Dear 1965, thanks for the blueprint.

The mindset that makes us

As our 60th anniversary celebrations get underway and to mark the occasion, we’d love to share one of the most important things that makes us who we are: our mindset.

It’s underpinned by three qualities that have defined us from the start: ambition, optimism and boldness. Since the 2000s, we’ve summed it up as: “Ambitious for the work, optimistic for the world”, but its roots go right back to the sixties when Michael Wolff, Wally Olins and Jane Scruton were at the helm, growing a company from the basement of a derelict butterscotch factory in Camden and creating the foundations for an entirely new industry: brand.

This mindset is not a slogan. It’s the blueprint we’ve built from, tested, evolved and passed on deliberately for six decades. And in a world full of timid ideas, short-termism and endless noise, it feels more relevant than ever. It's what keeps us restless. It's what still works.

Over three instalments, we'll explore the most important parts of our mindset. Let’s dive into the first one today.

Ambitious for the work

Wolff Olins has never lacked ambition. But from the start, it wasn’t about scale or status - it was about doing something exceptional. We wanted to be the place where people come to ‘do the best work of their lives’. And that promise still drives us today.

This spirit originally came from Wally.

“You can be one of three things. You can be the biggest, the best or the most profitable… We certainly never intended to be the biggest or the most profitable; we always wanted to be the best.” - Wally Olins

He had huge ambitions for the company and the emerging field of ‘corporate identity’. He was among the first to treat brand as a serious, strategic tool and didn’t shy away from telling businesses what they were missing. Robert Jones, former Head of New Thinking at Wolff Olins, fondly recalls “Wally’s complete lack of self-doubt and his ability to persuade a client into nearly anything.”

He also remembers the first brief he ever received from Wally; “I want you to write a twenty-year plan for Portugal.” (We did have a studio in Lisbon at the time and there had been a recent election. But still, a strikingly ambitious ask for a new recruit - typical Wally).

Here’s the critical thing though: this ambitious spirit was never just for ourselves. It was always for our clients.

We’ve always pushed our clients to see more in their organisations than they thought possible. To think in terms of what they could become, not what they already are.

Not for the sake of provocation but to uncover the ideas we can truly believe in. Because we know that the big ideas - the ones that can reimagine a category or change the trajectory of a business - tend to sit beyond the comfort zone.

Global Principal Charles Wright once captured this perfectly in a simple sketch: a scale with a zone of comfort on the left and a zone of opportunity on the right. Making the point that if an idea feels “comfortable”, it probably isn’t pushing you far enough. And you risk missing out on the opportunity.

Or as our Global CEO, Sairah Ashman, likes to say “nothing truly great ever comes from a comfort zone, there’s no growth there”.

The process can feel stretching, but when you land on a powerful idea you tend to know it. Believe in it. That conviction matters. As Brian Boylan, ex-Chairman and leader of some of our most impactful jobs over 40+ years puts it: “If we’re not behind an idea, we can’t expect anyone else to be. And we need our clients to share that conviction too.” Without it, even the best ideas risk dying quietly in a deck.

That said, conviction doesn’t just appear. It comes from real partnership. From the beginning, we’ve always seen our clients as collaborators and co-creators, not just stakeholders. We build relationships grounded in trust, openness and the courage to be candid when it counts.

It’s why we’re not “yes” people. If we don’t believe in a path forward, we’ll say so - and we ask our clients to do the same in return. We call it “tough love”. And it’s how - together - we reach the ideas worth fighting for.

You can feel this ambition in our partnership with Uber.

Since 2017, we’ve worked closely with Dara and the leadership team at Uber on projects that span brand, culture and experience - supporting them on their meteoric journey from ride-hailing app to global mobility platform. We helped steer the culture as Uber worked to rebuild trust; designed a much simpler identity system that performs at scale (globally consistent yet locally adaptable); and created an architecture model (go anywhere, get anything) that set the stage for growth and a historic IPO.

Uber is a powerful demonstration of how playing it safe doesn’t change the game, bold ideas do. Conviction does. In this case, turning a business built on simple car journeys into a much bigger adventure.

Right now, the world feels shaky: economies are stretched and technology is tearing up the rulebook. The first instinct is to bunker down and protect.

We say now is when ambition is most vital. The next decade won’t be led by brands and businesses that stand still. It will be led by those who look ahead, think beyond the next campaign and have the conviction to build a future only they can see.

Next week in our three-part series on the mindset that makes us: Optimistic for the world.