Who We Work With
We spent over 20 years each employed in blue chip, international, brand businesses including Unilever, Ford, Mars, Colgate, BT and Scottish & Newcastle.
Between us we have worked in every type of marketing and sales roles as well as leading Business Planning, R&D and Operations teams.
Since moving agency side we have worked with many customers, from multi €billion, global companies, working with 5 of the world’s top 55 consumer product companies, through country based business units to local inventors.
Much of this work remains under development and therefore confidential but the examples below provide a flavour of work we’ve delivered for customers.
We have worked across a range of industries including: Global Consumer Durables, UK Fresh Produce, Global Drinks, UK Food Division Of A Global Food And Drink Business, Global Consumer Products, European Packaging Trade Body, European Drinks, US Hygiene, Media Brand Extension, UK Technology House, UK Inventor.
Case Studies
Global Consumer Durables
Following a 3-way pitch we were appointed to develop a consumer led Innovation process to identify ideas which consumers value and how to extract full value through an effective marketing plan.
We recommended the marketing process and linkages to the marketing planning, technical and commercial processes and ran pilots in the US and Europe before finalising the process, developing and executing its training worldwide.
We have since been asked to do the same work for another business division, sponsor two major projects through to launch and facilitate a global brand positioning workshop with the Regional Marketing Directors.
UK Fresh Produce
Following a 3-way pitch we were asked to recommend whether our customer should investigate launching a brand in a category currently 95% own label, develop the brand positioning and validate the mix.
We reviewed available information to identify the best opportunities for a new brand, ran internal workshops and qualitative consumer research to develop ideas, selected the strongest idea through concept testing and then wrote the marketing and technical development briefs and headline business case.
Our customer has no marketing department and our role was extended to lead the development of pack design and marketing support, including writing and presenting the sales proposition to leading retailers. We have now been asked to lead development of a second branded project.
Global Drinks
We were initially asked to identify Innovation Platforms for On Premise growth across Greater Europe and to recommend whether and how to progress two high investment on premise projects.
On completion of this work we were invited to develop and train consumer insight methodology, run idea creation workshops throughout Eastern Europe and develop training to improve external (specifically consumer) focus within the head office teams.
UK Food Division Of A Global Food And Drink Business
We were asked to take an overview of work by incumbent agencies to recommend Innovation Platforms.
By combining interrogation of market and consumer information and overlaying input from managers from R&D, External Relations, Marketing, Sales and Strategy we defined and recommended Platforms to deliver against consumer needs gaps, the core business competencies and strategy. We then secured cross functional alignment behind these platforms through a full day workshop with the Management Team.
Since then we have led insight generation against one of these platforms as input to concept development, run an assessment of an extension to core business based on fit with emerging consumer needs, run a workshop of 25 managers to build on existing and create new ideas against 3 of the platforms and been asked to provide expert input to a Usage and Attitude survey.
Global Consumer Products
Design and development of training programme on Integrated Marketing Campaigns.
European Packaging Trade Body
We were asked to identify a sustainability positioning for a packaging format. We ran internal idea generation workshops, ran consumer research to identify the most persuasive messages, built these into final proposals and presented these to a number of packaging customers and NGOs.
European Drinks
We were asked to develop an innovation process tailored to this business and the training to implement it and to lead a complex technical project.
The process is in place and training ongoing through a series of project based workshops. Given the complexity and mis-match between scale of opportunity and required investment we recommended the technical project be suspended.
We also provided crisis management to rescue a failing project and sponsored the top three priority projects.
US Hygiene Business
We facilitated an innovation idea generation workshop involving the European marketing managers with the US based R&D team joining by conference call. The success of the workshop was largely dependent on our writing technical development briefs overnight to bring the US team back on board for day two.
Media Brand Extension
We provided Brand positioning advice to support negotiations with potential Brand licensees investors.
UK Technology House
We ran a workshop to identify business and consumer opportunities for a technical invention and this led to the invention progressing with a number of large consumer businesses. We have subsequently worked in partnership on a number of customer projects.
UK Inventor
We identified customer and business opportunities for a number of related technical inventions resulting in the establishment of a joint venture business.