Fundamentals
8 things about us /
1—Saffron (founded 2001) is an independent consulting firm working for companies, countries and other enterprises on issues related to branding and identity.
2—Each Saffron project team is tailor made, and assembled from our offices in London, Madrid, Mumbai and New York. People from multiple locations work together as a creative/strategic task force—a bit like producing a movie.
3—We work everywhere for clients from all over. East Timor? Northern Ireland? Australia? We’ve done jobs there. Romania? Turkey? Mexico? We’ve had major clients in these places. Airlines and hotels like us.
4—We’re adept in our singular globalization-attuned work style because we know the world. Fifty-four of us from 14 countries (this week). We speak Japanese, we speak California slang, and we speak Schwäbisch. We think this is important and we think it makes us different. We know it makes us better at what we do.
5—Saffron’s clients, whether they are a bank, an airline, a hotel chain, a tourist board or an insurance company, tend to be influential in their fields. And they tend to be bold, ambitious decision makers who don’t look too much over their shoulder.
6—A client once said about us that we embody “the perfect combination of charm and brutality.” Now you know what to expect.
7—Wally Olins is our chairman. It’s true his surname adorns the offices of another pioneering branding consultancy he founded in the ‘60s before ‘brand’ was a household word. But that was then, and this is now.
8—We are comprehensively aware that branding ain’t what it used to be. A radically different context is gradually engulfing everything to do with brands and branding. And we have ideas for what you should do about that. (See How we see it.)