BeenThereDoneThat: three brains, nine answers, one better brief

Carlsberg had a peculiar marketing problem. Its famous boast had become something customers could argue with. In 2018, as drinkers encountered more alternatives, the brewer needed people to reconsider the beer. BeenThereDoneThat helped open up a rather impolite possibility: perhaps the old promise belonged in the dock.

The boast that needed a question mark

In a London Business School interview, Giles Jepson described how BTDT framed Carlsberg’s challenge, agreed a brief and chose three experts. Each produced three solutions within 48 hours. The resulting possibilities included reversing the brand’s celebrated claim about being the world’s best beer. Jepson credited this approach with making that inversion possible.

The distinction matters. BTDT’s contribution was a way of thinking about the problem, within a wider marketing effort. Its lesson for another company is more interesting than a slogan: when the promise loses credibility, polishing the promise may be the wrong assignment. The uncomfortable question has to survive long enough to become a candidate answer.

That is the appeal of BeenThereDoneThat. It gives an organisation access to experience without assuming that experience must arrive inside one permanent agency team. It also gives disagreement a place in the process. Consensus is pleasant company. It can be a dreadful editor.

A recruitment business hiding inside a consultancy

The founders brought useful, different credentials. David Alberts had been a creative leader at Grey and had founded MoFilm. Ed Rogers had worked at McCann before building an advertising recruitment business. Recruitment taught him where experienced people were, and how a client might reach them differently. They launched BTDT in London in 2014.

The network became the central asset. A March 2020 trade report described more than 200 experts across 25 countries and a recently opened New York office. By February 2022, the company’s funding announcement described over 300 thinkers averaging 20 years of experience. These were network members, not hundreds of employees waiting at desks.

A small core can therefore assemble a larger range of perspectives. The difficult work moves into selection: who understands this category, who will challenge its assumptions, and who can make an idea useful? A directory alone would leave those questions with the customer. BTDT sells the managed process around the people.

The brief earns its keep

Today, its process has three stages: reframe, reimagine and realize. SOLVE handles problem definition; MATCH supports expert casting. The final stage develops assets, frameworks and playbooks from the chosen direction. BTDT says SOLVE has been used on more than 900 projects. That is a company-reported measure of usage, rather than a promise of results.

SOLVE’s five areas cover the situation, obstacles and opportunity, landscape, viewpoint and endframe. The sequence makes the brief a piece of shared work. Marketing leaders and agency partners can finish in a workshop with the same understanding of the assignment. That matters when a new idea has to travel through people who were absent from the original conversation.

The services cover category innovation, brand building and marketing capability development. A business might need a category roadmap, a clearer positioning or training that helps its own people write stronger briefs. Its client roster includes Google, PepsiCo, Unilever and the Ad Council. The website explicitly welcomes in-house agencies and brands backed by private equity or venture capital.

Clients can buy ideas on demand, bespoke projects led by a chief strategy officer, or people working inside their organisation. This places BTDT between brand consulting, creative strategy and senior freelance support. Its stated separation of strategy from execution aims to reduce the temptation to recommend whichever answer feeds a supplier’s production business.

For a buyer, cost belongs in the scope. Ask for a quote that spells out the thinking rounds, senior involvement, deliverables and implementation support. Compare that assignment with the internal time and external work it replaces. Faster ideas can still become expensive if everyone needs another meeting before anyone can choose.

Speed needs someone willing to decide

Some of the evidence is delightfully concrete. On BTDT’s website, Unilever’s Pete Harbour says a new ice cream brand was developed in nine days and sold into supermarkets on day ten. Read that as a client account of brand development and retailer acceptance. It is no reason to assume factories, distribution and consumer demand can be conjured on the same timetable.

“For many years, the agency model has not enabled the ideal conditions for creativity”Giles Jepson, London Business School interview

The money behind the model is concrete too. The February 2022 announcement reported $6.5 million, including $6.3 million from Beringea, for talent, infrastructure and technology. Later that year, an India partnership with Rediffusion and Sandeep Goyal added a route into another market. Funding and partnerships indicate expansion plans; they do not establish customer outcomes.

BTDT’s November 2025 newsletter offered another kind of evidence: responses from 857 leaders. Its own execution index scored teams that skipped problem definition at 49 and those that aligned first at 72. The association is useful to discuss, but the survey does not show that buying BTDT causes a 23-point improvement.

The choice of engagement should follow the bottleneck. A team short of alternative routes can consider an ideas assignment. A team needing an answer developed into a playbook can examine a project. Where the missing ingredient is continuing senior judgement inside the business, the people option becomes relevant.

The model asks something of the customer. Leaders must permit the brief to change, make decisions and give someone responsibility for delivery. A team seeking only execution of a settled plan may need a different supplier. More outside perspectives will offer little relief if the organisation treats every uncomfortable answer as inadmissible.

Borrow the argument, then borrow the method

The easiest thing to copy is the pause. BTDT recommends a 30-minute framing session before brainstorming. Put the problem and a measure of success on one page. Ask which assumptions are doing the most work. Have people form views independently before the group starts editing them into agreement.

Its recent writing adds a useful wrinkle to the speed story. AI can accelerate research and workflow, while original strategy still needs people to wrestle with a point of view. The consultancy’s interview with Debbie Millman argues for protecting that formation of judgement. The blank page remains inconvenient. Buying answers becomes much more useful once somebody has decided what question belongs on it.