The Brand Sensei

The Brand Sensei is a growth partner for small and mid-sized businesses who want to build effective, AI-powered marketing and brand systems that drive sustainable growth - all without the big team or big budget.

We offer:

- The SMTR BRND Method: A proven step-by-step framework for developing your brand strategy, maximizing customer engagement, and accelerating revenue growth using AI and digital marketing.
- Monthly Strategy Sessions to review your progress, solve challenges, and optimize your brand and marketing performance.
- A community of growth-focused business leaders who are implementing advanced marketing strategies to scale their companies.
- Access to AI marketing training, tools, brand templates, customer insight frameworks, and our annual Brand Masters Summit.

Book a discovery call at https://brandsensei.com to learn if you qualify.

Founder / Fractional CMO

Annansi

RECENT: Future of Retail Sessions • CSU College of Business Fall Speaker Series • Retail Innovation Week • Global South Tech • Global Entrepreneurship Week • The United Nations • Columbia University • Harvard University (2010) • SXSW Interactive Conference and Festival • The Smithsonian Museum • Google.org

Keynote Speaker

• Developing strategies for emerging brands to grow their visibility, engagement and sales by using customer insights, data, and digital tech including AI

• Workshops and training for founders and marketing teams on the strategic use of Artificial Intelligence (A)I for brand and business growth

Clients include:
→ SwatchOn (retail B2B ): brand strategy, customer research & segmentation, Web3 engagement strategy
→ PUMA (retail B2C): customer research and profiling, engagement strategy
→ Bayer (health B2B, B2C ): Product positioning, messaging, go-to-market strategy, launch
→ Sysdyne Technologies (construction B2B): re-branding
→ Party City (retail B2C): digitization
→ Novartis (health B2B, B2C): division branding, positioning

Digital Brand Strategist & Customer Experience Specialist (on demand)

Various Startups

✛ Streamlytics
✛ PopCom
✛ CRE Capital
✛ The Bridge Fashion Incubator (TBFI)

Startup Investor & Advisor

IPG Health

Drove strategic initiatives resulting in the successful launch and growth of domestic and global brands, overseeing $8+ million in business. Assessed market opportunities and crafted brand strategies to achieve objectives.

VP, Engagement Strategy

JUICE

Guided clients and department leads (creative, account, project management, etc.) to conceptualize, adopt, and optimize fully integrated marketing campaigns.

VP, Director of Customer Experience

Ogilvy

Served as strategy lead for diverse B2B and B2C brands, orchestrating the planning and execution of fully integrated multi-million-dollar campaigns.

Director, Digital Strategy

McCann Health

Senior Digital & Content Strategist

Saatchi & Saatchi

Digital Supervisor

Dress Barn

Manager, Digital & Content Marketing

Various

Clients: Captain Morgan, Hugo Boss, Giorgio Armani, Party City, PUMA

Digital Marketing Consultant

Helping brands to grow Visibility, Engagement, and Revenue using AI and Digital Tech || Strategist, Technologist, Data/Insights Nerd || Ex- @Saatchi, @Ogilvy, @McCann

Ever feel like everything is moving fast and your business is two steps behind? 

Forget surviving, you still want your brand to connect with the right people and soar! That’s where I come in.

As a seasoned marketing executive with over 15 years of experience, I have dedicated my career to driving business growth through innovative, data-driven marketing strategies. 

My passion lies in 

I've been in the trenches with big players like Mercedes-Benz, PUMA, and Pfizer and also bold startups like SwatchOn, guiding them in developing and executing multi-channel campaigns that not only generate qualified leads but also accelerate sales cycles and maximize customer acquisition.

Challenges I Understand:
❗️Struggling to stand out in a crowded market.
❗️Ineffective brand messaging that doesn't resonate with your audience.
❗️Difficulty integrating cutting-edge technology into your marketing strategy.
❗️Need for a data-driven approach to understand and engage customers.
❗️Desire to increase revenue while building a sustainable, beloved brand.

How I Help My Clients & Partners:
✅ Data-Driven Insights: Unlocking the power of data to create compelling, personalized brand stories.
✅ Digital Technology Integration: Seamlessly blending technologies into your marketing strategy for impactful customer engagement.
✅ Customized Brand Strategies: Crafting unique solutions that resonate with your audience and drive business growth.

