Mick Mahoney and Kevin Chesters understand the power and the peril of brand strategy. Mahoney is a former chief creative officer at Havas and Ogilvy, and featured on Campaign’s Top Creative Directors list at three different agencies. He is the author of The Complete Creative Director and co-author of The Creative Nudge and runs the D&AD Creative Director Training Programme. Chesters is a former chief strategy officer at Dentsu, Ogilvy and Wieden+Kennedy London. Now he advises global brands including M&S, adidas and LEGO, and works with leading agencies and organisations worldwide.

What they understand is that the advertising industry has turned brand strategy into an overcomplicated, over-intellectualised and self-important discipline that stifles the very creativity it is supposed to enable. And they have detailed the problem in their provocative new book, Destrategise: Why brand strategy has lost its way. And how creativity will save it, published by BIS Publishers on November 19.

The book calls out the industry’s obsession with elaborate frameworks, jargon and siloed processes while offering a practical alternative that puts creativity and collaboration back at the heart of brand strategy. With fifty years of combined experience to back their ideas, Mahoney and Chesters introduce a new approach to brand building, refined over the past decade and centred on three deceptively simple questions. It’s designed to cut through unnecessary complexity, the approach helps brands develop clear, compelling and actionable positioning while bringing strategic and creative thinking together from the outset.

The authors argue that what was once a discipline designed to simplify complexity and unlock great creative thinking has become weighed down by proprietary terminology, siloed behaviours and rigid processes. With shrinking budgets, procurement pressures, the rise of AI and an increasingly competitive agency market adding to the industry’s challenges, they believe the answer lies in simpler processes, greater collaboration and a more intuitive approach to solving brand and business problems.

The book also features contributions from leading figures across advertising, marketing and creativity, including Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of Ogilvy Group and author of Alchemy; Karen Blackett CBE, former WPP UK president; Sophie Devonshire, CEO of The Marketing Society; Rob Campbell, chief strategy officer at Colenso BBDO; Nils Leonard, founder of Uncommon London; and Richard Shotton, behavioural science expert and author of The Illusion of Choice.

Kevin Chesters stated, “Somewhere along the way, strategy got lost and forgot what its job was. It was to make the complex simple, separate the useful from the interesting, and give creativity somewhere brilliant to go. Instead, we’ve created a bloated industry of chevronathons, and invented impenetrable terminology and convoluted processes that too often get in the way of the very thing we’re supposed to be enabling.

“But the good news is that we can change it. Strategy doesn’t need to be complicated to be effective. By stripping away unnecessary processes, bringing together people with diverse cognitive styles, neurotypes, social and cultural backgrounds, genders and ethnicities., and putting true creativity back at the heart of strategic thinking, we can rediscover what makes great brand strategy so valuable to clients. That’s what Destrategise is about – not tearing down strategy but helping it fulfil its potential.”

Mick Mahoney added, “There’s no shortage of people telling us the advertising industry is broken. What’s missing is people prepared to actually do something different. We wanted to move beyond talking about the problems and offer a simple and practical way forward.

“We’ve spent years developing and refining an approach that brings strategy and creativity together, strips out unnecessary complexity and makes space for different kinds of thinking. We’re not claiming we’ve found the one true answer, and we don’t expect everyone to follow our process. What we want is to encourage people to experiment, challenge convention and find new ways of building brands. Because we genuinely believe creativity is the answer to many of the challenges our industry faces.”

Destrategise draws on scientific and behavioural principles to challenge the longstanding separation of strategy and creativity, arguing that stronger ideas emerge when different perspectives, experiences and ways of thinking are brought together, rather than confined to separate departments and processes.

Beyond brand positioning, the book makes the case for a more ambitious role for creativity in business. The authors argue that clients increasingly need creative partners who can help them navigate uncertainty, solve complex challenges and build coherent brands across their organisations, rather than simply deliver isolated advertising campaigns.

Destrategise  is written for brand owners, marketers, strategists and creatives; it combines a practical methodology with a broader call for change; and rather than prescribing rigid rules, it encourages readers to question established approaches, embrace cognitive diversity and experiment with new ways of working. At its heart is an optimistic proposition that by simplifying strategy, breaking down silos and giving creativity a central role in solving business problems, the advertising industry can find a new way forward that is more relevant to the challenges brands face today.

Destrategise: Why brand strategy has lost its way. And how creativity will save it is available to pre-order from Amazon, Waterstones and other retailers.