Consulting Services
Mission. Vision. Brand Essence. Value proposition. Key Brand Benefit. Grids, pyramids, bulls-eyes. There are many options in the brand positioning toolkit, but they all come down to essentially the same concept - identifying the sweet spot where your brand satisfies the underlying needs and motivations of a target audience while standing for something unique in the marketplace. I’m happy to work with your process and template, or one of my own. I tend to create 3-5 word phrases as a brand positioning statement. They’re meant to be internal strategy pieces, but many have gone on to be consumer-facing taglines.
Brand Strategy & Positioning
Consumer targets are much easier for internal client and agency teams to “get” when they’re given a catchy, descriptive name and explained in a rich, multi-faceted portrait of their lives that includes insights on how the category and brand fits into their lives. I can apply your existing data and analysis to develop a target persona, or use intuition and industry experience when that’s not available.
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Consumer Insights & Personas
What are you trying to achieve, where are you now, and where to do you need to get to? What kind of attitudes and behaviors will need to shift in your target audience? What’s really going to motivate those people? These are the important components of a multi-year marketing plan, or just a 1-page creative brief for the next campaign. I’ve written these on everything from giant global brands, to business to business situations, to small start-ups. I can also work iteratively if you’ve got a campaign idea or innovation concept that feels intuitively right for the client, but need help building the case for why it’s strategically sound.
Marketing Plans & Creative Briefs
You probably already have a short list of professionally-trained moderators who are your go-to for focus groups and several respected quantitative researchers who can handle even the most complex global studies. But on some projects you may find yourself with a more limited budget or just need something simpler or smaller scale – like interviewing a handful of loyal customers over the phone, or a half dozen executives at the client company, or fielding a simple quantitative survey to the folks in your database. After decades of experience hiring proper research firms for multi-million dollar studies, I’ve learned a thing or two about how to execute the simple ones.
Small-Scale Market Research
Perhaps you’re temporarily short on internal Strategy Team resources for an upcoming project or new business pitch. When that happens, it can be really helpful to have a senior person like me who can swoop in for some short-term support. I can get everyone up to speed quickly on a new category or consumer target, conduct competitive or trends analysis, identify existing best practices on something, or just sift through reams of research and client decks to search for those nuggets that will have the most impact on the project. You won’t get a summary of everything that exists, but rather a tightly focused list of insightful implications and thought-starters specifically relevant to the project with just the right amount of data to support each point. I’m happy to provide support behind the scenes or join the client meetings if that’s preferred.
Behind the Scenes Support
Behind the Scenes Support
I am a trained presenter for Climate Reality, an organization founded by former Vice President Al Gore to help educate the public about the climate crisis. I provide complimentary one-hour sessions to educate your team on the science, facts, and impacts of the climate crisis, along with what can be done to governments, brands, and people to help move to a more sustainable world.