Technical Proficiency:
From Adobe Creative Cloud to Google Analytics to ChatGPT to Web3 tolls, I help leaders understand and use the right technologies to drive brand growth.

I am excited about the intersection of creativity and data-driven decision-making, and am always open to connecting with like-minded professionals, discussing potential collaborations, or sharing insights on the ever-evolving landscape of marketing.

Eager for your brand to gain a competitive edge and dominate your market?

Let's chat!

G. Kofi Annan

What if everyone who rejected you was actually... right?

Hear me out.

My granny flew 5,000 miles to tell me I was ruining my life.
My professor compared me to an alcoholic.
My friends said my work wasn't worth $10.

They were all correct.

I spent years trying to conform.
Until my same rejected work sold for 6X more...to strangers.

The rejection was never about me.

This changed how I see every "NO" forever →

I help health brands grow clients/patients & revenue using a AI-enhanced acquisition system ✪ Fmr @Saatchi, @Ogilvy, @McCann

Finding Value in Rejection

The more you outsource your thinking to ChatGPT, the lazier you get and the more you risk losing your credibility. 

Customers, clients, and readers have access to ChatGPT too. 

They want your expertise, taste, and judgment. 

Don’t let one lazy tweet, post, or paragraph be the reason you lose their trust and kill your business.

Too many founders and owners wear exhaustion like a medal.

You built a business to help people. Now it's the thing breaking you.

60-hour weeks.
Answering texts at dinner.
"Always available" as a selling point.

But here's the truth:

Your clients and patients don't respect you more for being accessible.
They respect you more for being excellent.

And excellence requires edges.

The massage therapist who doesn't book past 6pm?
3-month wait list.

The nutritionist who doesn't answer weekends?
40% price premium.

The doctor who doesn't rush consultations?
Highest satisfaction scores in the city.

They're not working less.
They're working on what only they can do.

Everything else? It's noise disguised as necessity.

The highest-paid, most effective practitioners aren't the most available.
They're the most intentional.

What tasks are stealing your excellence?

My friend Camille is brilliant. MBA from Wharton. Built campaigns that saved millions.

But she gets ignored while people with less experience get the opportunities she wants.

It's not fair.

But in a world drowning in noise, intelligence without authority is just expensive advice nobody asks for.

That's why I'm partnering to launch Scaling Authority, a 4-month program to help seasoned professionals and ambitious entrepreneurs build authority at scale.

Your expertise is your most valuable asset. 

But if you can't make it land with authority, it might as well not exist.

If you're tired of being the best-kept secret in your space, this is your permission slip to finally change that.

Scaling Authority is limited to only 10 participants.

Early bird closes next Wednesday, Dec. 10th.

Read more ↓

View newsletter: Digital Brand Tips | By Kofi

My friend Camille is brilliant. She's got an MBA from Wharton. Built three successful marketing campaigns that saved her last company millions. Can di

Open article: The smartest person in the room often gets ignored. Let's change that! by G. Kofi Annan • 3 min read

The smartest person in the room often gets ignored. Let's change that!

John Pasmore

Latimer

A Large Language Model (LLM) additionally trained on the history and culture of Black & Brown people delivering all the expected functionality of an LLM with additional cultural precision. B2C and B2B (with API and agent dev ++) applications.

Founder & CEO

Movita Organics

A TRS Capital portfolio company. Partner with Tonya Lewis Lee and Bob Sires in building a leading women's wellness platform creating top-quality products, driving community, and sharing reliable information; focused on African American women as the core consumer. Movita products are made with organic ingredients, are non-GMO, non-allergenic -- all available at movitaorganics.com and on Amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/B01AYNBWOK

Partner

Outward Bound USA

Our mission is change lives through challenge and discovery and to help people achieve what they never thought possible. Outward Bound is the premier provider of experience-based outdoor leadership programs for youth and adults. 

Outward Bound USA oversees a system of 12 separate 501 (c) 3 chartered entities operating in wilderness and urban environments serving over 35,000 students per year.

