brand strategist
Rudi
petry
contact
hello@rudipetry.com
573-239-0434
I am a hospitality brand strategist based in Durham, North Carolina
I help create your favorite places, spaces, and experiences.
I have 10 years of brand strategy, writing, graphic design, and client management experience.
Driven by research, curiosity, and ruthless optimism, I excel at writing nuanced brand strategies that lead to bold, effective brands that prioritize both guest experience, directly connect to business goals, and create meaningful positive influence on our evolving culture.
Recent Experience
Hospitality Strategist at Brand Bureau
Client-facing brand strategist with focus on luxury hospitality, real estate, and F&B brands. Conducts market, audience, and trend research to develop brand strategies and naming concepts that align with stakeholder goals. Authors brand and verbal identities, experience strategies, and collaborates with designers to establish art direction and style guides.
Select clients: Marriott, Hyatt, IHG Resorts, Buffalo Trace, Capital One, Bozzuto, Tishman Speyer, Sunday Riley
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Masters in Branding at School of Visual Arts, New York
Studied under Debbie Millman, Tosh Hall, Scott Lerman, Tom Guarriello, Mark Kingsley, Dan Formosa, Carolina Rogoll, Brad Davidson, among others. One-year intensive focused on deep exploration of the role brand strategy plays in business, behavior, marketing and culture.
Areas of study include brand management, go-to-market research technique, brand life cycles, B2B + B2C frameworks, trend forecasting + analysis, research + statistics, behavioral psychology, semiotics, persuasion technique, brand auditing, public speaking + client relations
Winner of Paula Rhodes Award for Academic Excellence, Member of Honors Team, Winner of Adobe pitch, Winner of Harley Davidson marketing plan
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Design Specialist at Department of Defense: Army Research Lab
In-house designer for Army Research Laboratory, serving scientist and military leadership communication and presentation needs. Responsible for production of 400+ page print annual scientific report. Collaborated with government and scientific stakeholders to develop and maintain communication materials while ensuring subject matter accuracy.
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Agency Art Director Walmart, PACE Communications
Art director for Walmart World magazine and internal brand communications. Created concepts and pitches for in-store campaigns, designed print, digital, social, sign & packaging, and art directed on set for video and photo projects. Produced social media content strategy and scripts. Monitored and analyzed campaigns to ensure enhanced customer brand experiences.
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Freelance Brand Consultant & Graphic Designer
Offered holistic brand consulting and design services: brand strategy, campaign conceptualization, copywriting, print and digital design, brand training, and social media planning.
Clients of note: Badgley Mischka, Perkins&Will, Scout & Nimble, Subway, Howard Brown Health, INDYWeek, Durham Chamber of Commerce, UNC REX, Duke University, TranzAct, Citizen Jane Film Festival, Stephens College
Skills
Brand management: strategy, auditing, pitching, research, storytelling
Consumer + user research: interview + survey, psychographic persona building, data analysis
Trend forecasting + analysis: trend spotting, white space, resonance analysis,
Brand writing: semiotics, copywriting, language concepting, product naming, content architectures
Conceptualization: campaign strategy and art direction
Design: digital and print collateral, publication layout
Visuals: Photography, Art Direction
Software
Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, Figma, Procreate
“
If you're looking for a hard-working, curious, talented, engaging, ride-or-die-loyal colleague, hire Rudi Petry. I don't know if I've worked with a better candidate for pure, unadulterated collaboration. Do yourself a favor and hire her. I'm not kidding when I say I stake my entire career and reputation on this fierce creative who will bring nothing but ingenuity and heart to whatever your project may be.”
–Dr. Bob Besere, LabCorp Diagnostics
writing
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writing ~
Could Walmart be the best brand we’ve never seen?
When it refuses to evolve its branding, Walmart refuses consumers the opportunity to understand it in a new way. We are forced to recycle stories from the company’s past to try recon with its brand lore, unaware that the retailer has been paying penance and refocusing its power for good. Instead, we are left alone to justify its continued evil existence in our culture. This is especially true to the millions who have few shopping alternatives and rely on the store — what personal identity are they inheriting? To be a Walmart Shopper is to accept a certain negative branding. Instagram alone has taught us how brand affiliation can define someone, can affect their personal identity. If Walmart were to reclaim its voice and take the necessary risks to re-establish dignity within its brand, could it do the same for those who shop there? (read more)
Can corporate brands be humanity’s cultural doula as we reckon through the Anthropocene?
Embracing degrowth would require an intentional release from certain expressions of a person’s very identity– on a large scale this would be no less than traumatic. Objects hold complex emotional implications, either in aspiration or in sentimentality, and definitely as external assurances of safety. To tend to their public, brands may need to accept roles of emotional caretaking, using their booming, trusted voices to act as cultural doulas guiding us from one economic system to the next. We trust them, and now we need them. (read more)
A look at Waffle House’s brand through Susan Sontag’s “Against Interpretation”
An understanding of loosening standards, of not taking Waffle House too seriously, of not publicly waxing poetic on the raucous night culture, are all social agreements of cutting back on interpretive content in an effort to let Waffle House exist, to “see the thing at all”. We must trust Waffle House to find the harmony between the pastoral and wretched– perhaps even to achieve synthesis. We must agree to let Waffle House fold upon itself, oscillating between wholesomeness and chaos, hurting and healing itself in perpetuity, rising and setting with the sun and moon. (read more)
social
Email: hello@rudipetry.com
573-239-0434