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Creative boundaries: how to build a brand playground

October 22, 2026 · 18 min

Show notes

How do you keep a brand consistent without holding your creatives back? In this one, Jason Wood, Brand & Creative Lead at BT Group, joined us to talk about creative boundaries and how to build a brand playground.We got into how brand consistency works across the brands in BT Group, brand modes that give creatives generous boundaries to colour in, how to dial a brand up or down for a sports crowd or a billboard audience, guidelines split into core and expert layers so nobody gets buried in detail, and why taste is so hard to train across a big organisation. There's also a question from a marketing manager in the community about folding a company brand and a much-loved product brand into one when the CFO wants to save money. Jason also shared the park ranger idea he picked up from a former manager at Virgin, an alternative to being the brand police. Recorded live at Paradigms, the conference by Frontify.Jason Wood: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/jason-wood-b181b559_______Timestamps:00:00 - Introduction01:48 - The School of Video02:31 - Quickfire round04:03 - Advice he wishes he'd had earlier05:31 - A mentor's lesson: the park ranger06:53 - Brand consistency across several brands07:50 - Creative boundaries with agencies08:55 - Brand modes: a playground for creatives09:19 - How to build a brand playground11:08 - Brand guidelines in the real world12:30 - Taste across a whole organisation14:05 - Guidance that shows what good looks like15:02 - Merging a company brand and a product brand_______If you enjoyed this, please like and subscribe - it helps us reach more marketers like you.Join 35,000+ marketers getting our weekly newsletter (it's free): https://themarketingmeetup.comListen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/marketing-meetup-podcast/id1365546447Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5QvmFdxg5pMwsfPkKjhXl9_______This episode of Your CMO Mentor is brought to you by Weglot.Weglot: https://www.weglot.com/t/lp?utm_source=livesession&utm_medium=media&utm_campaign=nospecificcampaignTMMWeglot 2.0 for WordPress launched on 30 September, with MCP support, image translation, and a new AI translation model. They've also launched a new campaign, "You mean Weglot", which picks up on a lot of marketers' pain points.

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