PO & Co.

How can you sell products and services if you're ignored in the first place?

PO&Co. helps small-to-medium-size companies spring from their sales plateaus and increase revenue through effective marketing free of buzzwords, shiny objects, and black boxes.

Marketing Consultant & Fractional CMO

Common Giant

Common Giant is a growth-minded branding agency that digs deep into marketing strategy to produce stunning creative execution.

Common Giant was founded in 2012 to My role with Common Giant is to help grow the brand strategy framework for the agency and evangelize the company's brand. 

As of 2021, I have moved out of day-to-day operations to focus on brand growth at SFW.

Founder, Board Member, and Partner

Common Giant is a brand growth agency that digs deep into marketing strategy to produce stunning creative execution for companies who want to become legendary.

Common Giant stands tall with expertise in brand strategy, creative execution, and strategic communication. Our ethos is not only about delivering collaborative, successful brands and campaigns for our clients, it is also about building committed partnerships. We’ve worked globally with clients in the software technology, medical technology, consumer packaged goods, food, and retail industries.

At Common Giant, we channel our partners’ visions into projects that are inspired, clear, and concise. We bring our team’s full range of talents to generate a signature agency experience.

Founder and Chief Creative Officer

The YEC is a selective, invite-only group of like-minded peers and entrepreneurs from nearly every industry. YEC has been honored by Nasdaq, The White House and has been recognized in media outlets worldwide.

Member

Sales Factory

Sales Factory is a retail-focused agency compelled to succeed by a data-driven integrated approach for home retail brands eager to learn, grow, and win.

My focus is to develop winning brand strategies that drive business growth for our clients.

Vice President of Brand Strategy

Piedmont Opera

The mission of Piedmont Opera is to create operatic productions of the highest artistic quality to enrich our community and to advance the art form.

Our Vision is to be the finest opera company of our size in the nation and acknowledged as the best at what we do.

Board Member

iCan House

iCan House supports and enhances the lives of those with social challenges by teaching social skills, educational opportunities and provide a source of educational resources and networks. 

In our community, there exists a large population who live their daily lives with autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, PDD-NOS, and other social disorders. As they grow and experience a world created with rules that they may not understand, it is imperative that these unique individuals are provided with positive social models that care to help them grasp the social world in which they must live in.

Together we are stronger. A support system of parents, professionals and advocates will help us succeed and provide our loved ones with the best chance to get the most out of life. Let's chat and see how I can help.

The Variable

Formerly known as PAVE Creative Group, The Variable is a digitally informed marketing think tank that is committed to turning the traditional agency-client relationship on its head. We like MadMen here. But we're more like MathMen (and women, of course). In that spirit, The Variable thinks agencies should stop being cost centers and start being revenue generators.

Specialties –
Business Strategy, Digitally Informed Advertising, Brand Development, Innovation Development

Art Director

PAVE Creative Group

Designer / Art Director

Freelance Graphic Designer / Art Director

Freelance Art Director

Crobar Creative Leverage

Marketing consultant, Fractional CMO, brand strategy, energetic speaker, foodie, soccer player, and proud Dad

I love marketing and building brands. Friends, colleagues, and clients feel that energy from the first moment of interaction. It all begins with curiosity and evolves into a blend of strategic thinking and creative magic to construct brands through effective marketing.

Over the past two decades, I've led marketing initiatives for a diverse range of companies across various industries and sizes, including technology, medtech, consumer goods, and professional services, catering to both B2C and B2B sectors.

In 2012, I founded Common Giant, specializing in crafting branding and marketing for companies that understand that brand is a competitive advantage in a world full of commodities and a marketplace competing on price.

During my career, I’ve worked client-side managing retail stores up to $52MM, served on the agency side as VP of Brand Strategy, successfully launched an agency with global clients, started a marketing consultancy, and served as fractional CMO for multiple businesses. 

Throughout my career, I’ve believed in these four pillars:

1 - Marketing is a business practice. 
Successful businesses use marketing beyond promotion, as a series of business levers to pull for higher profits.

2 - Know the customer as much as you know yourself.
We’re in business to sell products and services. But it’s hard to sell something customers don’t want or why they should buy from you. Get to know what, how, and where they’ll buy.

3 - Grow the orchard while you sell the fruit.
A small percentage of your current target audience is ready to buy. Sell when they’re ready and invest in the brand long-term to sell a lot more.

