Making aviation brands CHOSEN.
Strategy that sells. Content that connects. A strategic and creative consultancy that turns aviation credibility into commercial advantage.
Kangae, 考え, means thought, and idea. In a market that shouts, we think.
I called it Kangae, 考え, the Japanese for thought and idea. It was deliberate: thought becomes strategy, idea becomes content, and in a market that shouts, I'd rather think.
Attention is easy to buy and easy to lose. Being chosen is harder, and it's the only thing that lasts.
Three decades in brand, advertising, direct, data, digital and now AI taught me what moves people. Then I spent seven years living it, flying the backcountry, and five years documenting it, building Hinterland Pilot from a farm strip in the Midlands into an audience that reaches far beyond its own following, most of it overseas. It's the method running live, not a case study I borrowed.
So when I work with an aviation brand, I start where the advantage is really decided: what you mean, and to whom, and why anyone would choose you over the noise. Strategy and content grow from that answer. Everything else follows.
THE THOUGHT
The best-built brands in aviation are often the least CHOSEN.
Aviation is an industry rich in engineering and quiet about everything else. The best businesses build extraordinary things, then compete almost entirely on specification. And specifications matter; every serious buyer reads them. But a spec sheet confirms a decision. It rarely creates one, and it does almost nothing to bring new people in.
So credibility is everywhere, and desire is rare. Being respected is not the same as being chosen, and the distance between the two is where growth is won or lost. It is almost never an engineering problem.
Kangae exists to close that gap. In a market that shouts, we think.
Growth isn't luck. It's altitude gained deliberately — three moves, in order.
THE APPROACH
01
STRATEGY
Strategy that sells
Every engagement begins with the commercial thinking: who the brand is for, why they should care, and what advantage actually looks like. Not a deck that gathers dust but a clear plan built to move the business, grounded in what your customer genuinely wants.
COMMERCIAL ADVANTAGE, BY DESIGN
02
CONTENT
Content that connects
Then the idea does the work. I find the point of view only you can hold, and put the people who actually know the field in front of the camera, because in aviation credibility can't be outsourced to a studio. I build for the people who don't yet follow you, because that is the reach that grows a market rather than flattering the one you already have. It's the leap from insight to something people genuinely want to watch. For Swissquote, that leap was uncovering the parallels with Manchester United and landing on a single proposition: Take the Lead.
AWARENESS THAT MEANS SOMETHING
03
ADVANTAGE
Known, chosen, hard to ignore
The two compound into position. The brand becomes preferred, and hard for competitors to unseat. This is the point where marketing stops being a cost and becomes an asset. That is what being chosen is worth.
THE COMMERCIAL PAYOFF
STRAIGHT ANSWERS
The problem is rarely where you think it is.
Most brands come to me wanting better marketing. Sometimes that's the answer. Often it isn't the real issue is the proposition, or the sales process, or something operational no campaign can fix. Thirty-five years across marketing and business turnaround means I can spot the difference, and I'll tell you straight.
An agency has every reason to tell you the problem is the thing they sell. I'd rather fix what's actually holding you back than sell you what's easy to sell.
Hinterland Pilot is my own backcountry-flying brand. I've flown the life for seven years and documented it for five: filming since 2021, writing for the Flying Farmers since the same year, over 400 posts on Instagram and more than a hundred films on YouTube. Flying an Aviat Husky, on a Hartzell propeller and Alaskan Bushwheels, using the exact approach KANGAE brings to clients. Calm, considered, unhurried storytelling that outperforms the adrenaline everyone else is selling.
I never ran it as a growth machine. No paid promotion, no chasing the algorithm, just the work, published honestly. And it still reaches hundreds of thousands of people who never followed me. That is what the method does when it's barely trying, in a specialist market too small and too expert to win any other way. I'm now giving it the focus it never had, and you get to watch it climb.
I'm not advising from the stands. I stake my own name and my own market on this method every week, which is the one thing an agency, or an algorithm, can't.
It isn't a case study I'm quoting. It's the method running live, in a real market, with real numbers behind it, before a client ever signs.
I don't just advise on building audiences. I've done it in public.
PROOF, NOT THEORY
PROOF, SHOW, DON’T TELL
0→
BUILT FROM A STANDING START
419K
VIEWS · ONE SHORT
129K
VIEWS · SINGLE FILM
500+
HOURS WATCHED
No paid promotion · not a single pound of spend.
THE BACKGROUND
Thirty-five years of building brands, now pointed entirely at aviation.
The strategy is the same discipline that has revived brands and shaped propositions across some of the most competitive markets there are. What's changed is the focus.
200+
Businesses advised
From FTSE-listed corporates to ambitious founder-led companies: brand strategy, proposition development, data, digital, AI and senior leadership advisory.
£30m
Venture built, not just advised
Co-founded DiscoverU, a music-discovery platform that secured £30m of committed investment. The same muscle: turning an idea into an audience.
8
Sectors, one discipline
Banking, sport, automotive, retail, technology, entertainment and government.
BMW, the BBC, Tesco, Barclays, Microsoft, the Football Association. I name them because you'd know them, not because they're the point. Seven sectors built the judgement. The eighth is aviation. I've worked there too, with United Airlines, and it's where all of it now points.
Exit
Built, and sold
Founded a strategic and creative agency and sold it to a leading UK communications group. Brand value created, then realised. Growth here isn't only advised; it's been done, and bought.
The people who build brands, on working with Edmund.
IN THEIR WORDS
Over three years, Ed shaped FDM Group's brand and cultural values, defined its positioning, and designed and built its global in-house marketing, communications and creative agency. Its Chief Operating Officer on the work:
“He took the time to really understand our business, then guided and coached our teams, and in the most commercially savvy way, he's a rule-breaker and an innovator. Different leads to exceptional. It truly works.”
Sheila Flavell CBE · Chief Operating Officer, FDM Group
PROOF, SHOW, DON’T TELL
SWISSQUOTE
Marc Bürki
Co-founder & CEO — the bank that pioneered online banking
“He understands how a company really works and its people, in a very professional way, appreciated by everyone.”
SWISSQUOTE · “TAKE THE LEAD”
“Edmund's expertise was essential in uncovering the parallels between Swissquote and Manchester United, leading to an aspirational proposition: Take the Lead.”
Jan De Schepper · Executive Board & Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Swissquote
WHO IT'S FOR
Built for aviation brands that deserve to be better recognised.
Built for aviation brands that deserve to be chosen, not just respected.
Aviation is a small world with a long supply chain, and I've spent years inside it rather than looking in. So whether you build the airframe or sell the fuel that fills it, I already know the audience you're speaking to, because I'm part of it. That's the whole proposition: strategy from someone who understands your market and your machinery both, aimed at commercial advantage across the whole business, not just the marketing team.
Manufacturers & makers · Airframes, engines, props, avionics, wheels and tyres, the kit that flies
Brands & marques · Heritage names and challengers alike
Training & academies · Turning reputation into enrolment
Destinations & events · Airfields, fuel stops, airshows, festivals, experiences
Media & channels · The titles, films and platforms your market actually follows
If your business flies, supplies, trains, hosts or covers this world, my job is to make it the one that gets chosen.