Destreza

Building iconic brands in the age of AI.

Destreza is an AI-native marketing consultancy based in Shoreditch, London. We help consumer businesses decide how and where to leverage AI across brand strategy, operating models, capability and agency configuration.

Let's talk → Selected work

OUR MISSION

AI is revolutionising marketing.

Used well, AI can compound quality brand-building activities, delivering sharper, faster and more measurable work. Used poorly, AI just scales mediocrity, erodes consumer trust and dilutes brand equity.

We help consumer businesses come through the AI revolution with stronger brands, not just cheaper marketing.

Founded in 2026 by AI marketing pioneer Andy Parton

16+
Years blue-chip brand-building
7+
Years pioneering AI marketing
£3bn+
Portfolio of brands managed · ≈$4bn+
60+
Operational markets

Category-defining brands · Diageo, BAT & El Grupo Varma

Guinness/Johnnie Walker/Smirnoff/Vuse/Tanqueray/Glenfiddich/Velo/Cîroc/The Balvenie/glo/Hendrick's/Talisker/Lagavulin/Ron Barceló/

WHY DESTREZA

Access to AI tools is no longer a competitive advantage.

Almost every marketing team can now produce more research, more ideas and more content. What separates good brands from great ones is knowing how and where to apply AI, what to believe, what to reject and which decisions must stay human.

That judgement, and the method behind it, is what Destreza sells. Your existing agencies keep what they do best; Destreza owns the method and the final judgement — and there is no separation between the adviser in the room and the team doing the work.

About Destreza →

The Destreza Operating Model

  1. 01
    Diagnose and directAndy PartonGets to know the business, frames the question that actually matters and sets the direction the work has to answer.
  2. 02
    DevelopSpecialist AI field agentsDo the research, the analysis and the strategic and creative development, against Andy’s brief.
  3. 03
    Challenge and sharpenThe Agentic CouncilTests the assumptions and the evidence, and puts the work through opposing specialist views to find what is missing.
  4. 04
    Decide and deliverAndy PartonReviews and reworks the thinking, applies the final judgement, and stays accountable for the recommendation.

Greater capacity. Sharper scrutiny. One accountable partner — at the start and at the finish.

HOW WE ENGAGE

Three ways in, one standard.

Survey.

Two to six weeks

A short, fixed-fee diagnostic — and the usual place to start. A senior, independent view before you commit to a bigger move.

Explore Survey →

Shift.

Three to six months

One defined change, delivered end-to-end. A specific transformation delivered against a milestone, with a defined end-state.

Explore Shift →

Focus.

Six to twelve months

A sustained senior partnership across your marketing engine. A portfolio-wide transformation, inside the leadership team’s rhythm.

Explore Focus →

Selected work.

01 / 03

Velo, Vuse and glo

Consumer Electronics / FMCG

AI-Powered Storytelling.

Rebuilding global content strategy with agentic AI.

An omnichannel content-strategy overhaul across BAT's Vuse, Velo and glo — each rebuilt as its own connected story, with agentic AI as the engine of the method itself — the approach behind our Destreza Operating Model. Three category-leading strategies in eight weeks, against a global planning milestone.

£3bn+ (≈$4bn+) portfolio · GlobalRead case →
Diageo whisky brands

Spirits / FMCG

What's Your Whisky.

Integrating AI across the full marketing mix.

The AI flavour discovery platform Diageo built for whisky — later extended across gin, beer, tequila and cocktails. It reached more than a million consumers worldwide, turning a recommendation into first-party data.

1M+ consumers worldwideRead case →
Vuse

Consumer Electronics

Vaping Done Right.

Consolidating brand architecture with AI-optimised activation.

Five operational programmes brought under one consumer-facing brand framework, with AI tuning the message to every market underneath. Now deployed globally across Vuse's markets — the consumer never saw AI; they saw a message that landed for them.

