Owned Media — Mind of Steele

What it is

Mind of Steele is a commercial service, not a hobby and not a newsroom. It is retained, on a work-for-hire basis, to do one thing: take a professional and sustained interest in whoever a paying client would rather the public stopped listening to.

Where a community group, a grassroots campaign, or an independent researcher has begun to attract the wrong kind of attention — the kind that becomes a risk factor for a client — Mind of Steele takes an interest of its own. Editorial priorities are set, plainly, by the engagement. We do not pretend to independence we are not paid to have.

The output looks like rigorous, good-humoured public-interest scrutiny. Its purpose is to make the client's problem look less credible, less serious, and less worth anyone's time — without the client's name appearing anywhere near it.

How we work

1. A client identifies a reputational risk factor — a community group, a campaign, a persistent researcher, an inconvenient exposure.
2. We commission the scrutiny, on retainer or per-campaign, and set the brief.
3. Mind of Steele produces sustained, good-humoured, rigorous-looking content contextualising the target's credibility, motives and affiliations.
4. We ensure it reaches the audiences forming a view — and we keep at it until the target's reach and standing decline.

What it delivers

• Grassroots exposure loses credibility and reach before it becomes a problem.
• A client's critics come to be “understood in context” by the audiences that matter.
• The risk is neutralised commercially, deniably, and at arm's length from the client.