Darya L.

I'm a brand strategist who blends evidence-based methodology with behavioural psychology and sharp creative thinking. I work from two questions with real research behind them, how brands actually grow and how people actually remember, drawing on the Ehrenberg-Bass tradition, behavioural science, and cognitive and consumer neuroscience, and translating it into strategy that survives real markets. 🔬 My strategic foundation draws on Ehrenberg-Bass Institute principles: measuring where a brand sits, diagnosing growth barriers, and building distinctive assets that drive long-term recognition. I layer in behavioural profiling, audience psychology, and narrative architecture because how people perceive, decide, and remember is at the centre of everything I build. I've worked on every side of the table, agencies, consulting, and as a founder who built and sold a DTC brand. That range shaped how I think: strategy has to survive contact with real markets, real budgets, and real customers. 🌍 Today I work with founders and brand teams across the EU, US, Canada, and Asia, health-tech, FMCG, retail, kidswear, apparel, legal, and wellness. My scope covers brand strategy and positioning, distinctive asset development, CEP mapping, competitive analysis, messaging architecture, storytelling frameworks, and go-to-market planning. I collaborate with your existing design team or bring in trusted designers, keeping execution aligned with the strategic direction. My earlier career was in London agencies, working across CSR campaigns for clients like FICO, British Airways, and UNICEF, and running user acquisition for accounts including Deliveroo, UberEats, and Playtika across European markets. This thinking also drives my research. Publishing as Darya Lebedeva-Gule, I'm the author of the working paper 'The Prediction Engine: Predictive Brand Encoding and the Music-Cognition Model of Brand Memory' (SSRN, 2026), which extends Ehrenberg-Bass thinking into how brands are encoded in memory. I'd love to talk if you're looking for strategy with both analytical backbone and creative depth.