no expensive redos six months after launch.

Flinch does important work: social change, behaviour change, communications that actually shift how people think and act. But the business had grown the way many good small agencies do — by saying yes to the right clients and figuring the rest out later. That works until it doesn't. Going into 2025, the founders needed to get clear on who they are, who they're for, and how to build systems that could support growth without burning out the team or diluting the work.

We ran a three-phase process that didn't skip steps. First, a proper brand audit: workshops to surface the real values, map the actual client base, and identify the differentiators that were genuine rather than aspirational. Second, brand hygiene: fast, high-impact fixes to pitch materials, website copy, and digital presence that could be done quickly while the bigger work was underway.

Third, full brand development paired with service design: translating what Flinch actually stands for into how they talk about themselves, how they structure their services, and how their internal culture shows up in client relationships.

Flinch came out of the process with a clear identity, a tighter proposition, and operational systems designed to scale without losing what makes them good at what they do. The brand now works as a filter, attracting the right clients and giving the team a shared language for the decisions they make every day.

The risk with a personal brand built around purpose is that it can tip into vague. Words like "impact" and "sustainability" do a lot of heavy lifting without saying anything specific. Laura's background is genuinely distinctive, and the work was to make that distinctiveness visible without diluting it into language that could belong to anyone. The site needed to hold the weight of her corporate experience while communicating the clarity of purpose that brought her back to the ocean.

We built Salt Labs from scratch with human-centred design as the guiding principle throughout, not as an afterthought. Every decision — from structure to copy to user flow — was made by asking one question: does this make Laura's purpose clearer, or does it get in the way? We kept the architecture simple, the language direct, and the focus entirely on what she's actually there to do.

The platform was built to be manageable by Laura herself, with no dependency on external support to keep it current.

A digital presence that feels like Laura rather than a template with her name on it. The site is clean, personal, and purposeful. It gives her a strong foundation to grow from and a platform she can confidently send people to, knowing it accurately represents who she is and what she does.