4 - Boring is expensive.
Boring is forgettable and less effective. Being ignored means being forgotten and spending more for attention. Boring is bad for business.


Now that you’ve read this excruciatingly verbose bio, I’d like to add that, in addition to my professional endeavors, I am an enthusiastic keynote speaker, delivering engaging talks on branding, marketing, creative problem-solving in business, and effective marketing strategies to audiences of all sizes.

Phillip Oakley

As people discuss the business decline of McDonald's and Wendy's, and blame it on brand promise or not making customers "feel" something, we need to keep in mind that prices outpaced inflation, and (for most), quality declined to maximize profits. 

Providing decent food for the value is the bottom rung of the consumer benefit ladder. You need a solid first rung before climbing up to the feels.

Once that bottom rung breaks, just as Domino's faced years ago, you must slide back to the ground to fix it. 

Or customers won't care to ask "Where's the Beef?"

Stand Tall.

Mixing strategy and creativity to build brands through effective marketing. Energetic speaker, foodie, soccer player, and proud Dad.

Did you know 30-year-old sonic branding for Mentos is so powerful, it can burn a Michael McDonald Yacht Rock earworm straight out of your brain?

I have a confession to make: I quite like Yacht Rock. 

My wife and I have been enjoying more than our fair share of The Doobie Brothers, Christopher Cross, and Steely Dan of late. For some reason, Michael McDonald has cameos in loads of them. 

One night last week, I couldn't get to sleep. I was being haunted by Michael McDonald. If you've heard the song "Ride Like the Wind," you know why: 

🎶 I've got such a long way to go 🎶

It had to stop. (Such a long way to go)

So I turned to ... The Freshmaker. And it works every single time. 🎶Doo doo doo doo, doo doo, doo wah! 🎶

Loads of smart people talk about brand codes and distinctive brand assets here on this platform. But I'll fly the Mentos flag any day as being one of the most powerful assets that's still an easy recall. 

Bookmark this post, so next time there's an unwanted song stuck your head you can freshen up with this commercial (one of many, might I add). How many of their TV spots do you remember? 

Nothing gets to you, staying fresh, staying cool, with Mentos, fresh and fuuuuuuull of life!

Stand Tall.

“I hate those things.” After overhearing three different customers share the same opinion in two days, the visiting district manager removed the virtual tellers from my local bank, for good reason. 

First off, good on the area manager for being in the branches to see how customers interact. 

Secondly, good on them to recognize tech was getting in the way of helping the customer, and hurting the brand. 

This was a video teller interface. You would walk into the branch, not speak to a human, visit a kiosk and push a button to summon a remote teller who would assist you via video. And when they finish your transaction, they can move on to someone else in another city.

Sounds a bit dystopian. And while the tellers were trained well, it just felt disconnected.

I’m sure decisions makers tried to level the playing field with larger banks through technology. And I’m willing to bet this idea was presented in a deck along with the words “digital transformation” in the mid-2010s.

But in the end, it actually removed what makes small local branches better: help.

Help from a real human. 

Know your brand by recognizing what customers need from the different touchpoints of your business. Especially the points where they seek real human interaction. 

If it can be outsourced to a screen, it can be outsourced to AI. 

Stand Tall.

No alternative text description for this image

“I went back to the BMX* deck, and I gotta say, I didn’t realize how much you’d nailed it. It had everything I needed to get focused.” — Our client, while making decisions on a campaign. 

Loads of people bash “brand strategy decks” on this platform. It’s easy, of course. 

Tales of 200-page decks of fluff. Performance art named strategy. Platitudes meant for break room walls that promote eye-rolling responses. 

But a good deck, meant to be a reference point not a performance, is distilled thinking that connects brand strategy to the business. 

It’s a point of focus used to make concerted business and marketing decisions, measured on value, not page count 

*The BMX is our Brand Matrix guide. It’s distilled into one page for a valuable, quick reference. We encourage clients to print and post it near their desk, so it’s ready to see and use.  

Stand Tall.

Want to find out how much you know about your customers and category? Prompt ChatGippity to ask YOU questions about the market you’re in.

Most of us who grew up in the 1970s or 1980s can recall that the Fruit of the Loom logo used to feature a cornucopia, a horn-shaped basket spilling out apples and grapes. Except it never did. 

