Brand strategy was supposed to make decisions simpler. Somewhere along the way it became a discipline of frameworks, phases, workshops and decks, and the idea at the end of it all got smaller as the process got bigger.
That is the starting point for Destrategise, the new book from Kevin Chesters and Mick Mahoney, published by BIS Publishers on 19 November 2026 in the UK, with a US edition following on 13 April 2027. It is the pair’s second book together after The Creative Nudge, and it turns the same instinct for simplicity on the strategy process itself.
What the book argues
The publisher’s summary puts it plainly: brand strategy has become unnecessarily complicated. Too many frameworks, too many steps, too much jargon. The book’s answer is not another framework. It is a way of getting to a clear, usable brand position by answering three deceptively simple questions.
The second argument matters just as much. Strategy and creativity are usually kept in separate rooms, with one handed to the other when it is “finished”. Destrategise makes the case that the best ideas come from connection and collaboration between the two, and that separating them is one of the reasons so much strategy never turns into anything anyone notices.
If you have read Kevin’s piece on why creativity is a commercial skill rather than a department, you will recognise the thread. Creativity sits upstream of strategy, not downstream of it. This book is the strategy-side version of that argument.
Who wrote it
Kevin Chesters has been Chief Strategy Officer at Wieden+Kennedy London, Dentsu and Ogilvy, and now works with global brands as a strategic consultant, keynote speaker and trainer. He is a TED speaker and lectures on creativity at universities including Oxford.
Mick Mahoney has spent more than thirty years in advertising as one of the UK’s most awarded creatives, with a Cannes Grand Prix, One Show Best in Show, and multiple Cannes Lions and D&AD Pencils. He is also the author of The Complete Creative Director.
Between them that is more than fifty years of doing the job, and the approach in the book is the one they have used and refined with clients over the last decade rather than a theory built for the page.
Who it is for
Destrategise is written for the people who have to make brand strategy work rather than admire it: marketing directors and CMOs, founders, agency strategists and creatives, and leadership teams who suspect their positioning work has produced a document rather than a decision.
If your organisation has a strategy that everyone signed off and nobody can repeat, this is the book for you.
The details
- Title: Destrategise. Why brand strategy has lost its way. And how creativity will save it.
- Authors: Kevin Chesters and Mick Mahoney
- Publisher: BIS Publishers
- Format: paperback, 176 pages
- ISBN: 9789063698065
- UK publication: 19 November 2026
- US publication: 13 April 2027
Where to pre-order
The UK edition is available to pre-order now from Waterstones and Amazon UK, and details are on the BIS Publishers site. Both of Kevin’s books are covered on the Author page.
Bringing the argument into your organisation
The ideas in Destrategise are also the basis of Kevin’s strategy consultancy and keynote work. If your team is wrestling with an over-engineered positioning process, or you want the case for simpler strategy made to a room of people who need to hear it, the shortest route is to get in touch.