Think big, dive deep, swim fast

For over 30 years, I’ve helped brave decision makers start, transform, and grow brands that genuinely enrich people’s lives.

I founded big fish® in 1994. a fiercely independent, B Corp-certified brand, design, and marketing consultancy that’s dedicated to displacing bad with better. We’ve helped entrepreneurial brands thrive by combining strategic thinking with intelligent creativity.

We’ve had the privilege of branding and supporting some exceptional entrepreneurial businesses, including:

• Abel & Cole
• Belvoir Fruit Farms
• Charlie Bigham’s
• Clipper Tea
• Coconut Collaborative
• Dorset Cereals
• Giovanni Rana
• Gü
• Kallo
• Maldon Sea Salt
• Picnic
• Riverford Organic
• Sipsmith
• St Pierre
• Tyrrell’s
• Typhoo
• Whole Earth
• Wyke
• Yeo Valley Organic
and many more…

We also share risk with some of our clients who we’ve invested and become partners in. Companies like sofa.com, Boden, Biscuiteers, Freddie’s Flowers, Cornishware, Howdah, Pooky, Tiba Tempeh, GrowUp, Cock & Bull, Holly & Co, Lonkero to name a few. 

In recent years, my focus has shifted towards supporting and investing in sustainable and ethical brands. 

One of my favourites examples of a force for good brand is Howdah Indian Snacks. It provides a school lunch for a child in India with every pack sold which has fed over 1 million children to date.

Brands like Howdah are proof that even small businesses can create enormous impact.

I am convinced that all businesses have a duty to be a force for good, and that consumers hold the power to help fix the future. I also believe that life’s too short to work with people who aren’t driven to change the world for the better. 

My personal mission is to support visionary leaders in building sustainable, ethical, and profitable growth strategies that put nature and ethics first.

My wife and I live in Somerset with our three incredible daughters, all of whom are named after typefaces. (I am a tad obsessed with good typography and believe it should be part of the national curriculum).

If you’re on an interesting mission that’s aligned with my interests and need help achieving it then please do drop me a line as I’d love to hear about it. 

Or visit http://www.bigfish.co.uk and apply to work with us.

Yesterday evening someone said to me “£250k for a rebrand? For a logo?” That’s insane!

I replied…

“Thats like saying “£10m for a footballer? For a pair of legs? Thats insane!”

When you buy a rebrand, you’re not buying artwork.

You’re buying…
Pricing power.
Distribution leverage.
Cultural relevance.
Confidence inside the business.
An opportunity to reset and focus
Clarity on your long-term ambition
Alignment
Power!
Sustainable growth!!

The logo is just the visible bit.
The logo is just the sign above the door. 
The logo isn’t where the value lies. 

How much would you pay to treble your growth sustainably in just one year? 

Just saying. 


#brandstrategy #growth #valueratio #behaviour #bigfish

Perry Haydn Taylor 💚

Chief Stoker at big fish® I help brave brand owners start, transform, grow, and exit their businesses and occasionally share risk with them

No alternative text description for this image

Some people endure horror. Very few turn it into a spotlight that exposes it. Gisèle Pelicot refused to hide. She waived her anonymity. She walked into court. She faced the men who abused her and let the world watch.

Not for attention. For accountability.

For too long, shame has sat with victims while silence protected perpetrators.
By opening that courtroom, she flipped that script.
That takes a different level of courage.

It forces uncomfortable conversations about consent, complicity, and the lazy everyday attitudes that let violence against women persist. 

That is leadership. 
The real kind. 
The kind that costs everything.

I’m the father of three amazing girls. And yes, I worry. I worry about the world they’re growing up in. I worry about the behaviour they’ll have to navigate, and the attitudes they’ll have to challenge. 

They're already out there telling me stories I wish weren't true.

So I hope this moment shifts something.
In homes. In schools. In workplaces. In courtrooms.

May it change behaviour.
Reshape attitudes.
Make it harder for cruelty to hide.

And may we never look away.

Just saying.

#GisèlePelicot
#ViolenceAgainstWomen
#EndRapeCulture
#ConsentMatters
#StandWithSurvivors
#WomensSafety
#CulturalChange
#FathersForDaughters

A lovely post from David Hieatt.  If you’re over 50 and wondering where you fit in an Ai powered world, then his moment was built for you!! Here’s why…

Ai collapses effort, not judgement. It makes execution cheap and fast. Which means knowing what to build, why to build it, and when to stop suddenly matters more than ever.

