Brainwaves launches AI platform for marketing teams

Brainwaves has launched an AI platform for marketing and creative teams, designed to turn research and brand knowledge into strategic direction.

The business was founded by Jamie Brownlee, Tom McKenzie and Ben Crawford, who bring backgrounds in marketing, agency work and technology. Brownlee previously served as chief marketing officer at Euronews, McKenzie was a founding engineer at Mr Yum, and Crawford held senior agency leadership roles across Asia-Pacific.

The platform uses more than 10 specialist AI agents in parallel across areas including audience, culture, category and insight. Brainwaves positions the model as a response to a common problem for marketers: content production has become faster, but deciding what to say and why remains slow.

That challenge has grown as brands work across more markets, audiences and agency partners. Research is often repeated by different teams, while context can be lost between those setting strategy and those carrying it out.

Brownlee said the aim was to make strategy a continuous process rather than a one-off briefing stage.

"Marketers and creative teams face an impossible choice: move slowly and get the strategy right, or move fast and risk wasting millions on ineffective marketing. AI means brands can produce more content, in more markets, faster than ever. But without sharper direction, faster execution just means more spend on ineffective marketing and the rework that follows. We're building Brainwaves for modern brand thinkers who are already moving strategy from a slow process that briefs the creative, to an always-on capability that fuels it. We do that by connecting brand intelligence to the creative process and closing the gap between insight and idea," said Jamie Brownlee, Chief Executive Officer, Brainwaves.

Strategy focus

The founders are entering a market where many marketing teams already use general-purpose AI tools for drafting and research. Brainwaves argues that these systems often produce similar recommendations regardless of the business context, echoing concerns raised in Harvard Business Review research cited by the company about so-called "strategy trendslop".

Crawford said generic large language models can create work that appears strategic without grounding it in a brand's own information.

"Most smart marketers are already looking to AI to help solve this, but are relying on generic LLMs, which just accelerate the problem, generating outputs that look strategic but lack any specific depth that is needed to create consistent and distinctive work. Meanwhile, brands are sitting on data and intelligence about their category, their customers, and themselves, as well as research, audits, past strategies, and cultural context. Still, it rarely reaches the people doing the day-to-day work," said Ben Crawford, Chief Creative Officer, Brainwaves.

The system links a brand's positioning, audience understanding, competitive signals and research to each strategic task. It is intended to fit into existing workflows and methods rather than replace them.

McKenzie outlined that technical approach in the launch announcement.

"Most AI tools give every brand the same answer. We've designed secure, enterprise-grade infrastructure for strategic marketing, which compiles and ingests brand research, positioning, and competitive intelligence, and leverages a powerful team of specialist agents executing in parallel. Strategy stays connected to the data sources, workflow tools, and established methodologies teams already rely on. We're building the alternative to dropping prompts into chat apps: the most capable models available, equipped with the architecture and capability to actually deliver - purpose-built for how modern marketing strategy teams actually work," said Tom McKenzie, Chief Technology Officer, Brainwaves.

Early use

Early pilot projects reduced time-to-brief by up to 70%, according to Brainwaves. The company added that more than 200 agency strategists are already using the platform across more than 20 countries.

One early user was Omnicom Malaysia, where the agency's strategy team tested the platform on local market work. Brainwaves said the system was able to process Malaysian English as well as Malay and Mandarin.

"What makes Brainwaves especially powerful is its cultural fluency. It doesn't just understand colloquial Malaysian English, but also Malay and Mandarin (the three main languages spoken in Malaysia), which adds an important layer of cultural nuance. For example, festive occasions like Chinese New Year and Aidilfitri surfaced not just as generic 'festive moments,' but in the way we actually talk about them locally: 'buka rumah/open house (Raya)' and 'bai nian/house visiting (CNY),'" she said.

Based in Melbourne and Singapore, Brainwaves is targeting what it describes as a global strategy market worth more than USD $100 billion. The business has also received angel investment from marketing and agency executives and entrepreneurs.