For the bulk of 2020, ecommerce was a vital lifeline for many businesses, with everyone from restaurants to retail brands presenting their offering online in novel ways. While ecommerce might have been a stopgap for many brands, others have prioritised this space for years. For those brands – brands like luxury fashion platform Farfetch – it’s now a question of how to truly put their own stamp on the increasingly hectic marketplace.

“We’re a bigger business than we are a brand, which is, in some ways, a wonderful problem to have. But it means that we’re tip of the iceberg. There’s so much opportunity, or money on the table as it were, with: what if we did have a stronger brand?” says Ronojoy Dam, global brand and culture director at the platform, which was founded in 2007 by José Neves.

Early on in his career, Dam joined BBH as a strategist, working on the global Levi’s account (“which was amazing because black 501s are my favourite jeans!”). “I didn’t want to go into advertising, but I realised those ads were something I really grew up with,” he says. At BBH, he also worked on Burberry’s digital strategy in the early years of the brand’s new leadership, helmed by creative director Christopher Bailey and CEO Angela Ahrendts. Dam then moved on to Nike, focusing on fashion and culture marketing, before joining Dazed Media, where he worked closely with founder Jefferson Hack as the publishing company’s first group creative director.

“He dropped out of college to start Dazed, so there was someone that I found a spiritual mentor in,” he says of Hack. “I don’t know how to use Photoshop, so becoming a creative director, it was much more around understanding the strength of concepts regardless of media.

“I think the language of jobs in our industry has changed, as well,” he continues. “What does a creative director even mean these days? What does strategy mean? I’ve found that some of the most creative people I’ve met have been the business people, and some of the most strategic people I’ve met have been creative directors.” The common thread between the roles throughout his career has been “engineering brand worlds for culturally discerning audiences and businesses that have been going through transformative stages,” he says.