The Bold Branding Vision Behind Truene Creative – Exclusive Interview with Brooke Heydon

Brooke Heydon is a brand strategist and marketing communications expert, and the founder of Truene Creative, a specialist agency based in Kent, UK. With over a decade of experience and a First-Class Honours degree in Journalism, she helps businesses grow through clear messaging, bold identity, and strategic execution. Her work spans brand development, content strategy, and multi-platform marketing, with a focus on supporting small businesses. Brooke has recently applied to undertake a PhD exploring how micro and small enterprises build brand credibility in digital spaces, a subject shaped by her own hands-on agency experience.

Brooke Heydon, Marketing Director

Tell us about your business and how you approach marketing:

Well, it’s been a wild ride, occasionally chaotic, but entirely worth it. I run Truene Creative, a branding and marketing agency based in Whitstable, along the Kent coast. The name Truene is rooted in the Spanish verb “to thunder” – fitting, really, because we’re not in the business of Whispering.

Our name actually speaks to the core of what we do: helping businesses make impact, reach their audience and connect through the complete marketing mix – strategy, positioning, pricing, promotion and delivery. And we start from the beginning. The very beginning.

My non-negotiable is informed decision-making, and, if you ask old colleagues, possibly my most irritating quality. Picture me sifting through ROI by creative, dissecting social reach by platform, by day, by post, or interrogating every content pillar until the numbers tell a clear story. Glamorous? No. Essential? Absolutely. This work is what builds the best strategies, in my opinion. Numbers don’t lie.

When we onboard a new client, often the real problem they face isn’t a lack of ambition or instinct; it’s the absence of usable data. Or more accurately, the absence of attention to the data they already have. Because trust me, there’s always something. Customer behaviour. Platform shifts. What achieved engagement vs. what quietly flopped? It’s all there, if you know where to look (and have the patience to look properly).

We start at the beginning and audit as many moving parts as we can – market position, competitors, channels, touchpoints, and then run fresh intelligence-gathering. We’re like CSI – if you swap fingerprints for brand metrics, we probably don’t look as cool, though. Only once the facts are on the table do we build out the full marketing mix: product, price, place, promotion, and the extra Ps modern brands can’t ignore (people, process, proof). It’s how you build a strategy that actually sticks. I’ve done the legwork.

You’ve worked in a range of marketing roles, from local businesses to global teams. How does that shape your work today?

My career has been anything but linear, and for a while, I saw that as a flaw. In retrospect, it’s one of the greatest assets I bring to the table. Where a conventional path offers consistency, I’d say mine has delivered perspective and a sharper instinct for what works across different industries and audiences.

My career began in communications, and after achieving my BA Hons in Journalism, I joined the powerhouse that is the BBC as a junior, where structure, clarity, and word choice carry real weight, but also need to remain objective. That training continues to shape how I approach messaging, positioning, and brand voice today.

I’ve since worked across a range of B2B and B2C sectors, adapting strategies to suit vastly different customer mindsets. I’ve led social for a highly regulated B2B industry, managed marketing for a hospitality micro-business, driven by seasonality and events, and built my own agency just before the pandemic.

Ah, the pandemic. That opens a whole new kettle of fish.

Like many others, my business was turned on its head by COVID. As clients were forced to pause

trading, income disappeared almost overnight, along with the momentum I’d spent months building. With projects on hold and payments understandably frozen, I made the difficult decision to close the doors before I had the chance to make the impact I’d envisioned.

I thought I’d failed, big time. But do you know what? In hindsight, that experience taught me more than early success ever could.

Closing forced me to strip everything back, how I structured my services, how I priced, how I built resilience into the business model. I learned how important it is to balance creative output with financial stability, and that being a great marketer doesn’t automatically make you a sustainable business owner.

It also made me more intentional. When I returned to relaunch the agency, I did it with a stronger foundation, clearer direction, and systems designed to support long-term growth, not just creative delivery. That pause, as challenging as it was, became the reset that shaped how I lead and operate today.

Before venturing out on my own again, I worked in a senior marketing role for a well-known, household retailer, managing marketing ouput for an audience that was equal parts deeply passionate and brand-loyal, while also needing to reach a completely different segment -– those just entering the space, often uncertain and overwhelmed. The challenge was balancing insider energy with accessibility, without diluting the brand’s identity. That experience sharpened my ability to write across audience types, map multi-layered messaging, and align content to commercial outcomes at scale.