There was never a cornucopia. Not once. Not ever.

Yes, I checked. I scraped the interwebs. Snopes confirmed it.

My childhood memories are lying to me.

If you remember the cornucopia, you’re in the collective hallucination with me, in what’s known as the Mandela Effect. It’s when a large group of people confidently remembers something that never existed.

But here’s what’s fascinating from a brand perspective: Fruit of the Loom built such powerful mental associations that we invented missing details, giving fruit leaves more importance than they called for. 

The logo felt like it should have a cornucopia. The imagery of abundance and nostalgia was so strong that our brains filled in the blanks. That’s brand memory at work.

Distinctive assets so sticky they expanded themselves in the public imagination. And even with several major refreshes over 100 years, the logo stayed consistent enough to be recognized through every iteration.

Or maybe it’s just crazy pills passed out by the bucketload.

Every brand should hope to be remembered so vividly that people recall things that were never even there.

Stand Tall.

📸: Snopes

“It’s a workshop for startup incubators, of course we have to use acronyms.” - Tongue in cheek client comment. I chuckled at this smart, self-aware comment by one of our clients in a brand workshop this Thursday. 

Sometimes, it seems today’s business world makes up comments on the fly. 

What’s your CAGR from your COGS?

Is your POS communicating your TOS to land your SLA?

And if your brand doesn’t know its COGS, how can your sales team understand its BANT?

How about your OAR? ELO? KLF? REM? POD? INXS? NWA? TLC? EMF? RUN-DMC?

LMFAO!

Isn’t the inside speak exhausting? It sounds like my mixtape playlist from 1992.

Speak clearly and lose the jargon if you want to connect with your target audience. They’ll appreciate the lack of need for an FAQ, IMO. 

Because if you overuse acronyms and insider terms, they’ll look at you like ODB. 

Speak the language of your customers. 

Stand Tall.

LALO

I founded LALO, a brand strategy consultancy with a human-centered approach and methodology designed to provide strategic clarity and creative direction. This enables entrepreneurs to consistently lead and execute in alignment with their brand, unlocking significant momentum for their startups.

We facilitate a mindset shift towards clarity by combining expert facilitation, strategic insights, educational components, and brand management fundamentals. This approach gets to the core of the business, allowing us to understand, frame, and address the challenges startup teams face. By guiding them to embed brand-led thinking into their day-to-day practices, we ensure lasting impact and alignment with their vision.

Startups need compelling strategies to connect with customers and employees in meaningful ways, because people choose brands they care about — brands that make them feel special.

Our foundational philosophy is that leaders must be intentional
in every aspect of the brand from the inside out, as early as possible, to capitalize on the long-term potential of the business.

To achieve this, they must put people at the center of the brand and the brand at the center of the business.

We call it Epicenter™

Founder & Brand Consultant

CUIDARLOS 

I co-founded Cuidarlos, the platform that enables families with elderly loved ones to find caregivers and manage them intelligently. The app is operating in Argentina and we are working to expand our footprint to other Latin American markets.

Co-Founder

40+ League

We are the First League of Experts, Leaders, CEOs, C-Level, and Professionals who are 40+ and want to continously Reinvent Ourselves!
As 40+ League Members, we are seeking to benefit from our years of experience, enhance our talent, acquire new skills, achieve new opportunities, grow our network, get out of our comfort zone, and change our mindset.
Our goal is to unite all of us in one place to accelerate our reinvention. We have created the most complete and specialized Professional Reinvention Platform and Community of Practice (CoP).
As members, we have access to our unique method, and we also offer training and education from the most recognized experts in different subjects. And we also enjoy unique experiences.
Our mantra is, “never stop learning.” We follow it every single day. By doing so, we become relevant, and we increase our competitiveness.
40+ League: Where we reinvent ourselves and become stronger than ever!

Branding & Creativity Expert

The Walt Disney Company

On my last role at Disney I was responsible for the Creative and Product Development teams of the Disney Consumer Products division for Europe, Russia and South Africa. These teams collaborate with hundreds of companies, some of the most important brands and retailers in the world to bring Disney’s stories and characters to life through innovative and engaging products and experiences across more than 100 categories, from toys and fashion, to food and home.

