A San Francisco-based brand incubator for founders ready to shape and share their story.

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Every great brand starts with a simple idea.

We help you shape yours and everything around it.

01

Brand Strategy

Purpose, positioning, and the central idea that unites your universe and directs every creative action. We help you define what you stand for — and who you stand with.

02

Design Strategy

Research, semiotics, and design direction that translate insight into a distinctive, resonant brand that looks and feels unmistakably like you.

03

Innovation Strategy

White-space identification, new brand creation, and portfolio thinking that unlocks growth and points toward what’s next.

Hi, I’m Robert

Twenty years ago, I started as a designer. Since then I’ve been a strategist, researcher, founder, department head, and lone tinkerer — but the thread connecting all of it has stayed the same: solving hard problems with curiosity and creativity.

I spent a decade working with amazing teams at JKR, Unilever, and Pearlfisher on some of the world’s biggest, most distinctive brands — Kraft Heinz, Heineken, McDonald’s, Hilton. This year I relocated from New York to San Francisco to work directly with founders building something new.

Robert Pietrzyk

The Approach

We start by listening — to you, your audience, and your category. Then we dig: into culture, into semiotics, into what’s missing in the market. From there we build together, iteratively, with your team involved every step of the way. The result is never just a strategy deck — it’s a shared belief in what your brand can be, and the tools to bring it to life.

01

Dig

Listen & uncover
  • Cross-functional stakeholder & expert interviews
  • Human-centered, ethnographic consumer research
  • Semiotic analysis, cultural immersion, lateral category analysis
02

Define

Shape the idea
  • Opportunity identification & strategic territories
  • Strategic exploration and co-creation
  • Early concept testing and iteration
03

Design

Build the world
  • Strategic foundations finalization
  • Creative exploration and development
  • Design finalization
04

Deliver

Launch & enable
  • Leadership, partner & board engagement
  • Guidelines, asset creation, deployment planning
  • Team education and engagement

Depending on the project, Robert is joined by a trusted team of designers, writers, and researchers — keeping the team lean and the thinking sharp.

Robert’s Track Record

Much of the upstream innovation work is confidential, but the above approach has shaped strategies and expressions for some of the world’s most iconic and disruptive brands. Below are a handful of projects in the public domain.

Note: all work shown here was led while at previous consultancies; JKR, Elmwood, Pearlfisher.

Have an idea you’re ready to bring to life?

Let’s talk! hello@innovation-department.com →