Today, I lead Truene Creative, a full-service agency built on the lessons I’ve gathered. In our first year, turnover has grown by 76%, and we’ve already been recognised with an industry award – I say ever so humbly.

How do you balance creativity with commercial thinking?

Hear me out: creativity on its own is just noise. It only becomes powerful when it’s anchored to purpose. I’m a firm believer that ideas should earn their place. If it doesn’t serve the goal, it doesn’t make the cut.

We use structure to sharpen creativity, not stifle it. Every project starts with clear briefs, benchmarks, and a solid understanding of what success looks like, rather than scattergun marketing – or what a former colleague of mine would say, ‘throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks’.

We’re not in the business of creating work that looks good for five seconds and disappears into the algorithm. We build ideas that land, last, and drive something forward, attention, action, or both.

Having worked on campaigns of every shape and scale, I’ve seen how easily teams can chase what feels exciting but doesn’t actually connect. So we ask early: Who is this for? What’s it meant to do? How will we know if it worked? That’s the difference between creative output, and creative impact.

Do you have any regrets in your career?

Of course. Yes. I think anyone who says they don’t is either rewriting history or fooling themselves. Early in my career, and again when I first launched the agency, I said yes far too often. Yes to the wrong clients. Yes to unrealistic timelines. Yes to briefs that didn’t align with my values, because I thought that’s what building a business required. I convinced myself that momentum mattered more than direction.

The truth? Some of those choices set me back. They drained time, energy, and focus I could’ve used building something more sustainable. But they also taught me what I stand for, and more importantly, what I no longer tolerate.

The industry loves to glorify the hustle, the “say yes and figure it out” mindset. But I’ve learned that growth comes not just through action, but through discernment. Saying no is a skill. Clarity is earned. And boundaries are a form of progress.

So yes, I have regrets. but they’ve shaped a business I’m proud to run, decisions I stand by, and built the kind of perspective I wouldn’t trade for anything.

If you could change one thing about the marketing industry, what would it be?

I’d love to see less overpromising and more responsibility in the marketing industry. Too often, businesses are sold style over substance, campaigns that look good on the surface but aren’t built to last. There’s an obsession with short-term wins, fast followers, and jargon-heavy strategy decks that say a lot without really saying anything.

What most businesses actually need is clarity. They need partners who ask the right questions, build from where they are (not where the industry assumes they should be) and who understand that sustainable growth often doesn’t come with a dramatic before-and-after moment. It comes from consistency, smart decisions, and strategy that’s actually aligned with their goals.

There’s absolutely space for bold creative thinking; we champion that every day. But boldness without focus is just more noise. I’d like to see more honest conversations, more commercially aware strategy, and more support for businesses that aren’t trying to scale at breakneck speed, but want to grow deliberately and well. Marketing should empower business owners, not overwhelm them.

What advice would you give to someone starting their own creative business today?

Don’t waste your time perfecting something no one’s seen yet. Too many people delay launching because they’re chasing polish over purpose. The logo doesn’t matter if your offer’s unclear. The brand colours won’t save you if you don’t know who you’re helping, or how. Start with a clear offer and real value. Say it simply. Deliver it well. Then build the systems that let you do it again without burning out.

And let’s be honest, underpricing to “get your foot in the door” isn’t a strategy, it’s self-sabotage. You don’t need to prove yourself by working twice as hard for half the rate. Protect your time.

Build something that can last longer than your adrenaline. Consistency is more powerful than hype. Direction is more useful than speed. And clarity beats cleverness, every single time.

So no, it won’t be perfect. But if you wait for perfect, you’ll never start. Just go for it. Adjust on the way. You’ll learn more doing than you ever will planning.

Final thoughts?

If your business has grown but your brand hasn’t kept pace, it’s not a red flag, but it could be a sign it’s time to reset.

You don’t need to shout louder or do more. You need to be clearer about who you are, what you stand for, and why that matters to the people you're trying to reach.

That’s what we do at Truene Creative. We help businesses refine their identity, communicate with purpose, and build brands that feel grounded, relevant, and worth trusting. Our services include marketing and branding strategy, website design, organic and paid social media, digital advertising, email marketing, print and graphic design, and more.

Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and visit my website for more info!

Read more from Brooke Heydon