Vice President, Global Product Creation (EMEA)

In my last role at Disney Latin America I was responsible for the Creative and Product Development teams of the Disney Consumer Products division in the region. These teams collaborate with hundreds of companies to bring Disney’s stories and characters to life through innovative and engaging products and experiences across more than 100 categories, from toys and fashion, to food and home.

Vice President, Creative & Product Design

In addition to my General Manager role in the Digital Business I was also responsible for the Publishing business where we collaborated with the most important publishers in the region to launch Books, Magazines, sticker albums and apps.
I also led the new integrated Creative Services team that help every business of Disney develop branded materials, campaigns, Character Art and Style Guides and more.

Vice President & General Manager, Disney Interactive & Creative Services

With the constant evolution of the Digital space we continued expanding the operation across multiple platforms and business models. To the existing businesses and operations we added Digital Distribution (TV shows and movies throughout online portals and broadband operators) and the launch of the Social Media operation in multiple platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and more. We developed the Content Network for advertisers on which we would develop Branded Content for advertisers and partners. We launched Disney Babble, the first Bloggers network for women in Latin America with dozens of influencers in multiple countries and hundreds content pieces that reached millions of users.
We also launched the Social Games and the apps and games local development operations to launch Mobile Games, Social Games, Mobile Apps, Augmented Reality experiences and more.

Vice President, Digital Media

To my existing responsibilities of Online Marketing, Mobile Content Distribution, Digital Advertising, third party e-Commerce and Virtual Worlds I expanded my role to oversee the Gaming Business (Console, Online and PC). We expanded our teams to Argentina, Brazil and Mexico.
During this period we launched the Latin American operation of Club Penguin in Portuguese (Brazil) and Spanish (rest of Latin America), the most important virtual world for kids that engaged with several generations. This launched included the set up of a Customer Service operation, Online Marketing, Content Creation and Distribution in Retail.

Director, Digital Media

Since 2004 I expanded my role. Apart of managing all online marketing efforts and operation, I started to develop digital businesses such as Mobile Content Distribution, Digital Advertising and Virtual Worlds.

Senior Manager, Digital Media

In this role I was responsible of the first Online Marketing operation of Disney Latin America including the launch of Disneylatino.com, the first website for Latin America in the history of the company. Then we expanded the digital presence of several businesses: Movies, Radio, TV and more.

Manager, New Media

I started ad Disney as a Creative Designer. My main role was to Art Direct and Localize all Marketing materials that supported the launch of every Theatrical release (Movies): Posters, in-Theater materials, Flyers, Campaigns, Ads, Banners, and Websites.

Supervisor, Creative

FIRST Global (International FIRST Committee Association)

FIRST Global is an international nonprofit that organizes an international robotics competition for high-school students from more than 160 countries that create robots, team up and compete for a cause. In 2018 I had the honour of representing The Walt Disney Company and delivered this incredible award.

Judge “Walt Disney Award for Imagination and Creativity”

Academy of Television Arts & Sciences

I had the privilege to judge hundreds of digital content pieces from around the world for several years in a row.

Judge - International Emmy Awards Digital

University of Buenos Aires

As an ad honorem teacher at the Graphic Design arm of the University of Buenos Aires I was part of Silvia Gonzalez's Typography team in different roles throughout the years and taught to thousands of students in different levels.

Typography Teacher

RGB Entertainment

I created the visual identity system for Popstars Argentina, a reality show that selected talented artists among thousands of contestants. I developed the logo, the communication materials, competition assets, and led the on-air graphics design.

Art Director, POPSTARS ARGENTINA (Reality show)

Ezequiel Abramzon

I worked for Design studios, Advertising agencies, Publishing and Entertainment companies.

Freelance Designer and Illustrator

Bridger Conway

As a Graphic Designer I worked in hundreds of projects for well known companies, magazines, TV shows and Production companies.

Senior Designer

"99% of startups fail". Want to be among the 1% that succeed?

Then you need to master branding, and I’ll tell you how ↓

By aligning everything and everyone behind a strategy that puts your brand at the heart of your startup and ensure all decisions are guided by it.

When you do this, you can:

→ Manifest your differentiated position
→ Inspire and engage the right customers
→ Influence a higher perceived value (and gain pricing power)
→ Improve your bottom line exponentially
→ Enhance your team's focus and motivation
→ Strengthen creativity and innovation across the board

As a consultant, I have the freedom to question your assumptions, discover hidden truths, and identify overlooked challenges and opportunities.

