As part of the OTT Conference 2026, the relevance of communications for think tanks and the trust the sector is working so hard to earn was explored across several sessions. Among them, “Building a stronger think tank brand,” convened by John Schwarz, Annapoorna Ravichander, and Sonia Jalfín, stood out for its clarity and ambition.
In a world where evidence alone no longer travels far enough, the ability to build a trusted, distinctive identity has become as important as the quality of the research itself.
Ask most think tank professionals what “branding” means and you’ll likely hear about logos, colour palettes, and perhaps a long-overdue website redesign. The session led by John Schwarz, CEO of Soapbox made a compelling case for something far more expansive.
A brand, Schwarz argued, is the collection of thoughts and feelings someone holds about your organisation through every interaction they have with it. A trusted think tank brand is one that “cares about you, and that you care about.” That shift, from visual identity to living relationship, reframes branding not as a communications afterthought, but as a core institutional function. And that changes everything about how think tanks should invest their time and resources.
Branding as an internal compass
One of the session’s most counterintuitive points was the direction in which branding operates. Most people assume it is outward-facing, a signal sent to the world. Schwarz inverted this. Branding works from the inside out: it helps organisations hire the right people, align teams around a shared purpose, and produce communications outputs faster and at lower cost through templates, editorial standards, and a clear tone of voice.
This idea has deeper roots than it might appear. Writing about think tank branding for OTT, Schwarz draws on Wally Olins, widely regarded as the father of modern branding, who argued that a brand is fundamentally about promises fulfilled. For think tanks, those promises are expressed not only through visual identity, but through the way an organisation speaks, writes, and behaves — the research it produces, the communications products it chooses, and the channels it uses to reach the people it wants to influence. A brand, in this sense, is an institution’s commitment made visible.
Annapoorna, who shared her experience building brand infrastructure for think tanks in India, illustrated this with her usual candour. Her communications team introduced strict editorial guidelines, unified logo usage, and resolved seemingly minor internal debates — British or American English? — that had quietly undermined consistency for years. The result was not just visual coherence, but a measurable increase in output efficiency and professional credibility.
This connects directly to what Héctor Cárdenas argued during his keynote, “If we don’t tell the story, others will: Think tanks in a polarised world.” Internal clarity — knowing what you stand for — is the precondition for communicating credibly outward. Your brand, in this sense, begins long before it reaches your audience.
Finding your blue ocean
Think tanks that work across multiple policy areas face a particular branding trap: they risk being known for everything and remembered for nothing. Sonia’s contribution to the session offered a practical framework for breaking out of it — the “blue ocean” strategy.
The case of GW Voices, an organisation focused on women’s leadership, illustrates strategic differentiation. When Soapbox mapped the competitive landscape of GW Voices, most organisations occupied predictable territory such as economic empowerment or gender-based violence. The underexplored space? The intersection of gender and multilateralism. GW Voices moved decisively into that niche, developed a flagship publication, and deployed striking visual data, showing just how few women had ever led major multilateral organisations, to generate real influence in UN forums within just four to five years.
The lesson is not to abandon breadth, but to identify and own a distinctive thread – an intellectual territory. Here’s how to do it:
- Map the field: Audit where competitors already operate before choosing your territory.
- Find the gap: Identify the credible niche where your organisation has genuine advantage and little competition.
- Amplify it: Build a flagship product around that space and invest consistently in its visibility.
- Play long: Intellectual territory is claimed through persistence, not campaigns. Think years, not months.
Care as a brand signal
Differentiation alone is not enough. The session’s definition of trust centred on something deeper: a reciprocal relationship between an organisation and its audience. Schwarz broke down how “care” is expressed in practice — through craft in the work, clarity of communication, personalisation of messages, genuine utility of information, and consistent openness to dialogue.
This is not abstract. When a newsletter is well-curated, when a report’s executive summary is actually useful to a time-pressed policymaker, when a think tank engages seriously with critical feedback — these are brand acts. They accumulate into reputation, slowly and unmistakably.
It is precisely here that Héctor Cárdenas’ keynote challenge hits hardest: “The challenge is no longer simply to produce knowledge. The challenge is to make knowledge matter.” Branding, in the Soapbox framing, is the institutional practice that makes this possible — ensuring the right people encounter your ideas, trust them, and act on them.
The tension between pluralism and coherence
Both sessions surfaced a tension that many think tank leaders will recognise immediately. Openness and intellectual pluralism are institutional virtues, they signal independence and attract a diverse membership. But taken too far, they can erode an organisation’s identity to the point of confusion.
The keynote drew on COMEXI’s own history: a decade ago, the Mexican Council on Foreign Relations became so closely associated with free trade debates that some members felt the institution had narrowed around a single narrative. The response — a deliberate broadening of agenda through structured planning processes — was itself a branding exercise: the conscious, ongoing management of what an organisation stands for and how that is perceived. Pluralism, in other words, needs a frame. Without one, it becomes noise.
ODI Global faced a version of this same tension. As Sara Pantuliano described at last year’s conference in South Africa, the organisation’s recent renewal — both of its brand and its broader business model — was precisely an exercise in reconnecting institutional identity with strategic direction, ensuring that what ODI communicates outwardly reflects what it has decided to stand for.
Modern tools, lasting trust
The good news is that think tanks have more tools than ever to build that frame and reach new audiences. Héctor’s keynote session acknowledged that the communications environment has transformed fundamentally. Think tanks are now experimenting with AI-generated podcasts, short-form video, curated newsletters, and social media strategies aimed at younger and non-traditional stakeholders.
But both sessions converged on a crucial warning: simplification for visibility must never come at the cost of depth and credibility. Short content opens doors; trust is built by what lies behind them. As Héctor put it: “Trust is not built at the level of attention. It is built at the level of follow-through.”
A compelling social post or podcast clip is a door. A rigorous report, a considered policy brief, a curated newsletter with genuine analytical value — these are what the door opens onto. Branding is what ensures that the organisation people discover on social media is recognisably the same one producing the research they come to rely on.
The strategic imperative
Both sessions pointed toward the same conclusion, with the same sense of urgency: the think tanks that will sustain influence in the coming decade are those that treat communications not as a support function, but as a strategic one — and that invest in brand-building with the same rigour they bring to research design.
The task, as Héctor closed his keynote, is to become strategic actors without ceasing to be trustworthy institutions. Branding, done well, is precisely the discipline that makes both possible at once. It is a commitment.