Ep 160: Behind The Rebrand with PJ Towle
SUMMARY
The Real Reason We Rebranded From "Consultants" to "Partners" (And What a Fox Has to Do With It)
For the first two years of this business, it was called Chief Creative Consultants. It made sense on paper. I had twenty years of experience, and "consultant" sounded like the right word for someone with that kind of runway behind them.
It just never felt true.
When the Language Doesn't Match the Work
I kept noticing the gap every time I sat down with a client. We weren't handing over a strategy deck and walking away. We were in it — building systems side by side, staying in the work until it actually stuck. That's not consulting. That's partnership.
It took an event in Oklahoma City, a text to a couple of trusted friends, and one honest question — "What do you think about this word?" — before the language finally caught up to the work. Chief Creative Partners was born, and with it, the tagline that now anchors everything we do: You create. We operate.
Why I Called My Designer Before I Called Anyone Else
When it came time to rebuild the visual identity, I did something I'd recommend to anyone facing a rebrand: I asked my wife, Sarah — the original designer behind my very first logo — whether she wanted to lead this one or whether I should bring in outside help.
She didn't hesitate. "Seek outside help. Call PJ."
That's PJ Towle, founder of Forty:Three Creative, a client turned collaborator turned friend. What followed was a four-week process that taught me something I want every creative business owner to hear.
The Fox, the Triangle, and the Story Behind the Mark
PJ didn't just hand me a logo. He built a story into it.
The fox represents adaptive intelligence — a nod to Robin Hood, my favorite childhood movie, and to my own love of foxes. Small serif details on the letterforms became, almost by accident, fox ears. That happy accident became the direction we built the entire identity around.
The triangle — or delta — represents change. It's the mathematical symbol for it, and it's exactly what Chief Creative Partners exists to help creative businesses do. But the real story is in how the mark breaks into three sections:
- The first section represents Chief Creative Partners — working behind the scenes, shaping and supporting
- The second represents your business, out front, leading and growing
- The third, sitting beneath both, represents the partnership itself — the thing that ties it all together
Even the Tagline Was an Accident
Here's the part that still makes me laugh: "You create. We operate." wasn't a strategic brainstorm output. It came out of a mockup session where PJ was testing different phrases as sample text on a background image. He typed it once, almost as a placeholder, and I said, "That's it. I'm done."
The best brand language often works this way — it feels obvious the moment you see it, which is exactly why it's so hard to find in the first place.
What This Means If You're Facing Your Own Rebrand
If your business has outgrown its own language — if the words on your website don't quite match what you actually do for people anymore — that gap is worth paying attention to. It's not vanity. It's clarity.
You don't have to have the perfect word yet. Start by naming the gap out loud, the way I did with a simple text message: "What do you think about this word?" Clarity tends to show up in conversation before it shows up on a page.
If you want a framework for finding that kind of clarity in your own business — not just your name, but your systems, your priorities, and where your time is actually going — grab the free resources at dustinpead.com/free.
And if you're looking for a designer who brings genuine intentionality to the process, go check out PJ Towle at Forty:Three Creative.
You create. We operate.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
⚡️ The right brand language isn't invented in a meeting. It's noticed — usually after you've already been living it for a while.
⚡️ A logo isn't decoration. When it's built with intention, it becomes a visual argument for how you actually work.
⚡️ Sometimes the clearest brand truth shows up in the margins of the work, not the center of the strategy session.
NOTABLE QUOTES
💬 "I genuinely believe intentionality is a learnable skill, not an innate gift." — PJ Towle
💬 "We're allowing you to focus on growing your business while we operate your business."
EPISODE RESOURCES
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TRANSCRIPT
Today, I used it in a thirty-second pitch at Creative Mornings. You can kind of see the look on people's faces — they're squinting until I get to "what do you do?" And they're squinting, and then I get to the part where I go, "You know, at the end of the day, it's so that you can create, we operate." And they go, "Oh, okay. Oh, I get it now. Totally makes sense."
Welcome back to the Chief Creative Podcast, the show equipping creative businesses to unleash their best work. I'm your host, Dustin Pead, founder and owner of Chief Creative Partners.
So today's episode, we're taking a quick break from the book-writing episodes this week and next week while I put some finishing touches on the next system I want to share with you. This week and next episode, we've got two powerful interviews. I'm pulling back the curtain a little on the rebrand of my own business and how we went from Chief Creative Consultants to Chief Creative Partners. And I did not do this alone.
Joining me on the show today is PJ Towle, founder of Forty:Three Creative. He's a partner of ours at Chief Creative Partners and the designer behind this whole transformation you've seen. We'll get into the meaning of the icon, the triangles, the colors, the font choices, and why "Partners" finally felt true in a way that "Consultants" never did.
