There's a question our consultant Günter Soydanbay used to dread. Not a hard question, in fact, it’s a pretty simple, ordinary question. The kind you get at a dinner party, or in the elevator, or when you're cornered at a family gathering by a well-meaning aunt.

"So, what do you do?"

For years, Günter - a brand strategist with decades of experience helping companies find their voice - could not answer it. And he'll be the first to tell you: that's a problem when your entire job is helping other people communicate clearly!

The grandma test

You might have heard of the grandma test. The idea is simple: if you can't explain what you do to your grandmother, you don't understand it well enough.

Günter failed it. Repeatedly.

Part of the problem is that brand strategy, as a discipline, is invisible. A web designer can show you a website. An architect can show you a building. But a brand strategist? The work lives inside documents, inside conversations, inside the slow changes that happen when an organization finally figures out who it is. You can't put that in a portfolio.

The other part of the problem is the words themselves. "Brand strategy" is two abstract terms bolted together. Ask ten people what "brand" means, and you'll get ten different answers - a logo, a reputation, a feeling, a promise. Add the word"strategy" and you've lost most of the room entirely.

So how do you sell something that no one can see, using words that no one agrees on?

The pattern that changed everything

Günter is the kind of person who notices things. Not just once, not just twice - but when the same thing appears a third time, he pays attention. He calls it an archetypal pattern.

And over the years, one pattern kept showing up in the feedback from his clients. Different industries. Different sizes. Different cultures. But the same words, over and over:

"Günter, no one has ever understood us the way you have. The way you've depicted our organization is truly remarkable."

He sat with that for a while. What was actually happening in these projects?

When he looked closely, the answer started to take shape. His clients were coming to him stuck - tangled in their own story, unclear about their direction, unsure how to talk about what they did and why it mattered. And by the end of the process, they weren't stuck anymore.They'd remembered where they came from, and they'd gotten honest about where they wanted to go. They understood their customers in a way they hadn't before. They knew who they were.

Hang on. Isn't that exactly what a therapist does?

The psychotherapist for businesses

When Günter finally landed on the right analogy, everything clicked. He's a psychotherapist for businesses!

He listens carefully, asks uncomfortable questions, and creates space for organizations to be honest with themselves - not about their marketing, but about their identity. What do they actually believe? What makes them different, genuinely different, not just on paper? Who are they really trying to serve and why?

That clarity, once you have it, changes everything downstream. How your leaders speak about the company. How your teams talk to each other. How you show up with clients. How your content sounds, your proposals read, your pitches land.

And once Günter had that analogy, he could finally pass the grandma test. He wasn't a brand strategist…

He was a therapist for organizations that had lost the plot on who they were.

Why this resonates with us

At Mach Media, we work in communications - helping executives and leadership teams speak with clarity, show up credibly, and sound like themselves when it counts. We've worked with smart, capable leaders who freeze the moment a camera turns on, or who have everything they need to say but can't quite get it across the table to the people who need to hear it.

And what we've found, again and again, is that the problem usually isn't skill. It's clarity.

You can coach someone on executive presence all day long. You can refine their messaging, work on their delivery, run them through every scenario. But if the foundation isn't there - if the organization itself hasn't done the hard work of figuring out what it stands for and why - no amount of polish fixes the disconnect. People can feel it. The room can feel it. The client on the other side of the table can feel it.

Your team doesn't need training... they need therapy.

The work before the work

Real brand strategy isn't about the aesthetics. It's not a tagline exercise or a visual refresh. It's about getting honest about who you are, what you believe, and how you want to show up in the world. It's uncomfortable, sometimes. It asks organizations to look at things they'd rather not look at.

But when it's done well, the effect ripples through everything. Leaders communicate differently. Teams align. The gap between what your company knows and what it actually says starts to close.

Günter spent years unable to explain his job. Then he realized his job was to help other people explain theirs. And the best way to do that was to start by helping them understand themselves.

That's the work. And it turns out it looks a lot like therapy!

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Want to read Günter's original take on why he calls himself a psychotherapist for businesses? https://soydanbay.com/2023/04/05/i-love-my-job-but-i-used-to-hate-explaining-it-to-others/

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