Through a human-centered methodology and my Epicenter✷ strategy framework, I get to the core of your business to understand, address, and reframe these insights, providing the direction needed to establish an indisputable position in your market.

I've successfully implemented the framework with dozens of startup teams worldwide who were able to raise millions in funding, make millions in revenue, and reach millions of people.

Here's what leaders like you said:

Dimo Yanchev, CEO & Co-founder, Almacena ↘
“We had a vague, confusing idea of our direction but now we understand our goals and actions for both the short and long term. Ezequiel’s a brilliant strategist and an amazing person.”

Juan Esteban Zuleta, CEO at Kin Analytics ↘
"Ezequiel goes beyond just knowing about branding. It was a breakthrough experience that led to transformative discussions that changed how we see our company and our brand's essence."

Guido Stefani, CEO & Co-founder, Extendeal ↘
“Ezequiel excels at interpreting situations to optimize them effectively. He guided us to think long-term and to question everything with intelligence.”

All of my work is rooted in my experience as a Disney executive for over 22 years, where I led award-winning teams in Latin America and Europe, and played a key role in shaping iconic brands like Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars for the digital age.

If you want to get serious about your brand and building your legacy, send me a DM!

See you soon!

Ezequiel Abramzon ✷

Did you know this about LinkedIn?

↓

Before we get to the numbers, a quick story.

LinkedIn is the app I spend the most time on.

It’s my digital HQ.

So walking into their Madrid office last week felt special.

The place where I “live” online, suddenly… real.

When I worked at Disney, people used to ask me with a dreamy smile, eyes glowing, and their hands as if wishing for something: 

“So… what’s it like to work in a Disney office?”

I could feel them imagining magic spells in elevators, talking pets in meeting rooms, and flying coffee cups around my desk.

So I can picture how you might feel right now hearing that I’ve been to LinkedIn’s office.

Yes. It’s pretty cool.

And, no. I didn’t see The Algorithm, sorry.

But I did learned this:

LinkedIn is not just a social network.

It’s 3 marketplaces in one:

1) Talent Marketplace: connects job seekers with hiring managers
2) Knowledge Marketplace: connects creators with audiences 
3) Product & Services Marketplace: connects buyers with sellers 

Three inseparable layers of our favorite digital lasagna:

We look for work. 
We sell our work.
We have conversations in the middle.

Right now, there are:

→ 1,300,000,000 user profiles
→ 69,000,000 company profiles
→ 42,000 skills declared
→ 14,000,000 jobs created

And in a single minute:

→ 5,000,000 profiles are changed
→ 17,000 connections are made
→ 50,000,000 platform fixes are shipped

A massive, mind-blowing powerhouse that started 23 years ago in Reid Hoffman’s living room, built to help people connect, share opportunities, and grow their careers.

And f*ck yeah it delivered.

Big time.

- - 

Thank you Maria Eugenia Renaldi for hosting us and Aranzazu Echezarreta for bringing IAE Business School alumni together one more time.

- - -

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♻️ → Repost it to help others
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📩 → DM me and let’s fix your brand narrative

Fix your startup’s sh*tty brand narrative | Own a solid market position, win better clients, convince investors, and attract rockstar talent | Strategy consultant | Ex-Disney

CEO: “We need an ad at the Stockholm airport”
Marketing: “Say no more. Hey Frank, open ChatGPT! We have work to do…!”

😂

Shit work is what’s going to kill your job.

Not AI.

- - -

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❤️ → Give it a like 
💬 → Share your thoughts in the comments
♻️ → Repost it to help others
🔔 → Follow me for more insights on brands and strategy
📩 → DM me and let’s fix your brand narrative

12 proven tactics to stay INVISIBLE to your prospects.

↓

1) Use cartoons in your branding
2) Use cartoons in your branding
3) Use cartoons in your branding
4) Use cartoons in your branding
5) Use cartoons in your branding
6) Use cartoons in your branding
7) Use cartoons in your branding
8) Use cartoons in your branding
9) Use cartoons in your branding
10) Use cartoons in your branding
11) Use cartoons in your branding
12) Use cartoons in your branding

Funny, but hurts, doesn’t it?

I know.

When your startup looks, sounds, and feels like everyone else’s, it disappears.

It doesn’t get considered.

