Brand and Creative Strategy

Target Audience Research

Ideation

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A skilled strategist and researcher who uses his powers for good

Strategy

Strategy is about matching your intent to market needs and perceptions, and guiding them all towards the alignment that creates the most value for you and your customers.

I develop strategic thinking that will give your creative and marketing teams the freedom they need to run, while insuring they stay on point.

research

I approach research as an aid to judgment, not a replacement for it.

I can design, field, and analyze a wide range of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, from informal audits to global multi-language surveys.

I can also tell you when it's a waste of money to do so.

ideation

Coming up with good ideas is neither an accident nor the inevitable result of a step-by-step recipe.

It's a learned skill that emerges from working on creatively-driven projects over and over again, until it becomes second nature.

Call me in when your naming project, new business pitch, or product brainstorming needs a shot of adrenaline.

Brand & Creative Strategy

Good thinking

Comprehensive capabilities across all elements of branding and creative strategy

From getting the right ground rules in place for a new startup to rationalizing complex branding architectures for the largest corporations, I can quickly define the best branding strategy for your product, creative, and marketing teams.

I understand classic branding fundamentals and rules well enough to know when it's worth breaking them to reflect changing consumer and market influences. The result is not only a sound strategy, but a clarity of purpose that becomes part of the company culture, long after the branding project is complete.

Branding Strategy

Definition of the foundational elements of the brand, its value proposition to its target audiences, its relationship to products and company culture, and its positioning vs. competitors.

Creative Strategy

Transforming the Brand Strategy into tangible direction for creative and marketing teams, from Creative Brief writing, defining Design Principles and Themes through writing specific Messaging Hierarchies.

Brand Architecture

Tired of tripping over brands scattered across the corporate floor? A solid, interlocking Brand Architecture will define the relationships between the range of brands you manage, and how they all can be presented most effectively. It determines which elements are truly functioning as brands, and which are simply product names. The result is a cleaner, more efficient working model of how to accommodate and welcome change while maintaining coherent brand communications.

Research

Don't just test. Understand.

Complete research capabilities,
without the idea-killing side effects.

Too many great ideas get shot down in research. Originality rarely tests well. A better approach is to conduct research that helps you understand how customers think, and when they're not doing much thinking at all. That understanding will give your ideas the fighting chance they deserve.

Remember the first time you heard a recording of your own voice? Oddly unsettling, right? There is almost always a similar disconnect between a company's brand intent and a target audience's brand perception, no matter how subtle.

Good research will not only alert you to those perceptual gaps, but help you understand why they are there, and how to act on it. I can help you choose and conduct the right kind of research to build that understanding, across a wide range of methodologies.

Quantitative Research

Complete design, fielding, and analysis of usage and attitude studies, customer and employee surveys, brand and category perception studies, awareness and attitude tracking, both domestic and internationally. Understandably, many designers and other creative talent tend to avoid quantitative research, but it doesn't have to be that way. Some patterns of human perception and behavior are only visible on a quantitative scale. I can show you how to use quantitative data in a very qualitative way, creating insights unavailable via qualitative methods.

Qualitative ResearchEthnographies, 1-on-1's, focus group moderation, online and smartphone usage panels, executive interviewing, design research and informal usability testing. I can involve and train your creative team to both participate… — **Qualitative Research**
Ethnographies, 1-on-1's, focus group moderation, online and smartphone usage panels, executive interviewing, design research and informal usability testing. I can involve and train your creative team to both participate in the fieldwork, and handle it themselves in the future.

Experience and Competitive AuditsSeeing the world through your target audience's eyes is crucial to understanding how your product or service is perceived in context. Through detailed customer journey mapping and message analysis, opportunities for … — **Experience and Competitive Audits**
Seeing the world through your target audience's eyes is crucial to understanding how your product or service is perceived in context. Through detailed customer journey mapping and message analysis, opportunities for improving service design and creating competitive advantage emerge.

Ideation

When you visit enough projects,
the ideas begin to breed on their own

Where do new ideas come from?

Well, when a consultant and a client love each other very much.....

One of the best ways to come up with new ideas within your discipline is to do something else. Fortunately, I spend all my time doing something else. That means no matter which category you're in, I can put my experience with just about every other category to work for you.

The result is fresh thinking that you might not have been able to come up with on your own. But don't be embarrassed about that; it's a very natural process that everyone goes through at some point.

Concept DevelopmentSometimes stopping at a creative brief is not enough. I have experience leading teams in naming, service design, marketing concepting, and other disciplines that will give your creative teams a running start. — **Concept Development**
Sometimes stopping at a creative brief is not enough. I have experience leading teams in naming, service design, marketing concepting, and other disciplines that will give your creative teams a running start.

Pitch DevelopmentWhen you're competing for a new assignment, I can help you identify a solid strategic angle to your pitch that will set you apart from the competition, while staying true to your team's unique style. — **Pitch Development**
When you're competing for a new assignment, I can help you identify a solid strategic angle to your pitch that will set you apart from the competition, while staying true to your team's unique style.