Creative direction applied to business problems.
Creativity and innovation consultancy. We sit at the table with those who decide, we look at the problem and design the solution: business model, product, brand or partnership.
Diagnosis is not direction. And almost everyone delivers a diagnosis.
Companies today have more data than they can use. Management consultancy delivers efficiency analysis and recommendations. Agency delivers communication execution. Between the two there is a void: whoever transforms market and culture reading into a idea that changes the business.
This void is expensive. This is where correct and dull launches die, repositionings that only change the logo, and portfolios that grow without gaining meaning. There is no lack of information. There's no one to decide what to do with it.
This is the place of OFFICE — amano.
The three data points describe the same movement in a sector that we know well: value is migrating to those who design instead of those who produce at scale. Movement is not exclusive to furniture. It's the reason why creativity stopped being a marketing expense and became a margin variable.
We are creative direction, not management.
OFÍCIO — amano is the consultancy front of the house. We do not provide financial, administrative or process consultancy. We do consultancy creativity and innovation: We take a business problem and return a viable creative path to it.
This means that the sector matters less than the question. We have already worked in design, architecture, materials, fashion, gastronomy, hospitality, retail and incorporation, and the method works equally well in an industry, a service or an institution. What we bring is a cultural repertoire, trend reading and the ability to connect things that no one has yet connected.
The most honest comparison is not with a consultancy. It’s with a creative director who understands the business, sitting on your side of the table.
Sectors in which we already operate. The list describes the trajectory, not the limit: the method starts from the question, not the category.
We draw the plan. We don't do it for you.
Being explicit about this protects both sides. Our value lies in the formulation, and a consultancy that also executes tends to recommend what it knows how to execute.
We can monitor implementation as a board, and we often do. But monitoring is an extension of the work, never the work.
Four types of problem.
Every project enters through one of these doors. Many go through more than one, because rarely is a product problem just a product problem.
How the company makes money and why it is becoming fragile. New revenue unit, migration from volume to value, offer architecture, entry into an adjacent category, expansion thesis.
What is designed, served, worn or inhabited. Product or line concept, materiality, experience design, commercial space, hospitality, packaging and ritual of use.
The place that the brand occupies in the mind of those who decide. Positioning territory, narrative, brand architecture, own content platform, building cultural authority.
Grow with those who already have what they lack. Design of authorial collaboration, co-branding, cultural sponsorship with measurable return, network of allies, own curatorial program.
Five moves.
The same sequence throughout the project, with depth proportional to the scope. Each movement has its own deliverable, so no one needs to wait for the end to see work.
Immersion in business and the field. Interviews with leadership, team and customers, visit to the operation and point of sale, reading symbolic competition and the sector's cultural repertoire. This gives a picture of where the company really is.
Problem redefinition. Almost every project arrives with the symptom instead of the cause: "we need a new product" is usually a supply, channel or narrative problem. This movement determines the value of all others.
Cross-referencing between the problem framed and market signals, behavior and culture, with sources classified by reliability. This is where the trend stops being a topic for a lecture and becomes a concrete implication for your business.
The creative part, which is the core of the work. Solution hypotheses, concepts, models and paths, always in more than one direction, with the cost and consequence of each one declared. Here we work in a joint session with the client.
Before delivering, the idea is compared: with sector experts, with market data and with the in-house network, which brings together decision-makers and prescribers from the territories in which we operate. What does not survive the confrontation does not enter the plan.
We close with the direction plan and a handover session for the team that will execute. If monitoring is hired, it starts from there, in meetings with a defined cadence.
What we work with.
Combined tools as per question. No project uses them all; every project declares which ones it used.
Continued presence at design weeks, biennials and fairs, from Milan and Venice to London, Shanghai, New York and Mexico City, transformed into a living archive of references and emerging movements.
In-depth interviews with decision-makers, prescribers, experts and end customers, conducted by us and not outsourced. Long-cycle programs track changes in behavior over the years.
All evidence is classified into three levels: reference consultancy, official source or statistics, and commercial market research. When two sources diverge, we declare the divergence instead of choosing the most convenient one.
amano — CLUB brings together a curated network of businesspeople, executives, architects, chefs, artists and collectors. It is a qualified panel to which we have direct access, capable of testing a hypothesis in days.
Construction of alternative futures for the sector, with advance signals associated with each scenario, so that the company knows not only what could happen, but what to observe to recognize that it is happening.
Working meetings with leadership, conducted by us, in which concepts are constructed together and not presented ready-made. It is the format that makes the solution adopted instead of archived.
What is hired, exactly.
Four formats, with defined scope, deadline and deliverables. The investment is presented by proposal, after the framing conversation.