When we were younger, we mistook speed for progress. Now we humans have got catastrophe recognition, taste, and a pretty good sense of unintended consequences. Those are exactly the things Ai can’t do!

Young people have access to astonishing tools. But what they don’t yet have is context. They need help deciding what’s worth amplifying and what should never exist in the first place.

So no, you haven’t peaked!!

The cost of ideas has fallen. 
The value of judgement has risen!

Read David’s post. 
Then act like this is your moment.

You are needed more than you realise. 

Just saying.

#ai #experience

I help founders write clearly enough that their business grows.

If you are over 50, you have NOT peaked.

These are not the words you need to hear, but need to believe.

You don’t need the energy you had when you were 21 years old. You ran around clueless back then because you had no clue what you were doing. But now, you know what you are doing.

- You’ve made the mistakes. 
- You collected the bruises. 
- But you’ve gained the wisdom from them.

This is the time to be the bravest because you know the most.

Your best work must leave you and enter the world. 

Your best words must be written.
Your best products must be made.
Your best ideas must be launched.

This is not the time to think your best days are behind you. That story does not serve you well.

Look, homeownership may have peaked.
Car ownership - ditto.
Birth rates - ditto.
Email usage - ditto.
Social media engagement - ditto.

But you have NOT.

This is not the time to drop anchor, this is the time to set sail.



If this struck a chord with you, please repost it to your network.

We humans are odd, aren't we? We’ll pay £192 for a 1st class, two-hour train journey without blinking. It’s just the fare. That’s what it costs. But ask us to pay the same £192 for an Ai tool that can replace £100,000+ of consultancy and months of build time for a system that could unlock millions of pounds of profit?

Suddenly we scrutinise it. 
We compare it to other subscriptions. 
We debate features. 
We call it “expensive”.

Same money.
Radically different leverage.

Both are business inputs.

One buys access.
The other buys acceleration.

Yet we accept one without question and interrogate the other.

The problem isn’t price.
It’s comparison.

We’re brilliant at judging relative value and terrible at judging absolute value. So we compare Ai to other Ai, trains to other trains, and almost never across categories.

Which means value isn’t found. It’s framed.

If you want people to see your worth, don’t let them benchmark you against the wrong thing…

Frame your offer against what it replaces.
Against salary, delay, risk, and lost revenue.
Against the outcome, not the category.

Because the comparison you allow shapes the value they see.

What’s your value proposition being compared to?

Just saying.

#brandstrategy #valueratio #behaviours #wehumansareweird #bigfish #brandconsultants #strategyconsultants

P.S. Yesterday, on my way up to London, I bumped into my good buddy, Mark Machray on the platform. He teased me about the fact I always buy 1st class tickets. Fair enough. However, I explained to him that over 20+ years of commuting, most of my clients have either been people I've met on the train, or people introduced by people I've met on the train. So, let’s say my penchant for a power socket and elbow room has cost me circa. £10k a year. Call it £200k over two decades. Wow! Sounds indulgent. Maybe?…

Until you realise that the projects that came from those conversations and random moments of introduction have run into the millions. My tickets haven't just been transport. They're distribution. You might even call it "travel-vertising!" 

Just saying (again).

‼️ WARNING ‼️ If you're not adopting a startup mentality in your life or business in today’s turbulent times, you're f**k'd!! Here’s why.

The world’s giving birth to the biggest technological shift since electricity, and it’s happening far faster than anyone’s comfortable admitting. We’re not in a phase of gradual change. We’re in a violent global reset.

There’s no certainty. Experience counts for very little. Believing you can predict the future right now is fatal. The only sensible posture is curiosity, speed, and a willingness to learn fast and be wrong in public.

Whatever you’re building today won’t be around next month. Every day brings new tech, new policy, new politics, and new consumer behaviour.

My advice as an old fart who’s seen this sort of transition before?

Be prepared to tear it down, rebuild it, then do it again, and again, while this spotty, awkward, unpredictable, but extraordinary Ai teenager smashes through puberty and rewrites the rules. 

