Sharp Sharp creative developed BrandSeed, an AI-assisted tool designed to make brand strategy faster and more accessible for creative agencies, while strengthening the agency’s own processes and capabilities.
The challenge
Sharp Sharp is a London-based design agency that combines creativity with an inclusive, evidence-led approach, involving clients directly in the creative process and grounding projects in audience research and testing.
Like many small creative businesses, Sharp Sharp found that client projects often surfaced a deeper need: an updated brand strategy. Yet the agency's own SME clients rarely had the in-house expertise, time, or budget to commission a specialist brand strategy consultant, whose fees can run into several thousand pounds. Without a clear strategy in place, marketing work risked limited long-term impact or even diluting the client's brand over time.
Sharp Sharp's founder, Steve McInerny, set out to solve this by building BrandSeed: a self-service, AI-assisted tool to help creative agencies and their clients develop effective brand strategy quickly and affordably. Having never taken a startup product to market before, he needed structured business and technical guidance to get the idea off the ground.
The BIG Growth Innovation Programme support
Through the UKSPF BIG Growth Innovation Programme, London South Bank University provided Sharp Sharp with a five-month programme of business mentoring, consultancy, and project management support, running from August to December 2024 and delivered by Associate Professor Lucia Otoyo of the LSBU School of Engineering.
The engagement combined regular one-to-one consultancy with a structured programme of activity, including:
- Review of Sharp Sharp's business plan and current project management processes and tools
- An agile workshop to set up new working processes
- Eleven fortnightly progress review meetings and two in-depth 90-day cycle reviews
- A parallel website development project delivered by a team of LSBU students over six weeks
Steve McInerny and his then-collaborator Josh Dawson met with Professor Otoyo regularly throughout, reviewing progress, testing assumptions, and adjusting plans as the project evolved. The engagement concluded with a soft launch of the BrandSeed platform, gathering real-world usability data ahead of a fuller product launch.
“The consultancy work provided through LSBU and the BIG Growth Innovation Programme was invaluable in providing assurance about our business development processes, challenging us where necessary and spotting any gaps and blind spots in our thinking. I'm very grateful for the support.”
— Steve McInerny, Founder, Sharp Sharp Creative Ltd
Results and impact
The support helped Sharp Sharp put in place new, more efficient processes underpinning its AI-assisted brand strategy offering, contributing to measurable gains in gross value added per hour worked and per worker. By automating key steps of the brand strategy process, the business achieved reduced manual labour hours, faster turnaround on client deliverables, and cost savings from reduced reliance on labour-intensive manual work.
While the standalone BrandSeed product has not yet gained traction with its original target audience of creative and marketing agencies, Sharp Sharp has put the underlying tool to direct use applying it across roughly four of its own client brand strategy projects to date, enabling Steve to focus his time on strategic thinking around the client's brand.
Through the project, Steve McInerny also developed new skills in product development, AI, and no-code automation, which he plans to draw on to expand Sharp Sharp's service offering to clients.
Future plans
Sharp Sharp is now exploring a pivot for BrandSeed, and is making use of advances in AI tooling since the original project's completion.
Reflections from the LSBU Project Team
Alex Hokin and Anna Kulhan supported the engagement throughout, from the initial scoping and Collaboration Agreement through to the programme's progress reviews and final case study.
“Working with Sharp Sharp was a good example of how structured mentoring can give an early-stage founder the confidence and rigour to test an idea properly. Lucia's consultancy gave Steve a clear framework to stress-test his business assumptions, and the programme's regular review cycle meant we could adapt the support as the project's direction evolved.”
— Alex Hokin, Project Team, London South Bank University
“This project showed the value of pairing hands-on academic mentoring with practical delivery support. Even though the BrandSeed platform itself didn't scale as originally envisaged, Sharp Sharp came away with a validated process and tool that's now delivering real time savings in their day-to-day client work which is ultimately what the programme is there to achieve.”
— Anna Kulhan, Project Team, London South Bank University
About the programme
The BIG Growth Innovation Programme connects South London businesses with academic expertise from London South Bank University and partner universities, delivering tailored collaborative support to help businesses innovate and grow. The programme is funded through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) by the Greater London Authority. The aim of the UKSPF was to improve pride in place and increase life chances across the UK by investing in communities and place, supporting local businesses, and developing people and skills.
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