About Us

Helping organisations bring their purpose to life.

Our clients say we’re transformational.

We are proud to have helped transform more than 30 major organisations, from the inside out. Our proven approach and tangible results make us long-term business partners of our clients.

We apply a highly engaging and multi-disciplinary approach to understanding core business, culture, stakeholder, market, and customer insights before we start our purpose or strategy work.

Our intent is to create alignment throughout the organisation, from what the organisation does, to what it says, how it behaves, and ultimately what it stands for.

We measure our success by our clients’ results.

Our Leadership Team

Dealing directly with the owners, our consulting model delivers experience, honesty, and flexibility, ensuring demonstrable results and return on your investment.

We tailor our approach to the assignment at hand, always placing the very best people on each project. Our team and partners are highly experienced specialists in their chosen field — researchers, strategists, creative teams, and implementation specialists.

Brand Council is led and owned by Trudi Cassin and Peta Quirk.

Trudi Cassin

Managing Partner & Owner

Trudi relishes working with clients where significant transformation is a strategic and genuine priority, often due to new leadership, mergers, or market dynamics.

Joining Brand Council as an equity partner in 2011, Trudi has over 25 years’ experience working in senior management roles for global agencies and brand strategy firms. Previous roles include Managing Director at Cato Purnell Partners, and eight years with M&C Saatchi where her favourite project was the global launch of 100% Pure New Zealand.

In addition to her commercial work, Trudi values the time she devotes to working with Redkite and other not for profit organisations.

Peta Quirk

Strategy Partner & Owner

Peta enjoys working with clients who are ready to step into change by helping them become more connected and culturally sound, with the ultimate goal of making the business more meaningful and successful.

Prior to becoming an equity partner at Brand Council in 2020, Peta worked in agencies in both strategy and research roles. She has facilitated large scale brand positioning projects, including communications and advertising strategy, brand health trackers, consumer research, and internal engagement programs, across local and global markets.

Peta is a graduate of the University of Sydney, having completed a Bachelor of Advanced Science and Commerce (Honours) majoring in Economics, Marketing and Biology.

Our Purpose

Transform organisations by putting purpose into practice.

Our Values

Our values underpin our purpose. They keep us aligned, engaged, and inspired.

Proudly nerdy

We love data and research, asking the right questions, academic rigour, digging deep, solving complex problems, and working with new industries. We are eternally curious. We love learning, growing, sharing, and developing ourselves and our team.

Ingenuity

Imagination, innovative thinking, and creativity can change the world and we do what we can to enable it. Ingenuity drives connection, stimulation, and improvement, and often requires bravery. We are open to diverse perspectives and creative concepts that deliver sound strategic outcomes. We seek out ingenuity in all its forms.

Practice what we preach

We are proudly purpose-led. We live and breathe our own purpose, values, and beliefs in our work ethic and everyday interactions. We make ethical decisions and only work with organisations that add meaningful value to the world.

Care deeply

We want our work to have a positive impact. We are open, honest, and vulnerable, and believe that good things come from genuine care and commitment. We care deeply about our clients as individuals and as business leaders. We care about the quality of our work, the experience of working with us, and the impact our work has on our client’s business and their staff, stakeholders, customers, and community.

“Brand Council has been instrumental in developing the DuluxGroup core purpose. They methodically and strategically worked across all levels of the organisation to capture – who we are; what we stand for; and why we do what we do – into a unifying core purpose ‘Imagine a Better Place’. The true test of their work is that, almost a decade later, our Core Purpose has endured, strengthened and is ingrained into the psyche at all levels of the organisation.”

Pat Houlihan | CEO & Chairman DuluxGroup, Chairman MCRI

"Brand Council have helped us clarify our brand architecture, reinvent Hard Yakka and KingGee, and provided strategic guidance on two additional brands. This has resulted in significant tangible results for our business. We enjoy working with Trudi and Peta and value their opinion and expertise."

Doug Swan | Group General Manager Workwear Group

"The key to Brand Council’s success is their process. They took the time to understand the market in which we operate, where we wanted to position the fund, and what we needed to do to reach that position. In this way, Brand Council encouraged us to discover our brand by finding and telling our own story. The most important element in Brand Council’s process is proof. They have not made any recommendations without evidence. Brand Council are genuine partners on the ‘brand journey’."

Michael Dwyer AM | Former CEO First State Super, Chairman UNHCR, Board Director

"Together they are a great team who are hands on, taking full responsibility for the work – it is rare to find an agency as experienced and professional who will actually get in and do the work at grass roots level themselves."

Alison Brink | Goodman Group GM Marketing & Communications

"The work Brand Council have done to engage staff across the agency, distil and define a clear and motivating brand purpose, and then help to communicate and inculcate that purpose internally has been invaluable."

Commissioner Paul Baxter | Fire and Rescue NSW

"Over many years, Brand Council have led three brand strategy projects for Redkite. What has been consistent throughout is a highly effective approach to brand strategy and a level of care and passion that you don’t often see. Trudi has become part of the fabric of our organisation and a trusted adviser. She puts her heart into making the Redkite brand what it needs to be so that no family faces their child’s cancer alone."

Monique Keighery | Chief Executive Officer, Redkite

"Our staff’s enthusiasm, energy and ideas have been amazing. We have a single set of Beliefs, Values and one common Purpose – and it’s all come directly from our staff."

Andrew Richardson | Aruma CEO

"Brand Council has continued to work with us in an ongoing capacity to define the purpose strategy for our individual businesses, including Selleys, B&D, Lincoln Sentry and Yates. They are a trusted advisor and provide sound counsel."

Pat Houlihan | Chairman and CEO DuluxGroup, Chairman MCRI

"I have been the leading executive on a number of engagements with Brand Council including IAG, BOQ & AIM. I subscribe to Brand Council’s philosophy that alignment between the brand message and brand experience is essential for business success. It is through their refined process that I have seen the cultural and behavioural change required to not only ensure this alignment is possible, but more importantly that it is implemented. I am pleased to endorse the people and process at Brand Council and commend them to any business looking to re-engage staff and customers."

Daniel Musson | CEO and C-suite client at BOQ, IAG & AIM

Meet our clients