I’m 59, so I’ve seen this pattern before…

The internet.
Ecommerce.
Smartphones.
Apps.

What have I learned?

Entrepreneurs thrive.
This is when visionaries rise.
They love disruption, change, and rebuilding.

Settlers eventually follow.
But they freeze at first, like rabbits in headlights, trying to work out their role.

Town planners struggle the most.
They follow rules, hate change, and can’t see past the present. They’re in for a rough ride. They worry me most, but that’s for another post.

If you own a business and haven’t embraced Ai like Robinson Crusoe would a raft, then life’s about to get very hard for you.

If you’re over 30 and not learning Ai like a ninja, you may soon be standing in a very orderly queue at the benefits centre.

Overconfidence is the enemy. I see the same old red trouser, mustard cord clad "so-called-experts" clinging to the past. But this time it’s different. This isn’t a slow wave. It’s more like Covid and lockdown. Sudden, everywhere, and nobody knows where it ends. It’s deadly if you don’t act.

That’s the threat!
But the good news is the opportunity’s bigger than the threat.

The playing field’s even.
Age, titles, and past success matter less than curiosity and speed.
Nobody knows what they’re doing, which means anyone can become an authority. Chaos creates opportunity at scale. So go for it!

Entrepreneurs should be drooling with excitement.
The tractor’s ploughing the field and the seagulls are already feasting on its wake. The old rules are breaking everywhere. Law, work, science, human behaviour. The assumptions that underpin business, economics and politics are collapsing at speed.

It’s all to play for!!

But be clear. Sunk cost will destroy anyone who wants to lead. Expect to redo your work again and again over the next 3 years.

Or, if you can afford it, go on holiday for 3 years, come back, and be the second mouse  who gets the cheese.

Just saying.

#ai #startupmentality

Phoebe Averdieck interviewed me on her new podcast. She didn’t ask me about my favourite colour. She grilled me!!

She asked about Ai and whether we’re building tools or summoning something we don’t fully understand.

She asked whether modern men are quietly falling apart while pretending to be fine.

She asked about obsession, addiction, ego, and whether entrepreneurs are just socially acceptable obsessives.

And yes, we talked about brands. The real kind. The ones built on behaviour, not brand guidelines.

It was uncomfortable in parts. Which usually means it was interesting.

Phoebe’s just launched the series. It takes courage to start something thoughtful in a world addicted to noise.

Have a listen. 
Support her. 
Reward curiosity.

Because the only thing more dangerous than Ai is intellectual laziness!! 

Just saying.

#podcast #ai #strategy #bigfish

Open article: Perry Haydn Taylor by open.spotify.com

As a creative director and strategist I sit in a strange place. On one side of me is the fight. The instinct to protect the idea. To push it further. To not let it get rounded off by comfort, fear, or committee.

On the other side is humility and the imposter sitting on my shoulder. The knowledge that I’m not necessarily the audience. That I can be wrong. That better ideas are almost always built, not just born ready to launch. 

Being a creative director is living in that tension. Sir John Hegarty is spot on. Great work comes from friction. From people speaking up. From defending a thought long enough for it to prove itself. From awkward pauses. From someone saying, “No, that’s not good enough.” From someone else replying, “Yes it is, and here’s why.” From allowing time for them to sink in and become familiar. And a whole lot more that I could write an entire book on! 

But here’s the discipline most people miss. It’s the language we use…

The words “I like” and “I don’t like” should be banned in any critique. 

They’re lazy.
They’re ego dressed as opinion.
They kill momentum. 

Why?
because they can’t be argued with.

Instead, big fish® we try and encourage everyone, including our clients, to say one of two things when evaluating work.

“It works because…”

Or

“It doesn’t work because…”

This takes us into the land of reasoning.
Doing this means we are talking about the brief, the strategy, the audience, the commercial objective. It means we can test it. Build it. Improve it. Or kill it.

“It works because it dramatises the benefit in one second.”

“It doesn’t work because it could belong to any competitor.”

“It works because it makes the price feel justified.”

“It doesn’t work because it solves our problem, not the customer’s.”

When you frame feedback like that, the room changes.

It stops being about taste.
It starts being about truth.

There’s still healthy heat. There should be.
But it is productive heat. Heat without egotistical conflict or fear of offending anyone.

And then comes the hardest, but most important part.

The decision.

