Rowan Emslie is Chief Communications Officer at the Centre for Future Generations. He was previously Director of Communications at the Clean Air Task Force, and Head of Digital Public Affairs at Edelman Brussels.
We’ve worked with Rowan and his team for over two years, advising on their new name and brand strategy, building their visual identity and website, and working with them on an ongoing basis since.
The website was a 2026 Webby finalist in the ‘Best Visual Design – Function’ category, coming in second to Canva.
Tom: What was the problem? What was the challenge?
Rowan: The challenge we were facing was that people in the organisation were calling for a rebrand, but actually what they wanted was a brand. When I joined there was a logo and four colours, and that was it. No sense of identity or narrative. Not even a set mission and vision.
So the task was to create a brand that everyone could recognise and endorse, and then to create the infrastructure for that brand—a website as our core channel, and the other assets. But it all stemmed from the fact that there wasn’t anything to build on. We had to build that first.
Tom: Why did you hire us? What did we score well on?
Rowan: I used to work in a big agency, so I knew I didn’t need one. I wanted a company that could do really good websites, but also had a strong understanding of brand strategy. There’s not always a good crossover there. And I particularly wanted a company that understood the nonprofit world, because I know from being inside the machine, everything is designed towards “how do you solve problems for your customers, who are you selling to”… it’s all corporate, private sector language. It’s so baked into everybody’s thinking.
So if you’re the one non-private sector client in somebody’s portfolio, you get a reheated version of the private sector approach. What stood out about Cast from Clay was that they could talk us through how they’d done similar work, with similar organisations.
Tom: What was the hardest bit from an internal perspective?
Rowan: Anybody can make me a nice website. I need my consultancy to help me convince everybody we’re going in the right strategic direction. A big part of the work is setting me up to win the arguments I need to win internally to get to the decision points, so you need somebody with a strategic mindset to help me. Delivering the final result isn’t always the hardest thing; getting there is.
We’re a think and do tank. We specifically hire people with a lot of opinions. That can backfire when you have internal processes that ask for people’s opinions. We’re normally pointing those opinions outwards at policymakers, but occasionally you get them turned inwards—and then oh my god, there’s a lot of opinions to wrangle. Getting people to feel like they were having a say, but without it being design by committee, was the hardest point.
Tom: How did the team support you with that?
Rowan: The Cast from Clay team did hands-on sessions with our teams, which really helped, because it helps when it’s coming from an external voice and not from me. It feels like a fairer process. People feel they’re being listened to because there’s not a secret argument happening. It wouldn’t have happened without that.
The other part that really helped was gathering external data points: interviews with external stakeholders. Those quotes were really helpful, because for our people, data is a stronger argument than aesthetics. They want to hear: “our target audiences care about X, Y, and Z, and therefore we should make this decision.” That work was extremely important.
Tom: What does brand mean to you?
Rowan: The way I describe it to the team is: you work hard to do your research and get meetings with important people who can make decisions. You only get so many of those meetings, and they’re not very long. What you want is for the least amount of time to be taken up explaining who you are.
If it can be a five-minute intro versus a 20-minute interrogation of who you are, what you stand for, who’s behind you, and all this stuff about your reputation—then you get into the substance, and you might actually move the needle. It gives you more room to be effective. That’s the point of brand.
Tom: Did this work help achieve that?
Rowan: I was introduced to the US Trade Representative by a representative of a Singaporean investment bank at a private dinner in Brussels as “this guy helps run the coolest think tank in Brussels.” That’s all the result of us figuring out our brand. I hadn’t met either of those people before. That’s the reputation preceding you. That’s the whole point of doing this kind of work.
Tom: What would you hire us for, and what wouldn’t you hire us for?
Rowan: When people ask me about hiring consultancies, I ask them: what is your level of ambition? Are you talking about a reskinning of your website so that it just looks up to date? In which case, go somewhere cheaper.
But if what you want to do is (re)establish yourself, you’ve gone through some sort of change, you’re shifting focus, and you need a larger communication effort—that’s when you come to an organisation like Cast from Clay. If there’s a change management aspect, I really recommend them.
If you want to experiment, they are a good consultancy to do that with, because they like to bounce off ideas, try new stuff, and figure it out with you. If you’re looking for a practice partner, where you’ve got all these ideas and you need to make them real, Cast from Clay is where you want to go.
If you want to read another review, the next is with Kareem Makhlouf, Co-Founder and Chief of Staff at the New Lines Institute. If you would like to have an initial conversation with Tom, our CEO, to discuss a potential engagement, you can book a 15 minute call.