Member of the Board of Directors | Governance Chair

2aDays

A TRS Capital portfolio company. LRT Sports is a rating and review site for college coaches. We work to help student-athletes and their families with Understanding College Athletics™ through first-hand information that comes from college coaches, college athletes, pro athletes, and Olympians.

Advisor

The Lewis Latimer Fellowship

Inspiring the next generation of greatness.

Fellow

TRS Capital

An early-stage investment company that invests in American success. We provide not only funding but also consulting services to help companies thrive. Our team has 200+ years of experience in business investing and consulting. We put that expertise to work for the companies we partner with, leading to great success in our investments.

Techstars

Mentor

Yestime

A TRS Capital portfolio company. (Acquired by FutureSum 2023) Yestime is focused on delivering core messaging tools that are easy to use and priced simply. The team is building additional capabilities such as a recommendation engine that efficiently delivers client messaging (email and text) with commerce offers that are non-competitive but relevant to the message. The Yestime service extends the consumer experience and drives ancillary revenue by intelligently including offers to complement outbound messages. Our primary focus is driving incremental revenue with data capture a close second. The Platform uses Machine Learning to optimize experiences for the consumer.

Managing Partner

American Elite Molding

US-based. Fast growing, middle market industrial manufacturer with top-tier clients. Assist CEO on sell-side of transaction: https://www.southwire.com/blogs/southwire-acquires-aem
A former TRS Capital portfolio company.

TRACE TV

Trace USA is a venture supported by Paris-based Trace TV,  a leading brand and urban entertainment platform that resonates with over 200 million multicultural and multiethnic youth in 140 countries.
Initially a print magazine published in New York and London, Trace was relaunched as a multimedia group in 2003. Trace now operates 20 TV channels under several sub brands and formats: TRACE Urban, TRACE Tropical, TRACE Toca, TRACE Gospel and TRACE Sports Stars.
Trace is also active in digital networks, FM radio stations, mobile services, content production and events organization.
Trace is a leading entertainment brand for youth all over sub Sahara Africa, in France, Caribbean and Indian Ocean, Trace USA intends to extend this reach to the United States.

CEO TRACE USA

Focused on building scalable and sustainable organizations with an understanding that diversity, smart design and open communication all impact outcomes.

Pay careful attention to revenue generation/growth, strategic partnerships, and overall management. 

Advise on financing, funding, Private Equity, corp structure, diversity/inclusion, and Board-level direction including:

• Strategy
• Technology evaluation & implementation
• Business & corporate development
• P&L management
• M&A/Private Equity strategy, planning, outreach and deal management
• Content (Media & Commerce) production, syndication & distribution

Bennett College in North Carolina! Airport chaos isn't slowing Latimer down. Our mission is to get AI into students' hands. Thank you, President Teresa Hardee.

Latimer.ai | Board Director | Partner | Venture Beat Generative AI Visionary Award

Spent some time with Salesforce. Great to see a big business building for the benefit of everyone. I appreciate the team inviting Latimer to be a part of a special event in Oakland. Thank you to Alexandra (Ally) Legend Siegel, SVP, Chief Equality and Engagement Officer, Courtney D. Williams, Senior Director, Communications and Engagement, and, of course, Salesforce President and Chief Operating & Financial Officer, Robin Washington, for including us.

Wonderful panel moderated by Madison Gunter, III MBA, with co-panelists Brandon Nicholson, Kimberly (Smith) Bradberry, and John Lindo, MBA, CISSP.

Great group and enjoyed meeting Akilah Cadet, DHSc, MPH, Heather Davis, Narender S., Ayori ‘Selfpreneur’ Selassie, Robyn Cross, MPH, swapping ideas with Erin Dangerfield, seeing Rachel Gillum, Ash Jha and Jared Morris, and hearing Andre Iguodala. + Selina Suarez, MBA.

Thanks to team Latimer for making it all possible: Elton Sampaio, Malur Narayan, Courtney I. Williams, Celestine Maddy, Shanti T., Erskine "Chuck" Faush, Munson Steed, Merline Saintil  +++

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The Battle

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John Pasmore

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}G. Kofi Annan's LinkedIn Performance

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