If you want to see how this all turned out, head to chiefcreativepartners.com. That's where it all begins — where you create and we operate. So let's dive into my conversation with PJ Towle. If you're watching on YouTube, you'll see some screen shares. If you're only listening right now, I'd suggest jumping over to YouTube afterward to watch it.
Alright, PJ Towle of Forty:Three Creative — thanks so much for being here, man.
Always glad to be here.
Today we're going to give a little behind-the-scenes look into the rebrand of going from Chief Creative Consultants to Chief Creative Partners. I'm just now realizing, PJ, I didn't pull up my old logo.
I can pull it up while we talk. Go ahead and set the scene.
So we went from Chief Creative Consultants — I started that business in 2023 and used the word "consultants" because for a long time I'd wanted to be a consultant. I thought, when my days in ministry are done, I'd love to do consulting work, because I'd never done it before. It sounds professional. But no one wants to consult with anybody who has less than twenty years of experience, and by that point I had twenty years of experience. So I figured, alright, I'll do the consulting thing.
As we started servicing our clients — and PJ at Forty:Three is one of our clients — I kept thinking, this doesn't feel like consulting to me. It feels more like a partnership. It took me a long time to land the language. I was at an event with a bunch of other creative business owners earlier this year in Oklahoma City. We were there to support a financial company we use — by the time this episode airs, you'll have already heard my interview with their owner, Christian Brim. Anyway, I was talking with people there and something clicked. In my mind I thought, "It's really a partnership." I texted PJ and another friend and client and asked, "What do you think about this word?" They both said, "Yeah, that's the word." I said, "Okay, great."
PJ, you can tell the tagline story if you want — it's my favorite.
Today I used it in a thirty-second pitch at Creative Mornings. Everybody's squinting until I get to "what do you do," and then, "at the end of the day, it's so that you can create, we operate." And they go, "Oh, okay. Totally makes sense."
So all that to say — I finally had that clarity after months of trying to figure out what was missing. The name change came immediately. I followed up with the tax people, had Core Group guide me through all of that. Then I realized I needed a logo change, because the logo my wife — who's a designer — put together for me quickly back when I started the business needed to evolve.
Let me pull it up. [Screen share begins.] This logo my wife did for me in 2023 was a direct reuse of a logo she'd designed for me back in 2015 or so, for my whiskey bar. The space I'm in now that I call my studio used to be my whiskey bar, called Chief's Whiskey Bar. "Chief" came from a dog I had — my favorite dog I ever had, and also a nod to Eric Church, whose nickname is Chief. So I called it Chief's Whiskey Bar.
I didn't know that about the dog.
Yeah, that makes it so much more endearing. People assume "Chief" is some kind of CEO or executive reference. I mean, sure, it plays that way now, but that's not really where it came from.
If you look closely at the old logo, it looks like a drink ring left on a table — because it was for a whiskey bar. I actually still have the etched glass vinyl sticker on my office door that says "Chief's Whiskey Bar." So fast forward to this year — I wanted to make the change from Consultants to Partners and needed a new brand. First thing I did was ask my wife, since she's the graphic designer, whether she wanted to do the rebrand or whether I should look for outside help — already half-planning to call PJ.
I appreciate that vote of confidence. Honestly, when you asked her, I was hoping you'd talked to her first — I didn't want to be the "designer he's having an affair with."
She didn't even blink. She said, "Seek outside help — call PJ." She felt a fresh perspective made sense given the scope of the rebrand.
I love doing consultations this way. Even when I'm not doing the logo work — which is my favorite part of the job — I love the process. The short version: we sent you through the same onboarding form I use with all clients, so I could get clarity on who Chief is, who you want to work with, who your competitors are, all of it. Then, thanks to my highest-valued employee, Claude — employee of the month, month after month — we ran some competitive analysis.
Some of what I loved about your old logo: that whiskey-glass ring read almost like a paintbrush stroke, which felt connected to the creative space. I liked the kerning on the font. And looking at your studio, there's orange everywhere — you'd told me orange was your favorite color. Knowing that going in was really helpful.
I always start concepting in black and white, because if a mark can't stand on its own without color, it's not strong enough. Some of the softer gradient logos out there get really difficult to reproduce across different uses. So we started from black and white, pulling in some of the rougher, creative edges while keeping the "Chief" ethos intact.
We landed on the fox. I knew you loved foxes — Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of your top movies. The fox represents adaptive intelligence in pop culture, going back to Robin Hood, which was your favorite movie as a kid. I did a few illustration directions: a regal, mascot-style fox, a modern heraldic version like a coat of arms, and a more minimalist, conceptual direction — even though you're not really a minimalist person.
I am not a minimalist. Anyone who's seen the rest of my studio knows that.
I used a triangle, or delta, because the delta symbol represents change — which is exactly what you help creative businesses do: grow, change, get better. Of the initial concepts, one looked almost like a church logo, one had a NASCAR-esque feel. But the direction that really got me going was a version where I put small serifs on the back of the "P," and they ended up looking like fox ears. Given how much you love foxes, that felt like the thread to pull.