A preliminary reading of your sector or issue, delivered before any commercial proposal. No cost and no obligation.
Deadline: 2 to 3 weeks.
Delivery: document of 15 to 25 pages with scenario, data with classified sources and the three to five questions that we consider decisive, plus a 1-hour feedback session.
Applied research on a sector, category, material or purchasing behavior, with practical implications for your operation.
Deadline: 5 to 8 weeks.
Delivery: complete study with declared source hierarchy, symbolic competition map, scenarios, 8 to 12 in-depth interviews and a 90-minute executive presentation.
The complete work: the five movements applied to a specific business, product, brand or partnership problem.
Deadline: 10 to 16 weeks.
Delivery: immersion with leadership and field, framework document, study of signs and trends, 3 to 5 management sessions conducted with your team, at least two solution paths designed with declared cost and consequence, management plan with priority, deadline and person responsible, and handover session for those who will execute.
Recurrent presence with the leadership, so that the management does not die during the presentation and the year's decisions have someone to consult.
Deadline: 12 months, renewable.
Delivery: 2-hour monthly meeting with leadership, two semi-annual reports on signs and movements in the sector, direct access between meetings for specific consultation, and agenda priority for urgent demands.
Formats can be combined. We also design custom scopes when the question does not fit into any of them, which happens frequently and is welcome.
Questions that come to us.
The type of problem that comes through this door, and the form the response usually takes.
It becomes a work on brand territory and offer architecture: where there is unoccupied symbolic space, what needs to change in the product to sustain this place, and which line enters and which leaves.
It becomes a reading of sector signals crossed with the real capacity of your operation, and ends in product concepts designed with materiality, audience and price thesis, not a list of ideas.
It becomes an experience design: what the space communicates before someone speaks, the visit itinerary, the service ritual and what needs to exist there that does not exist today.
It becomes a program design: which cultural territory actually belongs to the brand, which format generates relationships instead of exposure, and how to measure return other than media reach.
It becomes the architecture of relationships with prescribers: what needs to be produced, how often, in what format, and which doors the house network can open at the start.
It becomes a reconstruction of brand narrative and architecture, including what to do with sub-brands, inherited lines and acquisitions that were never integrated into the discourse.
The previous study.
Almost all of our relationships start the same way: a framing conversation, and then a preliminary study of your sector or issue, delivered at no cost and without obligation.
It is not a commercial courtesy. It is a demonstration of a method. Anyone who reads a previous study already knows how we think, how deeply we work and whether there is enough affinity to follow. The conversation that follows begins much further ahead.
Every source used in our studies is classified into three levels: reference consultancy, official or statistical source, and commercial market research. The classification appears in the document. We prefer to declare the solidity of what we say rather than affirm it with apparent solidity.
Tell us which sector or issue interests you and we will prepare a preliminary reading. It's how almost all of our relationships begin.
No cost and no obligation. You receive a document with scenario reading, data with classified sources and the issues that we consider decisive.
No. The method starts from the question, not the category. Design, architecture and materials are where we have the most accumulated repertoire, but we have already worked with industry, fashion, gastronomy, hospitality, retail and institutions. If the problem requires a creative solution, it fits here.
Agency executes communication. We formulate direction before there is anything to communicate: business model, product, positioning, partnership. We do not produce campaigns or operate media, and this separation is deliberate: those who execute tend to recommend what they know how to execute.
Management consultancy optimizes what already exists: process, cost, structure, efficiency. We work on what does not yet exist. We are hired when the right answer is not to do better, but to do something else.
No. We design the plan and pass it on to whoever will execute it, be it an internal team, agency or supplier. We can monitor the execution as advice, in the format of a creative advice, but the monitoring is an extension of the work and never the work.
Preliminary study: 2 to 3 weeks. Territory study: 5 to 8 weeks. Creative project direction: 10 to 16 weeks. Creative advice: 12 month cycle. Tailor-made scopes are dimensioned in the proposal.
By project, with scope and deliverables closed in a proposal, or by cycle, in the case of the creative council. The value is presented after the framing conversation, when we already know the real size of the problem. There is no cost for prior study.
Yes. It is our investment in the quality of the conversation. If there is affinity, we present a formal proposal. If not, the study remains yours.
The two partners. The direction of OFFICE — amano is by Marcus Yabe, whose vocation is strategy and creativity, and Adriano Tadeu Barbosa enters into every project with cultural reading and field research. Specialists are called on a project basis when the topic requires it, always identified to the client.
Every relationship starts with a conversation. Tell us the context and the challenge, and we will respond with an initial reading of the scenario.
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