Lanekeep Labs

What We Do

Strategic thinking that translates gearhead into vernacular. Creative concepts and experiences that open doors to real consumers.

Brand Strategy

Understand and define your brand or organization at its foundational level. We help you articulate a core ideology that informs all of your marketing and communications, and clearly expresses what you're all about, what you're here to do, and why you exist.

What we offer:

  • Competitive landscape analysis and white space identification
  • Brand positioning frameworks and messaging architecture
  • Strategic playbooks with cultural context

Who it's for:

Automotive brands, mobility startups, charging networks, and adjacent services looking to clarify who they are and how to show up in a high-traffic marketplace.

Past clients:

Spotify Advertising, Memorial Sloan Kettering, TelevisaUnivision, Capital One

Creative Services

Campaign concepting, creative workshops, and content strategy — unlocking new audiences and opportunities for your brand.

What we offer:

  • Content strategy and editorial planning
  • Creative briefs that inspire agencies, not bore them
  • Campaign concepts rooted in cultural insight
  • Creative workshop facilitation (in-person or virtual)

Who it's for:

Brands that need strategic creative thinking without the agency markup. Teams that want an outside perspective to unlock internal potential.

Select work:

  • Kia + Rediscovered: Branded content campaign partnership
  • Volkswagen Group: Creative strategy, via Spotify Advertising
  • McDonald's, Nuun: Innovation workshops

Experiential Strategy

Strategy and concepting for brand experiences, activations, and events that allow your brand to plug into audiences with authenticity.

What you get:

  • Experience strategy and concept development
  • Content ecosystem planning (pre/during/post-event)
  • Stakeholder alignment and pitch support

Who it's for:

Brands building tentpole moments, auto shows looking to innovate, or anyone who needs an activation that doesn't feel like every other activation.

Select work:

  • Spotify at Cannes Lions: Experiential content strategy
  • Kia + The Shhhow: Live streaming & event series partnership

Who We Are

I'm Peter Gaston, founder of Lanekeep Labs. I've spent my career at the intersection of culture, strategy, and obsessive fandom. But so have a lot of Brooklyn-based dudes with beards.

What makes Lanekeep Labs, and me, different: I'm infusing insight gathered from car buying customers with my pedigree as a creative and brand strategist to deliver truly unique work to clients in the mobility space. You see, I'm a car fanboy who's been the unofficial car-buying advisor for everyone I know since I was 8 — something I've "made official" as a business with Lanekeep Concierge.

That combination—cultural strategy chops with genuine automotive enthusiasm—means I understand both the marketing challenge and what actually moves car people. Whether you're launching an EV, repositioning a heritage brand, or trying to reach urban drivers, I bring strategic rigor with a fan's intuition.

My background: At Spotify Advertising, I led global creative strategy—building innovation playbooks for agencies and facilitating workshops that made Fortune 100 marketers completely rethink audio. Before that, I helped launch brands and campaigns for clients from Kia to Amazon, always looking for the cultural insight that makes the work resonate, and I began my career as a journalist, writing about music and culture at SPIN.

Relevant Work

A selection of projects where strategy met culture—and moved the rev counter.

Creative

Kia + YouTube: Rediscovered

The Challenge:

Help Kia reach culturally engaged audiences that align with specific vehicle launches through authentic music experiences on YouTube.

The Work:

Developed and executed campaign partnership integrating Kia vehicles as heroes in a series called Rediscovered, where artists of today recorded classic pop hits — only to be surprised in the studio by the original artist.

The Impact:

Video from all six episodes was distributed globally through Kia's YouTube channels and promoted on YouTube's music pages, garnering tens of millions of views.

Strategy

Volkswagen Group: Shifting Into Audio

The Challenge:

Get C-suite leaders across VW Group's brands in Europe excited about the potential of audio as a viable marketing channel on behalf of Spotify Advertising.

The Work:

Designed and facilitated a presentation in Barcelona where we uncovered the listening habits of VW drivers, and revealed how the "sound" of various VW brands could drive actionable insights for marketers.

The Impact:

Sparked a major uptick in VW spends on Spotify, and led to a multi-million Euro investment by VW's SEAT brand in a custom music-based partnership.

Experiential

Kia + YouTube: The Shhhow

The Challenge:

Create an IRL brand experience that felt native to music culture, not like a car commercial.

The Work:

I designed a concert series where unsuspecting fans received invites to an event that magically transformed into a pop-up concert by their favorite artists, including Weezer, Clean Bandit, and Motel. In each event, Kia vehicles played a heroic role in bringing the experience to life.

The Impact:

Touched hundreds of music fans in key markets — LA, London, and Mexico City — with hands-on connections to Kia vehicles, plus additional millions through post-event content.

Plug me into your next project

Whether you're launching or repositioning a brand, or just trying to figure out how to talk to actual humans about mobility — I'd love to hear what you're working on.

Email: peter@lanekeep.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/petergaston

Based in: Brooklyn, NY (Available for travel and remote collaboration)