At the end of the 2024–25 season, the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) announced the addition of its Seattle franchise. While this expansion team is still unnamed, creative agency VSA Partners couldn’t wait to welcome the team to the league.
Meet the Seattle Mutiny—a potential new name and brand identity for the team, created by VSA Partners.
“This was a passion project for sure,” said Associate Creative Director of Design Heather Stickney, who brought the opportunity to her team at VSA Partners. “I’ve been a Seattle Kraken fan since I moved to the area a few years ago, and I was really excited to hear we were getting a professional women’s hockey team. It felt like a way I could give back to my community and further advance women’s sports.”
Heather was quickly joined by Janelle Blasdel, Creative Director of Writing, to tackle naming and branding the team, along with Cody Fenske, Associate Creative Director of Design, for design support. The team treated the project as if it came from a client brief, exploring a broad range of names and territories.
“We knew we needed a clever, eye-catching design system that nods to Seattle’s iconic culture,” said Cody.
They finally settled on the one that felt right: Seattle Mutiny.
“There were a few favorites for us: Fog, Seismic, Emeralds,” Janelle said. “But Mutiny was our favorite. It’s fierce, exciting and a great seaworthy complement to ‘Kraken.’ Plus, fans could then call themselves the Mutineers, which really sealed the deal for us.”
The new identity uses the team’s existing cream and emerald green colors but progresses the brand with a new logo centered on the Space Needle and a vibrant orange accent.
“It’s a big moment for Seattle and for women’s sports,” said Chief Creative Officer Curt Schreiber. “Whatever the team decides, I’m really proud we raised our hands and put something out there.”
This project is part of an ongoing program by VSA Partners calls “Design for Better”—an ambitious journey to redesign logos, websites, apps, packaging and more. Part creative sketchpad and part contribution to businesses, brands and society, these uncommissioned solutions are generated simply for the love of the game. You can see the collection to date at design4better.co.
We’re so excited to share that FactSet’s “Not Just the Facts” campaign has earned three major wins at the 2025 ANA B2 Awards, which celebrate the very best in business-to-business marketing.
Developed with our amazing client FactSet, the campaign challenged the conventions of boring B2B financial marketing by spotlighting a common frustration: financial professionals need data, but facts without context are useless. With a smart, tongue-in-cheek approach, “Not Just the Facts” positioned FactSet as the antidote—offering insights that are as meaningful as they are actionable.
These awards reflect the power of blending creative bravery with strategic clarity, and what’s possible when a brand is willing to break away from the usual B2B playbook. Congratulations to everyone involved in bringing this vision to life, and thank you to ANA and the jury for this honor.
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Welcome to the wonderful world of strategy: the best, most interesting and arguably the most ambiguous job in this business. I understand there’s some confusion as to what exactly strategy is—given that my family still doesn’t understand what I do because there’s no main character from “Mad Men” to align it with—and therefore who’s likely to make a great strategist.
Strategy is the discipline formerly known as account planning. Back when account planning was invented, it was about understanding a broad target audience, gleaning insights and writing briefs that served as springboards for great work. And great work was limited to a much smaller number of mass media channels at that time: print, TV, OOH. Obviously, the world has changed a lot since then and with it, the practice of planning. The term strategy came about to encompass the broadening of the discipline’s scope—to include brand strategy, creative strategy, communications strategy, design strategy, digital strategy, social strategy and depending where you work, a fair amount of corporate strategy as well.
Well, that sounds daunting. What does it mean? While you can specialize in virtually any of the things listed above, strategy tends to be best suited for people with varied interests and an insatiable curiosity about almost anything and really, everything. A strategist’s primary job is the connection of disparate and sometimes seemingly unrelated dots to create a plan that solves a problem for a business and for a consumer. We still write briefs to inspire great creative work, but our job goes well beyond that today.
As strategists, we have an opportunity to shape and create better experiences for human beings. We have the power to encourage brands and companies to represent themselves more honestly, to impact how people across different genders and races see themselves represented in media, and to challenge our collective thinking about the way things are—and the way they could be.
A great strategist is part anthropologist (a student of cultures), part sociologist (a student of people and how we are shaped by our society), part psychologist (someone who seeks to understand the human mind and what makes us behave the ways we do), part analyst (adept at reading and interpreting data to uncover hidden truths about our habits) and part creative (skilled storytellers who are energized at the prospect of changing how people think, feel or act via inspiring work).
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Most strategists don’t start out as strategists. They take winding paths, ones that often begin in other disciplines within an agency, a related field or a different field entirely. There’s no right path, so don’t worry if you haven’t done all the “right” things. (If you secure an internship in strategy, you’re ahead of the game.) While few strategists share the same background, good ones often share similar traits. And you can highlight these traits in interviews, even if you don’t have much formal strategy experience yet.
The best strategists always seek to understand why something happens the way it does—or what makes someone do the things they do. Great strategists ask a lot of questions and enjoy spending time trying to figure people and things out. They tend to be people with varied interests, who demonstrate both an enthusiasm for and a commitment to learning new things.
Likely related to our curiosity, strategists tend to be people watchers who recognize that we learn more from watching how humans behave rather than simply listening to what they say. The best strategists are not only fascinated by people, but they naturally tend toward empathy and compassion—finding it easy to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and understand what they want and need without judgment or criticism. They embrace the humanity in any situation.
Standout strategists are equally good at talking to people and listening to what they have to say. Listening leads strategists to compelling insights rooted in real human truths, which lay the foundation for engaging stories. Great strategists are dynamic storytellers who possess the ability to make the incredibly complex feel simple—or at the very least, logical and easily digestible. And it’s not enough to be exceptional writers; strategists must also be highly skilled at presenting their ideas to a broad range of audiences.
As strategists, we deal heavily in possibility and opportunity. Great strategists are drawn to and excited by the prospect of solving complex and often layered problems, but also energized by possibilities. They possess the business acumen to understand not only how a business works today, but the imagination and the optimism to envision how it might work better tomorrow.
Great strategists are creative people who appreciate and voraciously consume creative content in myriad forms: books, films, plays, shows, stories, articles, podcasts—the list goes on and on. Exposure to a continuous flow of creative stimulus provides fresh perspective and inspires strategists to think about the problems they’re tasked with solving in new ways, helping them draw parallels, frame challenges and communicate opportunities in ways they otherwise may not have. This ultimately helps them to become better partners to their creative teammates.
If the above description sounds like you, find ways to demonstrate these traits in your interviews. Strategy is an endlessly fascinating field for those that love a challenge–and we’re always looking for critical thinkers and courageous creators who are unafraid to shake things up in order to make them better.
Interested in pursing a career in strategy? Check out VSA’s open positions.