When you showed me all of it, it didn't take me two seconds to land on that one. I told PJ, "This is the one." He'd deliberately put it in the middle of the lineup instead of leading with it, so I wouldn't feel steered.
From there we broke down logotype options — a distressed font to echo the whiskey-glass rings, an italic font to echo the original italic treatment — trying to keep some connective tissue to the old brand. We landed on a Gotham-based custom font, with small tweaks — including crossbar details on certain letters that ended up looking like little teeth marks, which felt right given the fox concept.
Then we moved into color. I like using a near-black instead of pure black in logo design — it displays better. We worked through several versions of orange until we found the right one — not too red, not too muted. Then came the accent color, which surprised me: an olive/OD green.
That's obviously more your world than mine, but I was genuinely thrilled with it — thrilled enough that I bought a pair of shorts in that color. I'm wearing them right now. My wardrobe is mostly black, OD green, and dark grays, with the occasional colorful plaid — a product of the nineties grunge era. We even played with blue at one point, but that started feeling too close to an NFL team's colors. Olive green just stuck.
We built out the full identity from there — brand assets, color patterns, font treatments — and then got to a media sample that really sold it. That's actually where "You create. We operate." came from — a total accident. I was mocking up sample text for a background image, trying different phrases, and when I typed "you create, we operate," you said, "That's it. I'm done."
I was relieved and a little annoyed, because that's how it always goes with the good ones — obvious in hindsight, like nobody wonders why the iPhone works the way it does once it exists.
From there we built out real-world applications: desktop mockups, Instagram handle treatments, a two-page visual identity quick-reference sheet so any future designer could pick it up and understand the system immediately. The whole process took about four weeks.
I've started seeing the identity show up everywhere — you mentioned mocking up a blanket in that pattern.
I did. I found the same shop where I get shirts made and mocked up a blanket in the OD green pattern. Haven't ordered it yet, but it's ready to go — I want to put it over the couch, maybe even do a big canvas flag treatment like the Chris Stapleton concert poster I have from a Birmingham show back in 2021.
Let me actually show you the icon in motion, since I had a motion graphic built. [Screen share.] One of the things that pulled me toward this mark in the first place — beyond the triangle-as-delta concept PJ described — is that it breaks into three sections. The first triangle represents Chief Creative Partners itself: we're behind the scenes, shaping things, letting your business grow up and to the right. The second represents the client's business out front, growing. The third section, at the bottom, ties both together — that's the partnership. It sits underneath both pieces. I had a motion designer animate it as one continuous line, connecting all three sections without lifting the pen — like one of those connect-the-dots intelligence tests.
I love that. When you first sent that over asking if I knew a motion designer, I understood the ask, but I wasn't picturing the story the same way you were hearing it — which I find fascinating. Some people look at the mark and just see "fox, got it, iconic, moving on." Somebody like you goes a level deeper and finds another story inside it, and then that story starts informing how you talk about the brand.
If you're thinking about the mark moving left to right: the business is out front, leading the charge. We're in the background, supporting. Together, that's the partnership — which felt like the whole point.
Brand design is genuinely my favorite part of the job, and I was honored you asked, and really happy with how it turned out.
I kept telling him it was better than I expected — way better. I'll say this to wrap the sappy part up: what makes a great designer, and I learned this watching my wife design too, is that when they present the work, people go, "There's so much intentionality behind this." That's why I wanted PJ — his bold use of color, his willingness to push boundaries. I told him upfront I wanted to push boundaries, since his own brand is vibrant. But I also knew he'd be intentional with the meaning behind every choice, the same way I've watched Sarah work over the years. If you're looking for design help, look for someone who brings that level of intentionality.
I genuinely believe intentionality is a learnable skill, not an innate gift. We've both been reading Save the Creatives by Brandon Triola, and the section on the soft skills of relationship, intentionality, and communication — I think that's such an underused force in creative partnerships. It ties back into why you moved from "Consultants" to "Partners" in the first place. If we stop looking at creative work as a project — here's a branding project, here's a website project — and start looking at it as partnership, that changes what we're actually offering clients.
I learned intentionality from watching you work, honestly. There's a hustle mentality a lot of business owners feel pressured into — constantly marketing yourself, marketing yourself. You and I are both Enneagram 4w3s, and when I've asked you how you approach it, you've said, "I'm just intentional with my relationships and partnerships." That's freeing. I've leaned into that same approach because of you.
PJ, thank you for your incredible work, and thank you for coming on the show. Hopefully this encourages other creatives and designers to bring this level of intentionality into their own work. Check out PJ at Forty:Three Creative — that's spelled out, F-O-R-T-Y, T-H-R-E-E, creative dot com. Go check him out for all your branding needs. He will elevate your brand.
Thanks, man. Appreciate it.