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.

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.

Phillip Oakley

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

“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.

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