Brand & Commercial Heritage Research
Heritage marketing is a relatively new discipline, first recognised in the mid-2000s. It explores how a brand’s past can strengthen its present and future. Over the years, many of my clients benefited from my heritage-oriented work: Ronson, Collinson, Priority Pass, L’Escargot, The Eccentric Club, I have also been an Hon Archivist at The Savile Club and The Arts Club.
Far more than nostalgia, it is about uncovering the real stories, values, and achievements that have shaped a business and demonstrate its integrity. Using them strategically can help to inspire trust, loyalty, and differentiation.
For employees, heritage marketing provides a powerful sense of identity and purpose. When people understand the legacy they are part of, they become more engaged, motivated, and loyal. For clients and customers, it signals authenticity and continuity: proof that a brand is not simply following trends but grounded in something enduring. Investors, partners, and the wider public also respond to heritage, as it adds credibility and long-term reassurance.
Commercial heritage marketing goes further, treating history as an active business asset. Properly researched and presented, it can add up to 35% to brand value. It fuels brand positioning, strengthens messaging, and provides unique, fresh content for campaigns, anniversaries, and storytelling. It can also support intellectual property protection by evidencing provenance and originality.
My work in this field involves researching company archives, real estate history, and family genealogy to reveal authentic and verifiable narratives. These are then translated into communications strategies, from brand positioning to media campaigns, that transform legacy into a living advantage.
Heritage marketing ensures that a brand speaks not only to the present but also to its future. It builds loyalty, deepens trust, and secures reputation across generations.
Far more than nostalgia, it is about uncovering the real stories, values, and achievements that have shaped a business and demonstrate its integrity. Using them strategically can help to inspire trust, loyalty, and differentiation.
For employees, heritage marketing provides a powerful sense of identity and purpose. When people understand the legacy they are part of, they become more engaged, motivated, and loyal. For clients and customers, it signals authenticity and continuity: proof that a brand is not simply following trends but grounded in something enduring. Investors, partners, and the wider public also respond to heritage, as it adds credibility and long-term reassurance.
Commercial heritage marketing goes further, treating history as an active business asset. Properly researched and presented, it can add up to 35% to brand value. It fuels brand positioning, strengthens messaging, and provides unique, fresh content for campaigns, anniversaries, and storytelling. It can also support intellectual property protection by evidencing provenance and originality.
My work in this field involves researching company archives, real estate history, and family genealogy to reveal authentic and verifiable narratives. These are then translated into communications strategies, from brand positioning to media campaigns, that transform legacy into a living advantage.
Heritage marketing ensures that a brand speaks not only to the present but also to its future. It builds loyalty, deepens trust, and secures reputation across generations.
So, Why Hire Me?
Here’s why: on average, only between 10% and 25% of archival materials worldwide are digitised and accessible online (depending on the country and industry). The vast majority remains in physical archives and libraries (and daily some get damaged and lost). My work draws on both — I research digitised records but also handle original documents, cross-referencing findings to verify their accuracy.
Even sources regarded as “reputable” can prove unreliable, so verification is essential.
Here’s an example. A period property developer asked me to look into the history of the private members' club Morton’s at 28 Berkeley Square. Not the historical building, but the club itself. While researching its history, I couldn’t find any reliable online record of its founder or its founding date. There were repeated references to the “Bentley Boys” of the 1920s-1930s who lived and partied there, but in reality, the club was established much later and had nothing to do with them.
The Telegraph reported in 2001 that Morton’s was started in 1972 by a “Ferrari driver Peter Morton” — yet no such racing driver ever existed, neither in F1 nor in Le Mans (although there was a John Morton, unrelated). In 2007, the same paper claimed that American Peter Morton founded the club in 1976, without further details. There's more than one American with that name...
After scrupulous research, I established the facts: the club grew out of Morton’s Restaurant and Bar, which opened in 1974 when Peter Morton, co-founder of the famous Hard Rock Café, leased 28 Berkeley Square. He sold it three years later. He never considered this venture a success and omitted it from his own biography. In just 50 years, his legacy was forgotten. Yet for the period property developers or anyone starting a similar hospitality business at this address, this historic link is invaluable. Incidentally, Morton still loves driving a Ferrari, but as a motor enthusiast, not a racing driver.
Having a verifiable heritage in a world full of made-up stories is priceless. Won’t you agree?