The Making
A Strategic Evolution
In an age of digital saturation, the harder question for a brand is no longer how to be seen — but how to matter.
I'm Sooyoung Cho, a strategic architect of cultural value. My work begins in the rigorous world of FMCG and consumer brand development, where I have spent the better part of two decades decoding market mechanics and human desire. I don't design surfaces; I architect the structures beneath them — the place where commercial logic, human psychology and cultural momentum quietly converge.
Where most of the industry is preoccupied with the what — the products, the logos, the launches — I'm interested in the why and the how. Having shaped brand evolutions for Samsung Electronics, Google, Baskin Robbins, Church & Dwight and Shinsegae Department Store, I build the invisible frameworks that make brands feel inevitable. My work is to read the cultural moment and translate it into a strategic advantage that drives both commercial growth and social betterment.
The Making
A Strategic Evolution
The Making of a Cultural Architect. Branding, I've come to realise, is less about how a business looks than how it exists.
The making of this practice has been a relentless pursuit of that existence — the line between what is seen and what is felt.
Foundation.
FMCG and the Rigour of Logic
My career began in the unforgiving trenches of global FMCG. Steering brand evolutions for household names like Baskin Robbins taught me the bread and butter of business: that even the most imaginative strategy must survive the cold logic of the market. Working alongside Samsung Electronics and Google, I learnt to decode human desire through data — sharpening a strategic lens that sees beyond the immediate transaction toward the longer cultural shift.
Essence.
Why the bread and butter?
People often ask about the consultancy's name. The truth is delightfully simple: I have adored bread and butter since I was a child. It is the most fundamental, honest and quietly satisfying of combinations. As we mark our 17th year, the name reads more clearly than ever — even, perhaps especially, in the age of AI. In a world increasingly drowning in synthetic data, authenticity is the real bread and butter of business. You can automate the logic; you cannot automate the soul. FACTION® — Fact + Fiction — is the methodology that grew out of that conviction. Seventy per cent strategic rigour. Thirty per cent cultural manifestation. The ratio matters.
Expansion.
London and the Human Context
My time at Central Saint Martins (UAL) in London was a deliberate pivot into the 'Fiction' of branding. Immersed in design journalism and cultural marketing, I came to see a brand as a piece of cultural capital. From interning aboard the SS Robin — a Victorian ship-turned-photojournalism gallery on the Thames. — to collaborating with Harper's Bazaar, I noticed a universal truth: a strategy is only ever as strong as the narrative it inhabits.
Convergence.
A Mandate for Betterment
Today, as a member of the Fast Company Impact Council, I apply the same philosophy to global retail leaders like Shinsegae and Hyundai, and to civic clients like the City of Busan. I don't simply build brands; I architect their momentum. Whether the work is a flagship department store or a community project in rural Mongolia, the brief comes back to the same word: Betterment. Because in the end, if a brand doesn't leave the world slightly better than it found it, it's just taking up space. And I'm much too busy for that.
The Architecture of Momentum