Case studies
The clients on this page didn't have a demographic and a hunch to sell.
Find the brand that looks like yours:
Running a brand → BuildoutRunning client brands → VelbyBuilding solo → Hoply
They had the hardest thing in marketing to make legible: a complex B2B product or service, an audience you can't even survey. An institutional capital consortium you can't cold-call. A closed business network. A capability assessment that's hard to explain in a sentence. A pre-launch aviation startup mid-pivot. Not consumer teapots – the briefs most tools can't carry. They chose the platform because the complexity is exactly what it's built for.
- 17
- distinct mindsets found beneath 6 assumed personas (Velby)
- 7 + 4
- buyer personas mapped for an audience you can't survey (ULTI)
- 5 wks
- from research to a live brand identity (ULTI)
- 41
- narratives found & scored – on our own brand
ULTI – a category for investors who think in centuries
Velby – one club, seventeen minds
Buildout – enterprise capability assessment
Hoply – a category from zero, mid-pivot
⌘ Creative Engines – "The hardest client we took on was ourselves."
ULTI – marketing a 100-year idea to people who think in quarters
ULTI (ultralongterm.org), founded by Michal Fonea Alexandron, is a strategic consortium for the world's longest-horizon investors – sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, endowments, family offices. The problem: systems governing trillions run on quarterly cycles, while the mandates of the people managing that capital are perpetual. The marketing problem underneath it: an audience you cannot reach. Trustees and CIOs don't shop for new investment concepts; their skepticism is a survival mechanism.
Find
- An audience you can't survey – mapped through expert workshops and AI digital twins of each target mindset.
- Calibrated against how this audience actually signals publicly.
- Result: 7 primary + 4 secondary personas – fears, objection patterns, engagement triggers.
Test
- Four narrative platforms stress-tested against those mindsets – fear, FOMO, duty, perspective.
- One core emotion surfaced (responsibility) – and one enemy: "the Tyranny of the Quarter."
- Messaging tested where testing on the real audience was impossible.
Install
- The proven narrative became the strategy's spine – an "invitation, not solicitation" go-to-market, in three phases.
- Four offer pillars; every page of website copy given a strategic job.
- A complete brand identity, live at ultralongterm.org – in five weeks.
Creative Engines on Creative Engines – we ran the platform on our own brand before we asked you to.
The challenge: an AI-marketing company is the easiest brand in the world to sound interchangeable. We had to find our own reason to buy – the same way you'll find yours.
- Find – 41 candidate narratives found and scored, on our own platform.
- Test – believability panels before anything shipped.
- Install – the winner governed as one source of truth; this homepage checks against it before it ships. That's why our own pages don't drift.
The kitchen proof: 100% of Creative Engines' own content ships through Creative Engines – including the deck that pitches it.
Creative Engines· our own client"The people we serve – trustees, sovereign-fund CIOs – are almost invisible online; they write nothing about what actually worries them. This work gave me the precise language, brand and visuals to finally speak to them – and start building a community you can't reach any other way."
"Before Hoply sold a single seat, we tested different versions of our story with real audiences across Europe on Meta – to see what actually works, not to guess. When our business model changed halfway, the strategy moved with it instead of starting from zero."