The North American View with Patti McNair, Principal, North America

Q1. What’s shifting in North American retail and hospitality that international brands aren’t seeing until they arrive?

A1. North American customers have become exceptionally discerning. They expect brands to do more than offer a great product. They expect them to understand them.

I’ve seen domestic brands work hard to build emotional relevance here, because what resonates in one market doesn’t necessarily translate to another. North America isn’t one market; it’s three countries, countless regions, and distinct local cultures. The brands that succeed recognize that nuance and try to belong.

That can mean participating in local events, supporting communities, using locally relevant materials and language, embracing local humor and customs, or simply understanding what matters to customers in a particular place. Those details can turn a global brand into a local favorite.

For international brands entering North America, translating product information is only the starting point. A successful launch needs a thoughtful localization strategy, one that captures the emotional nuance of the brand while making its products or services feel relevant and meaningful to specific customers in specific places.

The question isn’t just, “Is this a great product?” It should also be, “Why does this matter to the person I want to buy it?”

That’s where localization moves from translation to connection.

Q2. F&B and hospitality is a big part of your remit. What are the operators you’re working with getting right, and where do you see the biggest gaps?

A2. Beyond controlling costs and protecting margins, my best advice to hospitality operators is simple: keep it simple.

The more an operator tries to appeal to everyone, to every taste, every trend, every customer, the more diluted the experience can become. That applies to the menu, the product offering, the brand, and the physical environment.

The operators I see getting it right have a clear point of view. They know what they do well, stay disciplined about how they deliver it, and resist the temptation to add complexity just because they can. That focus makes it easier to maintain quality, create consistency, and communicate the passion that inspired the business in the first place.

And passion matters. People may walk through the door for the product, but they come back for the feeling and the experience.

Growth is exciting, and expansion is always tempting. But the most successful operators we’ve worked with understand that growth works best when it doesn’t come at the expense of the things that made the business special in the first place: a clear purpose, strong core values, and a deep understanding of what they do exceptionally well.

Q3. When a legacy brand needs to reinvent itself without losing its equity, what does the right process actually look like? What decisions come first?

A3. Reinvention starts with remembering.

Before changing anything, a legacy brand needs to understand why people loved it in the first place. What products, experiences, symbols, stories, and values have created genuine emotional equity? What is essential to preserve and what has simply become familiar?

From there, look at the present. Where is the brand no longer keeping pace with its customers? Is it still relevant, useful, convenient, accessible? Does it reflect today’s expectations and values? Those tensions often reveal the richest opportunities for renewal.

The best pivots are not about abandoning the past. They’re about keeping the good, contemporizing the current, and creating excitement about what comes next. And the story around that change matters. The narrative needs to make sense to the people who already love the brand while giving new customers a reason to care.

Most importantly, reinvention has to be proven, not simply promoted. A rebrand isn’t a splashy campaign announcing that a company is “new.” It’s a process of earning belief by listening to employees and customers, bringing people along in the change, and then demonstrating it through products, services, spaces, and experiences.

If you claim to be premium, you have to feel premium. If you claim to be innovative, people need to experience innovation.

The strongest reinventions don’t erase a brand’s history. They make its history relevant to its future.

Q4. Fresh spans architecture, brand experience, and delivery. On your projects, where does most of the value get created, and what’s the piece clients most often underestimate?

A4. I don’t think there’s one step in our process that creates more value than another. The value is in the process itself.

There are no real shortcuts to good design. When we research and investigate a brand, we’re getting underneath the surface to understand what makes it tick: its purpose, personality, opportunities, and points of connection with its customers. That brand essence becomes the foundation for the creative concept: a kind of north star that gives the brand something tangible to rally around and brings it to life for the consumer.

Then the creative work begins. Developing and testing a concept exposes practical challenges, creates opportunities to refine the idea, and helps turn a compelling vision into something that can actually work. During delivery, construction observation and project management give us the ability to solve problems in real time, when the design meets an unexpected site condition, a material isn’t available, or the budget forces a difficult decision.

Every step is another opportunity to make the idea better.

I think clients sometimes underestimate the value of the entire process because the thinking behind the process isn’t always visible. It can be tempting to eliminate a step and save a fee, particularly when the output of that step may not look tangible. But what appears to be a shortcut can ultimately mean losing the insight that makes the final result distinctive.

AI can generate a beautiful image in seconds. But a successful environment is about much more than a pretty picture. It needs to express why a brand exists, connect meaningfully with its customers, work in the real world, and deliver on its promise.

That takes insight, experience, iteration, and, frankly, a lot of care. The process is where all of that gets built in.

Q5. You’ve built long client relationships across NA. What separates a project that becomes a long-term partnership from one that’s a good single job?

A5. I’ve always encouraged anyone looking for a design partner to interview a few candidates and look for a genuine fit. Look at their work. Talk to the person who will actually be working with you. Ask the tough questions, the ones that matter to your business, your team, and your project.

Because long-term partnerships start with trust.

You need to feel confident that your design partner is giving you their very best, listening closely, advocating for you, and is willing to tell you when they think there’s a better way forward. And that trust grows when both sides bring something valuable to the table.

The best relationships have plenty of back-and-forth. There’s candor, mutual respect, healthy debate, and a shared investment in getting to the right outcome, not simply getting the job done.

Of course, there will always be projects that are transactional: a client needs a particular skill at a particular moment, the work gets done, and everyone moves on.

But the projects that become partnerships are different. They’re built on a shared belief that we’re better together than we would be working separately.

That’s what makes a client relationship go the distance.