Brand Strategy Fellow

Liminal•Boston, MA

13h

About The Position

This role involves building brands from scratch for founders who are starting new companies. It is not about brand refreshes or extensions, but about creating entirely new brands that need to become impactful quickly. The position is described as applied semiotics, requiring an understanding of why certain brands resonate culturally. The fellow will architect entire brand identities, including audience personas, brand models, positioning, personality, naming, messaging, and visual direction. While partnering with designers for visual execution, the focus is on strategy and storytelling, demanding exquisite taste cultivated through broad consumption of culture (literature, design, film, architecture, music, menus, memes). The role requires working across multiple ventures simultaneously, necessitating rapid context-switching between different industries, audiences, and problem spaces.

Requirements

Deep cultural knowledge across history, literature, art, pop culture, and subculture, with the ability to connect dots across domains.
Exquisite taste, demonstrated by a keen eye for detail (e.g., typography) and the ability to articulate why something resonates.
Real writing ability, capable of producing clear, compelling, and concise copy for positioning documents, brand narratives, messaging frameworks, and taglines.
Strategic clarity, with the ability to distill complex founder visions into concise positioning statements.
Comfort with ambiguity and zero-to-one environments.
A contrarian streak, with the ability to think independently, argue from first principles, and engage in open debate.
12-month commitment.

Nice To Haves

Serious visual design chops, such as a RISD degree, experience designing typefaces, or art direction at a magazine.

Responsibilities

Build the strategic foundation for each venture's brand from scratch, including target audience definition, competitive context mapping, positioning frameworks, and brand personality models.
Craft brand narratives, tone of voice guidelines, taglines, value propositions, and core copy.
Develop and evaluate naming candidates considering linguistic, cultural, and legal aspects.
Guide designers on visual identity, including logo direction, color systems, typography selection, imagery style, and overall brand expression.
Develop audience personas grounded in real cultural behavior, drawing on anthropology, semiotics, behavioral psychology, and cultural literacy.
Maintain coherent brand systems as ventures evolve and contribute to shaping Liminal's own brand.