C A L V I N I N N E S
Most brands treat fandom as a footnote.
The smart ones treat it as strategy.
I help brands, agencies and organisations understand the most loyal, passionate and commercially underestimated audiences on the planet, and turn that understanding into work that earns a place in culture instead of renting attention.
Everyone wants cultural relevance. Almost nobody knows how to earn it.
Briefs ask for culture and community. Agencies promise fandom. But most brands are still trying to jump on relevance rather than earning it, showing up in fan spaces they don't understand, borrowing energy they haven't earned, and wondering why the community pushes back.
Fandom operates in every sector, finance, food, sport, tech, beauty. The question is never whether your audience contains fans. It's whether you understand them well enough to act on it. That understanding is what I bring, from the inside.
Three ways to put fandom to work
Retained, project-based, or on a stage. All built on the same thing: understanding fan communities from the inside, then turning that into commercial and creative advantage.
Fandom Strategy & Insight
I map where real fandom already exists around your brand, what drives it, and how to earn a place in it. Audits of how you're showing up in fan spaces, cultural-code briefings before you launch, opportunity mapping, and pitch support that wins. The strategic brain your team can bring in when it matters.
Fandom Creative Direction
I don't hand you an insight and leave. With 25 years running creative as well as strategy, I make sure the work is fluent in the culture, not just decorated with it, catching the details a true fan would notice and a focus group never would. Creative direction that earns respect instead of eye-rolls.
Speaking & Workshops
Keynotes that change how a room thinks about loyalty and community, from Cannes to Golden Drum to TEDx. And hands-on workshops that move your team from understanding fan culture to applying it, with frameworks they keep using long after I've left.
Simple to start. Built to scale.
Most engagements begin with a conversation and grow from there, from a single project to an ongoing partnership.
A conversation
We talk through what you're working on and where fandom could take it. No pitch, no obligation.
The right shape
A one-off project, a workshop, or an ongoing retainer, scoped to what you actually need.
The work lands
Insight your team can act on, creative that earns respect, and fandom thinking that sticks.
An embedded fandom brain, on retainer.
A fixed monthly fee gives your team standing access to senior fandom thinking, feeding your pitches, strengthening your client work, and spotting opportunities before your competitors do. No project sign-off every time you need a sharp cultural read.
Fandom strategy that has helped win global accounts.
Regularly brought in by agencies and brands, including Jung von Matt (global BMW MINI pitch) and Unilever (fandom engagemnt & Ltd Editions). I lead fandom insights, community strategy and culturally led thinking that plays a significant part in winning national and global accounts.
Let's find where fandom
could take your brand.
A live brief or just an idea you're circling, either way, let's talk.
Get in touch →