Chris Endersby & Mickey Wilson
Most B2B businesses sell something genuinely different, then describe it in language that sounds like everyone else. Sameness feels safe, but it quietly erodes pricing power and gives buyers no real reason to choose. The harder task is finding the difference a company already holds and making a market actually feel it.
Chris and Mickey, founders of brand consultancy Firestarter, help B2B scale-ups turn a hard-to-copy difference into pricing power and growth.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Chris and Mickey
- Brand decisions get tested against how buyers actually think, because a creative director and a business psychologist run the same brief together.
- They show leadership exactly where sameness is costing pricing power, and where a defensible difference already sits unused inside the business.
- Their DARE method gives a repeatable test for whether a brand will command a premium, not just whether it looks current.
- They work the specific problem of the AI era: building a brand faster with generative tools without producing the generic output that makes a company replaceable.
Biography highlights
- Co-founders of Firestarter, a London brand consultancy with a design studio in Cape Town, working with B2B scale-ups across the UK, Europe, and beyond.
- Mickey Wilson founded her first creative agency at 21 and has spent over 30 years in brand, with clients including Tesco, Samsung, Ocado, and CIMA.
- Dr Chris Endersby is a business psychologist with an MBA from Imperial College London, who led change programmes for JP Morgan, KPMG, UBS, and Barclays.
- Creators of the DARE framework: Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, and Expression.
- Co-authors of the forthcoming book BRANDFIRE.
Biography
A brand can now be generated in days. That speed carries a cost. Across B2B markets, companies are converging on the same claims and the same visual language, and buyers lose any real reason to choose one over another. Firestarter, the London consultancy Chris and Mickey run, was built to reverse that drift.
Their method pairs two instincts that rarely meet. Mickey Wilson brings over 30 years of brand work for names such as Tesco, Samsung, and Ocado. Her instinct is for what makes a business unlike its rivals. Dr Chris Endersby, a business psychologist who ran change programmes inside JP Morgan, KPMG, and Barclays, brings the evidence for why those differences move buyers.
Their case is plainly commercial. A business that looks and sounds like its competitors ends up competing on price, and margin leaks away. The DARE framework, Differentiation, Authenticity, Resonance, and Expression, gives leaders a way to judge whether a brand will command a premium or blend in.
On stage, they work as a double act. Mickey reads a room by instinct; Chris explains the psychology underneath the reaction. The thinking behind both is now set down in their forthcoming book, BRANDFIRE.
Key speaking topics
- Brand differentiation in B2B markets
- The psychology of buyer decisions
- Brand-led growth and pricing power
- Branding in the age of generative AI
- Authenticity and brand consistency
- Creative strategy for scale-ups
Ideal for
- Founders and CEOs of B2B scale-ups deciding how to stand apart in a crowded category
- CMOs and brand leads are under pressure to defend pricing and win consideration
- Boards and leadership teams are weighing how generative AI changes their brand and market position
Audience outcomes
- A clear read on where their brand currently sounds like everyone else, and what that is costing in price and consideration
- The DARE framework is a working test for whether a brand will command value
- A view on where generative AI helps build a brand and where it strips out what makes the brand worth choosing
- The psychological drivers behind B2B buying decisions, and how to align a brand to them
Talks
How businesses slide into a “me too” sameness, and what that drift costs them in pricing power and growth.
Key takeaways:
- The psychological and commercial pressures that push companies toward looking like their competitors
- The difference between surface, structural, and emotional differentiation
- How to find the distinctive value a business already holds, rather than inventing a new one
How to use generative AI to build a brand at speed without producing the generic output that makes a company easy to overlook.
Key takeaways:
- The DARE framework as a route from generic instigator to chosen brand
- Where a brand sits on the Brand Maturity Scale and what is holding it back
- When to use AI to accelerate brand building and when to keep it out
Why a brand is experienced differently depending on how deeply someone engages with it, and how to keep it aligned at every depth.
Key takeaways:
- The Brand Lake model and why shallow and deep engagement produce different impressions
- How small misalignments between belief, values, and behaviour create hesitation and lost trust
- How to build a brand from the inside out so it holds together as the business grows
Why relevance gets a B2B brand considered while resonance is what gets it chosen, and how to build that resonance deliberately.
Key takeaways:
- The Four Cardinal Drivers behind what an audience truly cares about
- Why broad appeal weakens traction and how focus increases it
- The hidden forces behind buyer inertia, and why strong propositions still fail to convert