The team behind the brand.
What's now Mindstate Creative started with one person doing the odd banner and poster for a local streetwear brand, and grew - under a couple of different names - into full-service creative work for Christchurch and Canterbury.
Full-service, one team, no fragmented vendors.
Mindstate Creative exists because juggling a web developer, a marketer, a photographer, a videographer and a social media person is exhausting - and usually means none of them are talking to each other. We handle all five, so your brand looks and sounds like one thing everywhere it shows up.
We work with any business, no matter the size - from your local home cleaner running a Facebook page, to multimillion-dollar companies that need a full brand system. Confident, playful and bold is how we work; no corporate jargon, no runaround.
How we got here.
Getting started
Founder Michael started doing the odd job for Propaganda Streetwear - a banner here, a new product listing there.
The nickname sticks
Picked up more of Propaganda's website work, and their owner Jamie started calling Michael "The Guru" - a name that stuck around.
More design work
The Guru nickname kept going, along with more in-store poster design work for Propaganda.
Same jam
More of the same - steady poster and creative work, one job at a time.
Socials by Guru
Socials by Guru was born, Michael started a Bachelor of Digital Innovation at Yoobee, and started managing Eco-Group's brand portfolio for Arnie in whatever spare time there was. The degree's marketing papers went straight into running Google and Facebook ads for Propaganda Streetwear.
The Guru
The name became simply "The Guru," with the domain theguru.co.nz to match. More brands came on board.
Top of the class
Even more brands picked up, Michael finished his degree top of class, and started doing trade shows for Ecoquip - picking up new clients on the trade show floor for social media management.
Mindstate
Time to scale, and time for a rebrand. Mindstate - pulled from everything learned at Yoobee about the psychology of marketing and the state of mind behind a good brand - is where it landed.
Michael.
Rangiora-based, and building brands since 2019 - back when it was just the odd banner and poster for Propaganda Streetwear. Along the way he picked up a nickname ("The Guru"), a Bachelor of Digital Innovation from Yoobee (finished top of class), and a genuine handle on what actually makes a brand work versus what just looks nice on a moodboard.
Mindstate is what that turned into - same approach as day one: understand the brand first, then make it look and sound like something worth paying attention to.
Life of the party, backed by the work.
Confident
We say what we mean and back it with work that holds up.
Playful
Good ideas don't have to be delivered in a suit and tie.
Bold
We'd rather make something that stands out than something that's safe.