It doesn’t get remembered.

One of the most important things your company should develop is a set of distinctive brand assets.

Visual, verbal, and emotional cues that make your brand instantly recognizable.

Do what everyone does, and you’ll automatically become invisible.

Before you take the cheap and easy route, ask yourself:

Is this helping me stand out or not?

Choose distinctiveness. 

Every time.

- - -

If you found this post helpful:

❤️ → Give it a like 
💬 → Share your thoughts in the comments
♻️ → Repost it to help others
🔔 → Follow me for more insights on brands and strategy
📩 → DM me and let’s fix your brand narrative

Your marketers are melting.

↓

I’m sensing an authentic marketing crisis.

But not the one you’re thinking of.

We’re all talking about the next big AI thing, new workflows, more tools, the “future of” everything, but we’re forgetting something so basic it’s almost embarrassing to admit.

Marketers are exhausted.

→ Always putting out fires, with no time to stop and think
→ Given endless to-dos, but nobody helps them prioritize
→ Expectations are 10x bigger than the budget they get
→ Everyone pulls them in every direction: founders, sales, product
→ Juniors are doing everything, without the skills to do it all well
→ Seniors are stuck executing, without the team to back them up
→ They push content everywhere, but nothing really engages
→ New tools keep popping up, but results keep going down

I see it first-hand in the faces of marketers I collaborate with every week, and it goes way deeper than we think.

And if you look at the data… it’s not pretty:

↳ 73% of marketing departments report pressure to “do more with less.”

↳ 1 in 5 social media managers functions as a “one-person social media department.”

↳ Nearly 60% of CMOs say their resources are insufficient to meet strategic goals.

↳ 63% of CEOs rate their marketing teams as “average or below.”

More workload, less focus.

More stress, less creativity.

No wonder why 90% of the ads we see are CRAP!

We live in an age of unlimited tools and channels, where anyone can reach the world almost for free and it's probably the best moment in history to do marketing.

Yet, it has never been harder.

Because behind every campaign, every post, every dashboard, there’s a person trying to make sense of it all.

Every day. For your business.

And to be fair, most founders aren’t marketers or don’t have marketing experience.

You might not know how to lead them, how to measure their work, or how to protect them.

So if you’re a founder, stop for a minute.

Call your marketing person, your team, your agency or partner.

Ask them:

→ How are you doing?
→ What’s working and what’s not?
→ What would you do differently if you had the space to think?
→ How can I help you do your best work?

Who knows, maybe that conversation changes how you see your business, and reminds your team why they believed in it.

You know…

Better to melt hearts than marketers. 😅 

- - -

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❤️ → Give it a like 
💬 → Share your thoughts in the comments
♻️ → Repost it to help others
🔔 → Follow me for more insights on brands and strategy
📩 → DM me and let’s fix your brand narrative

Don’t treat your customers like Vecna treats Hawkins.

[NO SPOILERS BELOW]

Advertising tries to take something from you.
Branding tries to give something to you.

Yes. I know. 
It sounds exaggerated.
But the difference is important.

We don’t want to be chased by brands.
We want to feel understood by them.

Branding builds the relationship.
Advertising activates it.

You need both working together so that when you finally ask for something, you’re speaking to someone who already cares.

So, don’t be Vecna.
Build a brand they’d actually choose to follow, not run from.

- - -

If you found this post helpful:

❤️ → Give it a like 
💬 → Share your thoughts in the comments
♻️ → Repost it to help others
🔔 → Follow me for more insights on brands and strategy
📩 → DM me and let’s fix your brand narrative

Every startup thinks their brand narrative is clear.

Until they open their mouth…

After working with hundreds of founders, I’ve learned the friction rarely comes from one place, it usually shows up across the business, from the complicated issues to the (embarrassing) simple ones.

I’m curious to see where you struggle the most.

So I’m running a quick poll below.

What’s the hardest part of putting your brand narrative into practice?

→ Getting your team aligned
→ Turning your narrative into content
→ Keeping it consistent everywhere
→ Other (leave it in the comments)

PS: Your answer will help me shape upcoming posts and trainings.

- - -

If you found this post helpful:

❤️ → Give it a like 
💬 → Share your thoughts in the comments
♻️ → Repost it to help others
🔔 → Follow me for more insights on brands and strategy
📩 → DM me and let’s fix your brand narrative

What’s the hardest part of putting your brand narrative into practice?