At some point the debate has to end. The door closes. The work moves forward. Once that happens, the fight is over. Even if your idea did not win. It’s time to run with the team and move on and build. 

Because leadership isn’t just about being good at winning the debate. It’s about committing fully once the choice is made.

No sulking.
No passive resistance.
No “I told you so” waiting in the wings.

If it’s the chosen route, it’s ours, together.
We build it. We sharpen it. We make it undeniable. We take collective responsibility. 

That’s the balance.

Fight hard for the right reasons.
Stay open to change and builds.
Judge ideas on why they work.
And once the decision is made?
Move on as one team.

That’s how great work actually gets made.

Just saying. 

#creativity 

P.S. and if someone says “it works because I like it, send them out of the room!!”

Co-founder & Creative Director at The Business of Creativity

Great creativity sometimes does take a bit of anger. 

It does take a bit of determination. It does take a bit of a fundamental belief in what you're going to do.

You have to fight for ideas. 
If it’s too polite, it won’t go through. 

"Oh, please. Would you buy my idea?" 
No. You’ve got to fight for it. It’s fundamentally important.

I’ve always believed that a great idea must possess a degree of irreverence. It’s that lack of over-respect that allows you to break things down and rebuild them in fresh, compelling ways. Without that spark of defiance, you’re just left with the warm, comforting blanket of mediocrity.

Don't be polite. Be provocative.

Follow me, Sir John Hegarty, for weekly thoughts on creativity in business.

One can’t look at the history of Ai without noticing something uncomfortable.

Around 78% of the pioneers named in this deck are men. Women hold just 22% of Ai roles globally  

If the people building intelligence are mostly male, what perspectives are missing?

It’s not a political question. Its a structural one. It shapes what gets built, how it behaves, who it serves, and who it accidentally excludes.

I put this presentation together for the team at big fish®. Not as a bit of hype or doom. But as context.

Ai didnt appear overnight. Its been built over th last seventy years. From Turing’s early provocation to deep learning breakthroughs, to trillion dollar companies that now control the infrastructure of all future intelligence!!

We’re living through the fastest technological acceleration in history. It’s moving faster and more aggressively than a hormonal teenager!!

Small teams can now produce the output of fifty. Most cognitive work that happens on a screen is already exposed. And it isn’t slowing.

But the bigger and deeper issue is governance.

Not who invented it.
Not who profits from it.

Who decides how its used, who it serves, and what it’s not allowed to do  

Right now, those decisions are being made by a small number of private companies, in a small number of cities, with limited democratic oversight and minimal female participation. 

This deck maps three things.

Who built it.
Who controls it.
What is likely to happen next.

It is not about fear. It is about awareness, agency, and participation  

Inside big fish® we are neither worshipping Ai nor resisting it. We’re studying it properly. Using it deliberately. Teaching our team to work with it, not around it. And, most importantly, not trying to use it to make ourselves just look better and pretend we’re all superhuman!!

Because the decisions made in the next five years will shape the next fifty.

The real question is not whether you engage with Ai. 

It is whether you engage with it on your own terms.

Just saying.

Ai. Who built it. Who controls it. Where it’s going.

Warning! ‼️ this is Ai. #fakenews 😆


Dan Pope

PINT OFF WITH PEZZA

My kinda Friday afternoon Perry Haydn Taylor 💚

taplio

Perry Taylor's Linkedin Analytics

Perry Haydn Taylor 💚

Performance ScorePerry Haydn Taylor 💚's LinkedIn Performance

What is Perry talking about?

Perry Haydn Taylor 💚's Best Posts (last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

.css-6ytdur{background-image:linear-gradient(284deg, rgba(39, 43, 72, 1) 0%, rgba(33, 47, 183, 1) 100%);color:transparent;-webkit-background-clip:text;background-clip:text;}Perry Taylor's Linkedin Analytics

Perry Haydn Taylor 💚

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Perry Haydn Taylor 💚's LinkedIn Performance

What is Perry talking about?

Perry Haydn Taylor 💚's Best Posts .css-1emoo84{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:400;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);}(last 30 days)

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Perry Taylor's Linkedin Analytics

Performance ScorePerry Haydn Taylor 💚's LinkedIn Performance

Perry Haydn Taylor 💚's Best Posts (last 30 days)