We are a new breed consulting firm that helps 21st century leaders deliver the brands, experiences and people they need to drive innovation and sustainable growth when the ground shifts.
What we do
Brands
Brand Strategy
Brand Innovation
Brand Design
Brand Activation
Organizations
Best Practices
Benchmarking
Capability Development Roadmaps
People
Global Executive Search & Recruitment
Design, Brand, BX, CX, Digital, UX, Innovation Leadership Talent and Teams
“To compete and win in the 21st century, you need brands, organizations, and people that are tightly aligned, highly leverage-able and that can outperform your competitors. This is just table stakes.”
Greg Johnson | Former VP, ECD, Stitch Fix | VP, Brand, Creative & Media, Box | Global CD, Brand Strategy & Advertising, HP
Clients we’ve worked with
When to fly with us
When you’re leading transformation
Success depends on how well you align your strategy with your purpose andorganizational capabilities. To execute a winning transformation,you need to align key stakeholders to define the org strategy, structure, operating model, and systems required to drive change as you pivot. Groundwork laid, you’re ready to build your organization with the right combination of resources, processes and tools to socialize and operationalize your purpose.
When you’re driving innovation
Where will your next growth engine come from? What kind of leaders and team skills inwhat combination do you need to identify and deliver against your nextinnovation platforms? Design innovators, product and servicedevelopers, commercialization and/or go-to-market specialists? Flamethrowers orconsensus builders? We replace the mystery with confidence by helping to alignyour investment in capability and people with your purpose and strategy.
When you’re creating the context for growth
Ready to scale? Determining what to retain or create – behavior norms, best practices,decision making – to attract the best talent and enable their success as you get ready to drive scaled growth? We help you understand what you have and what you need to build the teams required to optimize and expanda purpose-driven design organization ready to accelerate transformation, innovate and grow.
When you’re embedding design/UX into the organization
Trying to put user needs and a fail-fast, learn faster culture into practice? You needthe right Design/UX strategy, along with an organization design that includes a diverse mix of leaders and talent to shape new capabilities, methods and processes, and an ops plan to integrate them into your culture and drive change.
Some of our work
Brands
A nation in the Americas
Branding to support transformation of this culturally rich and diverse nation’s economy, set it apart from regional competitors and shape global perceptions. Initial scope was an overarching brand to attract Investment and Trade for the Minister of Trade & Industry. Engagement with top government leaders, state agencies, public and private sector CEOs, and civil society, informed our breakout brand strategy: big idea, story and positioning, brand architecture, messaging framework and visual identity system. When presented to the Tourism Ministry, an agency that was developing its own separate brand when we started the engagement, their new Minister said to our CEO, “You have done the impossible. Your team has come up with a brand that truly unites us under one brand for one people (across all our government agencies). We will not proceed with a separate one.
Brands
Scotiabank for LACA region
Refined, gained alignment and rallied key stakeholders around core brand strategy including positioning and taglines for their International bank that, with adaptations for local relevance, would work in the LACA region across 3 languages: English, Spanish and French. We designed, branded, promoted and delivered highly experiential workshops to engage key stakeholders including Country Managers, Heads and Directors of Strategy, Planning, Marketing, Digital & Communications at Scotiabank across the Caribbean, Central and Latin America, as well as members of their advertising agency’s account team. Our process included pre-read assignments and an education module, followed by strategic, creative and ideation exercises, and exercises to rank and refine the final positioning and taglines each country would use to launch the new brand in advertising campaigns and marketing communications.
Organization & People
Auto to future mobility leader
Customer Experience benchmarking and best practices consulting covering strategy and organization alignment, case studies of best-in-class exemplars, operating models for transformation, and readiness scorecard; global engagement to scale Human-Centered Design organization capability across innovation studios, EV, AV and Mobility businesses for a Fortune 50 legacy auto company in transformation. Senior stakeholder alignment, executive search & recruitment of Design and Innovation leadership talent and Design teams across Experience Design, UX Design, and Digital Design; Design Research, Design Strategy, and Design Operations; Business Design, Product Design, Service Design, Communication Design, Design Prototyping, Software Design and Design Studio Directors for Connected Vehicles, Mobility-as-a-Service across Consumer and Commercial segments for multiple locations in the US and China to fuel their rise as an EV leader.