Mirel Thinking

How Mirel thinks about strategy, agencies and AI.

This is a public description of what Mirel believes good strategic work looks like: how strategy is made, how AI should support it and how agencies can organise around it. Where the evidence is uncertain, I would rather say so.

Part I

Agency operating model

How agencies can redesign strategic work without hiring more strategists

What happens when account and creative start covering strategy by default

Why “do more with less” usually means “make seniors work harder”

Does AI replace strategists? It replaces some strategic labour.

Can independent agencies keep up with the networks on AI?

As execution gets cheaper, strategic judgement becomes a bigger agency differentiator

Part II

Agency economics

Why strategy margins are getting squeezed in agencies

The economics of strategic work in creative agencies

The hidden cost of letting senior strategists absorb unbillable work

Why smaller accounts still need strategy even when nobody budgeted for it

Clients cut budgets. Why strategy rarely gets cut with them

When freelance strategy makes economic sense

Part III

Strategy craft

How to set useful business, behavioural and communication objectives

How to interrogate an incoming client brief

How to build an audience profile that goes beyond demographics

Brand positioning: from evidence to strategic choice

Campaign strategy and creative strategy

What strategists owe creative people in a brief

How to tell whether a strategy is actually good

Part IV

Evidence and AI

What counts as evidence in strategy?

Synthetic audience research: what it can and cannot tell you

How to decide which strategic tasks to give AI

Part V

AI and strategic process

What is an AI strategy platform?

Why ChatGPT is not a strategy process

Why AI needs persistent client context

Want better outputs from LLMs? Forget about data and prompts.

AI for creative agencies: thinking tools and execution tools

Epilogue

Process and judgement

Good strategy needs a process. Great strategists know when to break it.

This is how Mirel thinks

See how Mirel works.

How Mirel works