I build brand systems for hypergrowth startups, identity, story, and the discipline to hold it together from pre-seed to IPO. Built once. Built to scale.
I’m Tom O’Keefe. I was Creative Director at New Relic from fifty employees through a $1.4B IPO, and I’ve shaped the brands of Microsoft, Adobe, Evite, and 150+ companies before and since.
I came up doing graffiti, which means I learned to judge what stops you in your tracks on a wall, long before I learned to judge it on a screen. The trends rotate. The eye is the part that doesn’t. The Brand Whisperer is that judgment, on call.
A few are under NDA. Most aren’t, ask.
The right number depends on your stage and what’s at stake, so we set it in the room, not on a page. Here’s where founders usually land.
A full identity system, pitch deck, site direction, and voice, the whole brand, built once so you don’t rebuild it at every round. Fixed scope. Fixed timeline.
Launches, positioning, employer brand, exec presence, everything that moves revenue, handled. Month to month. No retainer you can’t walk away from.
I embed as the head of brand you haven’t hired yet, setting the system, directing the work, holding the line as you scale. Priced to the outcome, not the hour.
Start with the audit. A seven-minute teardown of your current brand, logo, site, deck, messaging, scored out of 100, with the three things quietly costing you deals and talent. No pitch. Just the read.
Old deck got ghosted. New deck got term sheets in 48 hours. Same product.
Over many years I’ve worked with Tom on more than a dozen branding projects. He’s my go-to because the work is high quality, fast, and actually brings the company’s identity to life, the best and easiest design partner I’ve used.
Tom is an exceptional designer and creative director across brand, web, comms, and UX. Compelling vision paired with a hands-on, pragmatic approach that delivers high-quality work fast, and he defends his ideas thoughtfully. I’ve hired him for everything from identity systems to product UX.
The Brand Whisperer extends far beyond design, he considers the brand, the user interaction, and every detail to craft a truly world-class experience.
Most brands get torn down and rebuilt every eighteen months because nobody designed them to hold.
Yours won’t.
Or keep looking like every other startup. Your call.