A map before a mark
We place you against named alternatives, not against “the market.” If we cannot point to who loses when you win, we do not write the line.
Collum Collum · NSW
Studio note 08 / 26
Paint the house after you know which street it sits on.
Appcraftgrid practises business consulting for brand positioning as editorial work: a category claim, a refusal list, and language a sales team can repeat without shrinking it.
From the journal
Recent notes on language, category maps, and why logos arrive too early.
Flagship programme
Category Narrative Intensive
Twelve weeks of counsel for founders and marketing leads who already have a product, a pipeline, and a sentence that no longer fits either. We rebuild the category argument, then pressure-test it with buyers who have heard every adjacent claim in the corridor.
The live rooms are small. Homework is written, not workshopped into slogans. You leave with a mandate document, a refusal list, and a speaking brief your principals can use without a designer in the room.
Open the syllabus17 positioning mandates closed last year
11 wk median time to a signed category claim
6 industries we will not take in the same quarter
NSW studio hours, Australian clients first
Language a board can defend
Copy is treated as policy. Each claim is attached to evidence, a forbidden synonym, and a person who must be able to say it on a Tuesday morning.
Counsel, not a campaign dump
You will not receive fifty unprioritised territories. You receive one seat, the arguments that hold it, and the work you should stop doing.
The Category Narrative rooms forced us to retire a line we had printed on every leave-behind since 2019. That was uncomfortable. The replacement sentence survived a procurement panel we had previously lost on “fit.”
I wanted a slogan in week one. They would not write one until the competitor grid was ugly enough to be useful. The delay annoyed me; the grid is now on the wall in Collingwood.
Next conversation
Bring the sentence you no longer trust.
If you already know the brand looks finished and still fails in rooms that matter, write to the studio. We answer within two working days.
Write to Appcraftgrid