Emma Sheppard

Emma is the Founder and Branding Director at Big Bear Creative, with nearly 20 years of experience in branding, design and creative marketing.

She started Big Bear in 2016 with a simple belief that marketing should feel useful, clear and genuinely supportive rather than overcomplicated. What began as a small freelance business has grown into a family-run agency working with organisations across Cambridge and the wider UK.

Emma specialises in helping businesses understand how they should look, sound and present themselves to the people they want to reach.

Her work spans brand strategy, visual identity, creative direction, website design and wider brand rollout. Over the course of her career, she has worked with organisations including BMW, Mercedes, Hilton, Savills and Newmarket Racecourse, as well as growing SMEs and in-house marketing teams.

At Big Bear, Emma is involved from the early strategic stages of a branding project through to creative development and implementation. Her approach is centred on understanding the business first, rather than jumping straight into logos, colours or design trends.

The aim is to create brands that feel authentic to the organisation, distinctive in their market and practical enough to work across websites, campaigns, presentations and everyday marketing.

Areas of expertise

Emma’s specialist areas include brand strategy, brand positioning, visual identity, creative direction, tone of voice, website design and brand rollout.

She is particularly experienced in helping established businesses that have evolved faster than their brand, where the challenge is often deciding what should change and what is still worth keeping.

Experience

Emma has almost two decades of experience working across branding and creative marketing.

She has worked with a wide range of organisations, from internationally recognised brands to independent and growing businesses. Her experience includes work for BMW, Mercedes, Hilton, Savills and Newmarket Racecourse.

In 2016, Emma founded Big Bear Creative. The agency is now led by Emma and Dave Sheppard and combines strategic thinking, creative direction and practical delivery across branding, websites and digital marketing.

Emma also studied at Anglia Ruskin University.

Emma’s approach to branding

Emma believes a successful brand should reflect the business behind it rather than simply follow whatever visual style is fashionable at the time.

For her, branding starts with understanding the organisation, its audience, its personality and where it wants to go. The visual identity comes afterwards.

That means asking difficult questions early, retaining existing brand equity where it still has value and creating an identity that can work properly across the day-to-day reality of the business.

Big Bear Creative

Emma has played a central role in shaping Big Bear’s own positioning and visual direction since founding the agency in 2016, helping build a brand based around clear advice, practical thinking and a more human approach to agency relationships.

What Emma believes

A brand should make it easier for people to understand who you are and why they should choose you.

Good branding is not about changing things for the sake of it. Sometimes the right answer is a complete rethink. Sometimes it is about recognising what already works and building something stronger around it.

The important part is knowing the difference.

Elsewhere

Emma is active on LinkedIn, where she shares thoughts on branding, agency life, marketing and building Big Bear Creative.

LinkedIn: Emma Sheppard

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