I wish I could build a machine that gives you clarity with one click.

But hey… bad news, that machine doesn’t exist.

Most people want that instant “now we have a strategy” feeling, as if it were a button you could just press, but strategic clarity doesn’t happen overnight.

Strategic clarity can’t be treated as an event, a 2-hour workshop, or a 3-day strategic retreat.

It’s a habit that compounds.

It builds through daily decisions and alignment, and strengthens every time a team slows down enough to think, question, define, and choose.

It’s very rare to see a startup behave like that.

The way I see it, a startup without a strategy is like a small boat in the middle of the ocean without GPS, stormy weather, and a crew rowing in different directions.

A catastrophe in the making.

And I see this lack of clarity every week.

Here are a few examples of how I helped startups gain clarity:

A startup’s messaging was aiming at “anyone” in their sector, so we defined their four core target segments, divided them into primary and secondary, and clarified what to say to each.

They ended up spending less and getting better results.

Another startup had never mapped its category, sounded identical to competitors, they even used the same colors as the leader. So we defined a differentiated point of view to set the right context for the value only they could claim, and built an attractive, more distinctive identity to help them own their own space.

Prospects started to understand them better, and sales conversations started to move faster.

Two co-founders were giving two different versions of the company in every pitch, and their website and social profiles looked like they were from different companies. So we built one narrative the whole team could stand behind, and unified how the brand showed up everywhere.

They closed a big brand client right after.

None of this happened by accident.

And none of it happened without leadership.

It took full commitment from their leaders, months of research, deep dives, workshops, cross-function discussions, and lots of creativity and hands-on work.

And the best part was seeing these teams smiling, more motivated and energetic at the end.

Like a big weight was lifted off their shoulders.

This is the part most founders underestimate, the belief that a rebranding, a repositioning, the whole idea of investing in a better strategy is “for customers”.

But the reality is that it’s also an investment in their teams.

If you want a company that moves with confidence, clarity isn’t optional. 

It’s your job as a founder to make it a priority, a common practice, and visible at all levels.

And you know exactly which button to press for that.

It’s not the ON button.

It’s START.

- - -

If you found this post helpful:

❤️ → Give it a like 
💬 → Share your thoughts in the comments
♻️ → Repost it to help others
🔔 → Follow me for more insights on brands and strategy
📩 → DM me and let’s fix your brand narrative

Dear founder: THIS is HOW you recruit rockstar talent 👇 

Take note.

Co-Founder, Evidenza | Synthetic Research

We are hiring our very first marketer at Evidenza!

We are a team of 17 now, but we’ve waited a long time to hire a marketer.

It’s not because Jon and I don’t think marketing is important.

On the contrary, it’s because we think marketing is so important that we refused to let anyone do it other than ourselves. It’s where we try to spend most of our time, since brand is the deepest of moats. 

But we have reached the limits of our abilities as marketers, and the time has come.

We are searching for a "full-stack" marketer who can:

1)   Increase the mental and physical availability of Evidenza. 
2)   Scale distribution through paid advertising on LinkedIn.
3)   Turn founder-led thought leadership into a well-oiled content machine.
4)   Manage a sprawling network of vendors and freelancers.
5)   Teach us the dark arts of “conversion optimization.” 
6)   Learn at least three words in Italian.
7)   Use AI for literally everything.

I can promise you this: you will never need to prove the ROI of marketing here. You will never need to explain to us that marketing costs money. You will never need to tell us to make the logo bigger. You will never be treated like a sales-support function. You will exist at the cutting edge of marketing and the cutting edge of AI, at an (insanely!) fast-growing start-up.

Marketers who have never heard of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute or Binet + Field need not bother applying. Sadly you won’t make it past the first interview question (“Have you read How Brands Grow?!”).

Doppio points for any alumni of Mark Ritson’s Mini MBA Program.

We’re also hiring more sellers, more engineers, and more researchers, BTW.

But the marketer will have a very special place in our hearts!

All roles are based right here in paradiso, AKA Brooklyn Heights.

Reach out or apply on our B2B marketing platform of choice, LinkedIn…

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The Battle

Phillip Oakley

Ezequiel Abramzon ✷

Followers

Posts

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);}Phillip Oakley's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScorePhillip Oakley's LinkedIn Performance