Vol. S · Panama Red strategy & innovation consultancy

Strategy without prefix.

Panama Red is a strategy and innovation consultancy. The approach is not always orthodox, but it is backed by rigorous thinking, data and gut. And it will be provocative, every time.

For agencies & brand owners
who have a business problem before they have a brief.

Bring a problem See the studio

Vol. S · The idea the whole method in one sentence

A heap of green chillies with a single red one among them. — Unbiased thinking for non-conforming brands.

“So the problem is not so much to see what nobody has yet seen, as to think what nobody has yet thought concerning that which everybody sees.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

Everyone in a category looks at the same data, the same consumers, the same competitors. The work is thinking something about it that hasn’t been thought yet.

So if you are an agency or a brand owner who welcomes brave ideas, or needs them, give us a shout. We would love to take your brand, or your clients’, to uncomfortable places.

What Panama Red does.

05 practices · consultancy

Icon: a tactics board with plays drawn on it.

Brand and communication strategy

Brand positioning and purpose

Brand architecture and portfolio orchestration

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Ideation and innovation pipeline

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Value proposition and go-to-market

How it starts

A 30-minute call. You bring the problem, we tell you whether we are the right people for it.

Book a call

Vol. S · The studio alongside the consultancy

We build AI planning tools for strategists.

Ask most AI tools for an idea and you get the average of everything already written. These are built to find what the average leaves out.

Where the model runs.

05 sprints · run with you, by request · September 2026

For the past year Panama Red has been training a model on how this work gets done, and tuning it for the interesting answer.

01 / 05 By request

Positioning Sprint

For startups that have to think past the product. Finds a position the category has left open.

Write to us

02 / 05 By request

Pitch Sprint

For agency teams with a pitch in four days and no territory yet. Gives back the first 96 hours.

Write to us

03 / 05 By request

Competitive Analysis

For brand teams whose category read never leaves the category. Surfaces the substitutes and the buyers already walking.

Write to us

04 / 05 Page · EN / PT

Innovation Sprint

For innovation teams briefed to find the next thing. Comes back with territories, a business case for each, and prototypes you can put on the table.

Open

05 / 05 By request

Problem Definition Sprint

Most of the work is knowing which problem you are solving. Rebuilds the question before anyone starts answering it.

Write to us

In development

Brand World Sprint

Also being built: one sprint for archetypes, one for messaging, one for the tension a category carries.

Built to order

If the problem isn't on this list, we point the model at yours.

Start a conversation

Vol. S · The founder who thought this up

Twenty-five years inside the positioning decisions at Nike, Guinness, Dove, White Claw.

Panama Red is Thiago Bersou’s practice: an award-winning, multicultural career in brand and marketing, across food and drinks, sports and entertainment, and tech, for bluechips and upstarts alike.

The same thing kept happening. The product was sharp, the positioning wasn't there, and strategy at that stage rarely gets built: no budget for it, nobody with the time. So teams compete on features, and a year later the buyer can't tell them apart.

For the past year I have been training a model on how that work gets done, and tuning it for the interesting answer.

It is what I wanted in the room at every stage that couldn't afford a strategist.

Thiago Bersou, Founder, Panama Red

A few highlights.

08 · from the road

01Turned missed flights into margaritasYou know how the things you don't plan end up becoming some of your best memories? That's the idea behind The Cayman Club. It takes annoying travel hiccups and turns them into excuses to slow down, take a breath, and get into that margarita state of mind, even at the country's busiest airport.
02Gave underdogs their starting-five momentHelped Degree flip the script on March Madness by backing walk-ons, the overlooked hoopers grinding without scholarships. With Giannis in the assist role, we dropped $100K in NIL deals, mentored the athletes, and turned “benchwarmers” into headline-makers.
03Transformed a team into a countryStrategy lead for one of the most engaging and successful Nike campaigns worldwide, República Popular do Corinthians, generating almost US$10M in earned media. Clio Award 2011, Integrated.
04Pushed a behemoth to move fasterDeveloped and led a study on the DTC drivers of success and how to implement them at one of the largest beverage companies on the planet.
05Reconnected an icon with a passionLed ‘Guinness: Raise Your Game’ as part of Guinness’ largest ever Africa activation, reaching 63 million consumers.
06Cracked the 60-million mobile marketing opportunity in AfricaLaunched the world's first mobile fantasy league game, Guinness Football Manager, for basic mobile phones, engaging 500K weekly players in 6 months.
07Convinced people that mobile carriers can do goodIn a total brand repositioning, led Claro (América Movil) to nurture a social movement to approve the Portability Act, the right to switch carriers and keep your number, against the lobby of the other four major carriers. A point of view of its own in a category immersed in sameness. It helped Claro become the most valued telco brand in Latin America.
08Launched the first business of its kindIn one of the most challenging countries in the world to do business, pioneered cross-content digital strategies by launching e-pidemic, the first social media agency in Brazil. In hindsight, not the best name for an agency nowadays…