Deployed globallyRead case →
VIEW ALL SELECTED WORK →

COMING SOON · FOUNDERS AND LEAN TEAMS

The Playbook for AI Brand Building™

How to build an iconic brand — in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost.

Launching a brand has never looked easier, but the reality is very different.

We’ve distilled the brand-building approach that blue-chip companies use to beat these odds into a ten-stage workflow that founders and small teams can run with their AI assistants, without the huge teams and budgets it once required.

Pre-order The Playbook — £395 Start your free trial
40m+new business registrations worldwide each year1
76%of new product launches fail on our broad four-study measure2
6%fail at the best-run product businesses — the ones running a formal staged process3

LATEST THINKING

AI x Marketing.

A group of friends around a dining table in a room with Sonos speakers.
Sonos 27 launch photography, released on 1 September. Its connection to external AI assistants enters Early Access on 8 September; this scene is launch imagery, not evidence of customer satisfaction. Source: Sonos.

Analysis 005 · September 2026

A better model. A better customer experience?

September brings new AI controls and fresh evidence of customers’ reluctance to retry a failed chatbot. A launch needs to prove what happens after the conversation.

Read the piece
Two people and a dog sit on a sofa in a room with a Sonos soundbar and rear speakers; one listener wears headphones.
Sonos’s September 1 launch photography shows Beam Ultra, headphones and rear speakers in one home system. The products were announced alongside Sonos 27, the software update discussed inside this edition. Source: Sonos.

The Weekly Cut 018 · 4 September 2026

ChatGPT ads expand. New models raise the bar.

A wider advertising channel, more capable models and a staged rollout of image creation inside Google Workspace change the next marketing brief.

Read the piece
A hand holds a smiling Goldfish cracker close to the camera, with a young person’s face softly out of focus behind it.
A product close-up from the 30-second version of Goldfish’s “Photoshoot”, published in July. It shows the campaign’s central idea: the snack itself smiles back. System1’s 27 August review evaluates a shorter execution from the same campaign. Source: Goldfish / Mischief / Blinkink; film supplied by Marcus Lim SO.

Analysis 004 · August 2026

More executions. How many ideas?

August brings more control over AI image editing. The creative test is whether that freedom produces a better idea, or simply more versions of the first one.

Read the piece

Explore Thinking →

MAKE AI WORK FOR YOUR BRAND

AI is changing how brands are built.If you’re deciding how best to leverage AI for your brand, let’s talk.

From the choices you make to the way your team works, we help you apply AI with the judgement it takes to build a stronger brand.

Let's talk →
Sources
  1. Destreza calculation from 2025 national registration and business-formation data across 19 economies, with partial US coverage (Florida and Delaware); the selected counts total approximately 40.28 million and the headline is rounded down. Includes companies, sole traders and other registered business forms; national definitions vary and the series are not harmonised. Some registrations represent existing activity becoming formal, new legal vehicles or business names, and a registered entity may never begin trading — this is an indicator of annual formation activity, not a deduplicated count of newly trading ventures or brands, and a separate population from the product-failure studies at reference 2. Principal sources: China SAMR, Sebrae (Brazil), INSEE (France), Destatis (Germany), Companies House (UK) and twelve other national registries and statistical offices. Data checked 19 September 2026.
  2. O’Reilly, L., ‘3 in 4 FMCG launches fail within a year’, Marketing Week (2014); Victory, K., Tanusondjaja, A., Dawes, J., Nenycz-Thiel, M. and Romaniuk, J., ‘Are there generalizable patterns in line extension performance?’, Journal of Product & Brand Management, 33/6 (2024); Victory, K., Romaniuk, J., Nenycz-Thiel, M., Tanusondjaja, A. and Dawes, J., ‘How to identify line extensions that survive’, Journal of Product & Brand Management, 35/5 (2026); NielsenIQ, Launch Fast, Learn Faster (2026).
  3. Stage-Gate International, Winning at New Products (2017), presenting SGI–IFMA Research Study (2014).
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