Navigating the flow

While some consultancies promote complex models and frameworks,

I emphasise directness over complexity and often find that answers already lie within you.

My job is to hear them, clarify them and codify them.

A typical process flow is as follows:

  • Immerse and understand.

    Mode: gaining an understanding of and feel for your business, customer, and competitive set. 

    INTERNAL 

    Immersion: deep dive into your business & brand

    EXTERNAL

    • review competitors

    • category immersion

  • Strategic foundation.

    Mode: alignment around direction and the role of positioning to support it - with excitement around making a strong strategic leap.

    Exercises include:

    • ambitions for the business & brand

    • core competencies

    • what - how - why

    • key audiences

    • competitor plotting

    • company beliefs

    • storytelling models - fighting for / fighting against.

  • Bring positioning into view.

    Mode: crafting a distinct, category-aware positioning and narrative that resonates inside and out.

    Positioning Refinement: Finalise the brand positioning statement.

    • Market Proposition:
      The foundation anchor articulating what we stand for

    • Market Promise:
      A customer-facing hook that encapsulates what you deliver

    • Internal Manifesto: Write an inspiring, manifesto that rallies the team around mission, vision, benefits and beliefs.

    • Category Benchmarking: Ensure the positioning stands out within the category while remaining authentic and credible.

  • Test, adjust, approve.

    Mode: Ensure the positioning is resonate, competitive, and actionable.

    • Audience Testing: Validate the positioning and promise with a sample of the target audience (e.g., focus groups, surveys, or social media sentiment analysis).

    • Competitive Stress Test: Assess how the positioning holds up against competitors’ claims and market noise.

    • Internal Alignment: Workshop the manifesto and positioning with key client stakeholders to confirm buy-in and practical application.

    • Refinement: Adjust based on feedback to optimize clarity, impact, and uniqueness.

I plug in and dive into your world by talking with you and understanding your category.

Fishing the stream, so to speak.

I listen closely and serve as sounding board and provocateur for your strategic vision.

Approach

  • Rapid brand intervention workshops,

  • Desktop immersion and reviews,

  • Filtering, crystalising, prototyping,

  • In-person or remote consultancy and presentations,

  • Time-bound engagements,

  • Recurring audit/refinement retainers.

Activities

Using a gut feel for brand garnered over thirty years,

and rapidly prototyping ideas and straw-man ideas that give a range of possibilities,

I partner you and LLMs, like Claude, Grok and Chat-GPT, or a combination thereof

to get to a human-curated and strategically lyrical outcome that is clean, fit-for-purpose, and delivered with a sense of shared ownership and involvement.

  • "A showstopper"

    Dave - wanted to share something that happened yesterday. I was asked to present to Laurene Powell Jobs. She is looking into ways to educate, inform and enlighten folks on education, gun control and immigration reform.

    Our vision statement and belief in inspiring each other to go beyond what we already know to make our world more interesting was a showstopper.

    It was really powerful to talk to this within the context of why we are building this platform and how it ties into what she is working on. Anyway - thank you for guiding us through the exercise.

    - Mark Bartels, CEO, StumbleUpon Inc. US

  • "an inspiration to the business"

    Great to work wth you in 2024 Dave. Such an inspiration to the business. Indeed to the team - most collaborative thorough brand evolution process I’ve ever been involved with. Thank you.


    - Jane Kirkup, Marketing Director, GreenAcres Living Memorial Parks, UK

  • "THE key success factor"

    Dave was able to put together the story and identity of our brand when others were still trying to figure out what we do...His ability to get to the core was THE key success factor in our rebranding.

    - Max Armbruster, CEO and Founder, Edgilis Consulting, SG

  • "Facilitation skills (are) bar none"

    Dave's calm, reassuring manner helped to create a safe space for the leaders to explore and debate opposing opinions for the first time.

    Dave's facilitation skills are bar none. He was able to bring together strongly held disparate views with ease to help create a shared understanding amongst the board.

    This ultimately resulted in a refreshed vision, mission and values document that guides the charity and has enabled the Executive Director to make more effective decisions around purpose, programming and partnerships.

    - Lisa Gainer, Social Impact CEO, TalentTrust, SG

  • "identifies the real truth"

    Dave is an astute thinker who has an uncanny ability to remove all ambiguity and identify the real truth in a brand; always expertly delivered through compelling storytelling.

    - David Blyth, MD, Brand Union Africa, SA

  • "vehicles for morale and self-discovery."

    Dave help us build a company’s mission, a soul, a rallying cry for internal teams in need of purpose... and a magnetic beacon for our users.

    He was elegant on his approach to corporate culture, and well-versed and convincing with his researched opinions.

    His strategic mind was crucial to help us build customer trust over time, and craft value messages with a shelf life longer than just the next quarter, (and) his presentations became vehicles for morale and self-discovery.

    - David Gómez-Rosado, Exec. Director Experience, StumbleUpon Inc. US

  • "clear and impactful"

    Dave is a masterful facilitator who helped the CampusImpact board articulate a vision for the next 3 years, and the strategy we would take to get there.

    It was no easy feat, considering that we had strong personalities on the board. Thanks to Dave’s clear and impactful communication, the board was able to come together behind a common vision.

    This also empowered the management team and we tripled our staff component, growing from an organisation with Total Operating Expenditure of around $500,000 to an organisation with TOE of $1.2 million today.


    - Elysa Chen, Executive Director, CampusImpact, SG

  • "an artists eye, a marketers mindset"

    Dave combines an artists eye, a marketers mindset and design thinking to produce solutions that deliver above expectations. What I value most is that while Dave clearly does his research- he is also a keen listener. The result is he often understands the product as well (and sometimes better) than the owners.

    - Dr James Andrade, Head, Catapult Executive Leadership & Innovation Institute