FAQs
About what we do
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We help companies compete more effectively, by making better choices about how to find the customers they need. Unlike agencies, we don’t start with media or execution. We start with your commercial goals and develop a Creative Growth Platform designed to make whatever you’re selling easier for current and new customers to buy.
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We’re size-, geography- and industry-agnostic. Our clients range from global consumer brands to fintechs, healthcare to travel and tourism, retail to edtech, specialized business services to psychedelic meditation. We’re happy to work with any ambitious company that needs to find new customers.
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Sure, we’ve helped brands that were already big and famous stay that way. But strong strategy isn’t a luxury for big brands, it’s competitive leverage for ambitious ones. We’ve helped startups and SMEs clarify direction, focus resources, and punch above their weight in markets dominated by larger players.
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We work with a network of talents in every discipline, from film production to social media to web development to package design. They’re located around the world, which can offer clients who tap into them “chasing the sun” advantages in terms of turnaround times. But they’re not full-time staff, so you don’t pay for them unless and until you need them.
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“Success” is defined in commercial terms as per your business planning and agreed upfront. It’s also defined in marketing terms as per the strategic plan we co-create. Typically, we’ll track leading indicators like fame, distinctiveness and mental availability, trailing ones like sales and share, unforeseen “ripple effects” in the marketplace, even organizational impacts.
About how we work
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It’s a robust series of structured interviews and working sessions. Every engagement starts with understanding your commercial challenges. Once it’s clear where you are and how you got there, we develop hypotheses on where you could be instead, what’s keeping you from getting there, and how you might get there. Then, we stress-test the ideas we develop for you to ensure they’re authentic to and achievable within your organization, as well as something the marketplace actually wants to buy.
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You’ll work directly with our principals. We’ll keep you closely involved through collaborative working sessions, and regular check-ins will ensure you and your stakeholders always know where things stand and what’s happening next. We’re not one of those “black box” consultancies, and your input is essential to success, but we promise we’ll do all the heavy lifting ourselves.
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Our engagements range from weeks to months. Early impact and quick wins are important, but business growth takes consistent effort, so we focus (and help you focus) on effects and outcomes that build lasting value – commercial, organizational and reputational.
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It probably will, and that’s part of our value. We’re comfortable testing what’s been taken for granted – always constructively, always anchored in your goals. If the evidence says a different path leads to stronger growth, we’ll show you why and how – and help you get other stakeholders on board.
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We don’t believe in “ironing out every wrinkle.” Disagreement that signals potential opportunity is healthy, so we work at surfacing it early. Our process uses these tensions creatively, turning competing viewpoints into strategic options that can be assessed objectively.
About value, fit & followthrough
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Discretion is non-negotiable, and we never enter intoan engagement without a mutual NDA. Obviously, it’s to your advantage to capitalize on everything we’ve learned from our previous clients, whether in your industry or not. But we never share their secrets (for example, we don’t publish case histories) and we won’t share yours.
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We sell our time and expertise, not our overheads. We price your project based on its scope and complexity. We agree our fee upfront – transparent, outcome-oriented, no hidden extras. (If you’d like, we can explore shared-success agreements, or, for longer-term partnerships, retainers.)
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We love to solve marketing problems of any size. Sometimes all you need is a fresh pair of eyes on a pesky problem. A well-informed nudge in a more promising direction. Or a thought-provoking training session for your team. Since we don’t sell prefabricated “solutions” we can keep an open mind on what “help” might look like in your specific situation. Just ask us.
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We strongly prefer to, yes. Continuing as advisors through rollout helps your team stay true to your strategy in the real world. We provide quality control, but also guidance on how to evolve and adapt, all while monitoring and evaluating the impact of our recommendations.
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If you’re serious about business growth and open to challenging your assumptions about how to make that happen, you’re ready. If management has nagging questions you haven’t been able to answer with confidence, you’re ready. If you want closer alignment between business and brand strategy, value creative thinking combined with commercial savvy, and/or suspect there’s a mismatch between what your stakeholders think of your brand and what your marketplace does, you’re ready.
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Almost all our business comes through referrals, so we haven’t had to do as much marketing as our competitors do. We manage our profile carefully and our professional social media activity judiciously. Swimming Downstream (which Judd published recently) has gotten us on more people’s radar, but we’re about as loud as we want to be. Loud enough for you read this far.