August, 2026.- CAPE was designed to be deeply consultative in its approach, not just handling the task of filling boxes with creative. When Drew King joined as the first Head of Strategy, Pete Gosselin saw it as a step change. King’s background—in consultancies, creative agencies, brand, and social—combined with their shared desire to help clients build creative systems, not just one-offs, made it clear that he was the missing piece of the puzzle.
In this interview, King and Gosselin discuss the difference between an agency that sells and one that solves. Selling starts with the agency’s offering, but solving starts with the client’s business. If you start with predetermined capabilities, every client problem eventually gets translated into one of them. If you start with the client’s business, you are free to recommend whatever gives them the best chance of creating the outcome they need. Sometimes the answer is a campaign. But sometimes it is a different audience, a different way of measuring success, or deciding not to do the thing the client originally asked for.
King also reflects on what it means to be “Bravely Smart.” He does not think the tension is between being brave and being smart. He thinks it is that people sometimes confuse “smart” with “safe.” But intelligence should make the work braver, not safer. Strategy can become a way of reducing risk—the rationale gets longer, the evidence gets deeper, and the work becomes easier to defend but less original. The role of strategy is to create enough clarity around the problem, the audience, and the opportunity that the team can pursue a more original answer with conviction.
On scaling quality, King notes that agencies often confuse scale with repeatability. What should scale is the standard around thinking, not the answer itself. The goal is to make quality more repeatable without making the thinking repetitive.
1. The First Head of Strategy: You’ve been named CAPE’s first Head of Strategy. What specific need in the agency’s strategic capability did this role exist to fill, and what’s the biggest change you’ve already made in your first few months?
Pete Gosselin: CAPE was designed to be deeply consultative in our approach, not just handling the task of filling boxes with Creative. From the day that we opened, we partnered with very skilled and very talented strategic partners. When we met Drew, it was a step change: his background–in consultancies, creative agencies, brand, and social–combined with our shared desire to help clients build creative systems, not just one offs, made it clear that he was the missing piece of the puzzle.
Drew King: Every agency develops defaults over time: how problems get framed, when strategy gets involved, how teams work together, what gets measured, which decisions get prioritized, etc. Sometimes those things are intentional, but more often I think they’re inherited. A lot of what I’ve focused on over the past few months is making those things explicit: building shared language, better ways of working, and a clearer understanding of what good looks like, so strategic thinking improves the work all the way through the process, not just at the beginning.
2. Selling vs. Solving: You said “too much of the industry rewards selling rather than solving.” What’s the difference between an agency that sells and one that solves, and how do you know which one you’re working with?
Drew King: I think the difference starts with the fact that a business problem doesn’t arrive labeled with the capability required to solve it. Selling starts with the agency’s offering, but solving starts with the client’s business. If you start with your predetermined capabilities, every client problem eventually gets translated into one of them. If you start with the client’s business, you’re free to recommend whatever gives them the best chance of creating the outcome they need.
Sometimes the answer is a campaign. But sometimes it’s a different audience, a different way of measuring success, or deciding not to do the thing the client originally asked for. If an agency is willing to recommend what’s right for the business, even when it isn’t the most commercially convenient answer, you’re probably working with people who are solving instead of selling.
3. Bravely Smart™: CAPE’s approach combines “bold creative thinking, grounded business strategy, and excellent service.” In practice, where is the tension between being brave and being smart? How do you resolve it without losing either?
I actually don’t think the tension is between being brave and being smart. I think it’s that people sometimes confuse “smart” with “safe.” But intelligence should make the work braver, not safer. Strategy can become a way of reducing risk: the rationale gets longer, the evidence gets deeper, and the work becomes easier to defend but less original.
That’s not the job I want strategy to do. I don’t think creatives enter this industry to make work that is merely defensible. I don’t think consumers are asking brands for more work they can predict or ignore. And if that is not what people want, I don’t believe it is what clients need from us, even when they think they do.
The role of strategy is to create enough clarity around the problem, the audience, and the opportunity that the team can pursue a more original answer with conviction.
That is what “Bravely Smart” means to me: using rigor to create the conditions for more original thinking.
4. Strategy’s Accountability for Outcomes: You said strategy should be held “accountable for the outcomes it delivers.” How do you measure whether a strategy is delivering, and what do you do when the data shows you were wrong?
Something I’ve become increasingly aware of is that accountability often gets weaker the more senior you become. Strategy gets approved, creative gets made, client partnerships manage the relationship, and performance gets reported, but accountability becomes so distributed that the original thinking is rarely revisited with enough honesty.
I didn’t join this industry to get further away from the work or to manage mediocrity from above. I care about the work, and I care about helping people get better at making it.
To me, leadership means staying close enough to see what is actually happening, being honest when something is not good enough, and taking responsibility for helping the team make it better. It requires the willingness to make difficult calls, give clear feedback, protect the conditions people need to do great work, and remain accountable for the decisions you ask others to carry out.
That same standard applies to strategy. Did we define the right problem? Did the creative actually solve it? Did the client have what they needed to make it successful? Did the outcome we promised materialize?
When the answer is no, the job is not to explain it away or blame the client. It is to understand what broke, take responsibility for it, and make the next decision better.
5. Scaling the Quality of Thinking: CAPE has doubled in size in two years and is projected to 4X in year three. How do you scale the quality of strategic thinking as the agency scales, without becoming formulaic?
I’ve been thinking a lot about what should actually scale inside an agency, because I think agencies often confuse scale with repeatability. They build a successful way of working, then try to reproduce the same answer across clients, categories, and teams. That may make the business easier to manage, but it rarely makes the work better.
Every client deserves thinking that is specific to their business, audience, and problem. What should scale is the standard around that thinking, not the answer itself. You can codify what a strong strategic output requires, which inputs are necessary, the questions that need to be asked, how decisions get made, where creative should be involved, and what good looks like. But the thinking still has to emerge from the problem.
That also means protecting the conditions people need to do their best thinking. You cannot ask people to think originally while fragmenting their attention across meetings, forcing every assignment through the same process, or treating every output as interchangeable.
If the standards, decision-making, and conditions for good work become more consistent, quality becomes much less dependent on luck, heroics, or who happens to be in the room.
The goal is to make quality more repeatable without making the thinking repetitive, not to make the work more formulaic.
