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.

Marcelo Salup

Iffective

💡 40+ years of national and international expertise in branding, digital & direct
💡 Launched and re-launched 15+ Fortune 500 brands internationally
💡 Expertise in creative, media, strategic planning

Left Brain

Performist

Performist '➡️ Total Performance Marketing Agency. 1️⃣ A real DSP, with more than 2 dozen affiliated SSPs 2️⃣ Data-driven advanced segmentation & targeting  3️⃣ Truly international footprint  4️⃣ AI driven analytics suite.

Chief Executive Officer

Fractional CMO services that leverage 40+ years in national and international marketing and advertising. Award-winning creative, deep and actionable understanding of customers insights, top level media expertise including strategic planning, high-level negotiations, and day to day planning. 

My expertise includes fast food, automotive, CPG, soft drinks, health & beauty, financial, technology, and much more. I have been part of the launch team of 15 Fortune 500 companies around the world, including McDonalds, General Motors, Samsung, L’Oreal, Coca Cola and many more. 

We are a great fit if you are a B2C mid-sized company and want to grow substantially or even achieve leadership in your industry. We are an even better fit if your business needs to sell “a bunch of things” to “a bunch of people” because I truly merge creative messaging, channel planning and data analytics to increase sales. We are also a great fit for a highly specialized project: a product launch, a brand re-staging or introduction to a market. If I can be human for a moment, I absolutely love product introductions.

Included in my approach is helping you identify gaps in your team, people to fill those gaps, helping you find them, hire, and train them so that your company will have its own in-house marketing team.

Finally, if you have made it this far: I am not a “suit” and my rates are absolutely reasonable. I balance just the right amount of process and creativity to make your company stand out from its competitors and grow. I’m not going to drown you in process. I won’t try to apply some cookie-cutter methodology to your non-cookie-cutter business and will definitely not going to shoehorn you into unwieldy structures. 

At the very least, let’s talk: msalup@iffectivemarketing.com

Fractional CMO

LISTEN MEDIA CAMPAIGN COMPANY UK LIMITED

The Listen Campaign is a decade-long global broadcast campaign that combines entertainment and cause marketing with the power of 80+ stars to help 1.2 billion vulnerable and disadvantaged children around the world. The Listen Campaign (1) Illuminates problems (2) Celebrate proven solutions (3) Replicates and Scales Up proven projects (4) Creates a global community and (5) Reports transparently on the impact.

Chief Global Messaging Director

CEO Analytics, LLC

CEO Analytics combines disassociated conjoint analysis and predictive algorithms to unearth what your customers really love... and are eager to spend money in. We increase retention, generate incremental sales and increase your revenues by 3% to 7%.

Principal

VIEWN

ViewN is a leading provider of cutting-edge technologies and services, offering scalable solutions for companies with lots of customer data or none. Founded by deep domain experts in enterprise software, we strived to build something even custom IT shops could not.

CRO Advisor

Consultancy services specializing in

1. Strategic planning
2. Multi-media planning, buying
3. Company launches
4. New-business generation for ad agencies

Montano + Salup Communications

A Full Service communication company specializing in response generation and offering:

- Branding
- Direct
- Digital

With fully integrated creative + media

The five things we believe in:

1. Analytics: Measuring response
2. Better messaging - born of years of talking to and analyzing real people
3. Media-atheist creative executions
4. Truly integrated platforms
5. No silos

DMG Solutions

1. Create DIRECTV Mas first fully integrated media program with TV, Cable, internet, mobile, print, out of home
2. Maintained goals in spite of disappearing inventories

CMO & Media Director

Siboney USA

VP Media & Strategic Planning

Recognized "C" level international expert in media and strategic planning. Proven expertise in launching and building companies around the world. I join deep strategic planning, consumer insights, messaging and branding, digital and direct media to create measurably successful marketing and advertising efforts for a wide range of companies, products and brands.

My product launches include:

* Renault 5 TS (Spain)
* Iberia Airlines (Spain)
* LADA Automobiles (DR)
* Diet Coke (Mexico)
* Camel Cigarettes (Mexico)
* Colgate Total (Mexico)
* Fabuloso Cleaner (Mexico)
* L’Oreal: Plenitude & Lancome (Mexico)
* Quatro (Coca Cola Co) (Argentina)
* General Motors (Argentina)
* Oreo, Club Social (Nabisco) (Latin America)
* Glade (SCJ) (Latin America)
* Kingston Mini-Fun (Latin America)
* Visa & MasterCard (Latin America)

Successful High-stakes negotiation

* World Cup (Mexico, Pan-Regional Latin America)
* Formula 1 (Mexico)
* Other sports events (e.g., Copa Libertadores...)

If you are an ad agency, I have re-engineered dozens of bundled and unbundled media departments around the world, have created a dozen media standalone units and put together winning presentations that got over $385 million in new business. I have created several softwares and methodologies for managing strategic and media planning, multi-media optimization, evaluations for product placements, product integrations and much more. I have also trained dozens of media professionals.

taplio

The Battle

Phillip Oakley

Marcelo Salup

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScorePhillip Oakley's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Phillip Oakley

Marcelo Salup

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

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScorePhillip Oakley's LinkedIn Performance