Services/Clients

Demanding companies value my ability to:

  • Create marketing stories that set them apart.
  • Position and communicate big new ideas.
  • Facilitate off-sites and workshops where the stakes are high. I bring people together to have conversations about the real issues in ways that lead to new ways forward and a renewed sense of energy and purpose.
  • Provide executive communications counsel and writing around important issues. The more complex the issue, the more valuable my services. CEOs trust me, listen to my advice, like working with me.
  • Coach marketing and corporate communications organizations to help them improve performance, close talent gaps, and create innovative capabilities.

The clients who hire me tend to be rebels and drivers of change, seeking a creative spirit grounded in affecting business change. I believe the best answers exist inside of companies; the consultant’s role is to help people find their own answers as those will be the best answers.

Examples of some assignments:

Marketing stories and points of view

  • Bringing the marketing, sales and executive teams of the world’s  second largest technology company together to co-create points of views and an organizational narrative to  set them apart from the competition and resonate in big ways with customers.
  • Helping Communispace create both a compelling corporate narrative and a new customer research category.
  • Developing new sales messaging story for a  Global 100 company, based largely on interviews with recent sales wins/losses  and high-performing sales executives.
  • Revamping positioning and messaging, sales approach for technology company, which was successfully acquired a year later by Hewlett Packard.
  • Writing the strategic sections of an RFP for a major advertising agency in their bid to win a $35 million account. Emphasis : creating compelling points of view to set the agency apart.
  • Creating strategic social media content strategy for global HR services company that supported cohesive narrative.

Executive communications

  • Advising and coaching new C-level executives on their communications platforms and three essential talking points.
  • Helping a C-level executive step up onto a bigger national stage by writing a speech for a White House event that was personal, provocative and memorable.
  • Designing and facilitating an off-site retreat for a global consulting firm and their C-level clients to explore emerging industry issues and implications.
  • Creating  a unique leadership development program for a CEO intent on empowering  his middle management team to do more — and do it as a united team.
  • Counseling numerous CEOs on crisis communications issues: environmental, mergers and acquisition, product/service, layoffs, business practice investigations.

Marketing & corporate communications organizational coachin

  • Developing strategy for global client’s  innovative social business Intranet for 300,000 employees, including ongoing counsel and direction to make sure IT execution supported how employees wanted to be able to work and communicate.
  • Developing social media training program for Fortune 50 company’s 600+ marketing and corporate communications professionals.
  • Creating professional development learning and certification program for Corporate Communicators of Fortune 100 company.

Positioning and communicating big new ideas

  • Creating new story and “so what” messaging to help  global organization inspire and align employees around strategy to increase revenues by $6 billion a year.
  • Helping team sell in multi-million dollar social intranet to senior management.
  • Positioning environmental benefits of major public/private real estate development, winning over  environmental opponents.
  • Helping numerous companies create new industry categories, and position themselves as players within in them.

 

Clients: making a difference

  • Boston Coach
  • Communispace
  • Copernicus
  • DST Systems
  • Dunkin’ Donuts
  • FedEx
  • Fidelity Investments
  • Harvard Institute of Coaching
  • HomeGoods
  • Hewlett Packard
  • Infor
  • LIMRA
  • Monster Worldwide
  • Organic
  • The Rhode Island Foundation
  • Sapient
  • SAP
  • Sun Microsystems
  • TJX: Marshall’s, TJMaxx, HomeGoods
  • The Conference Board
  • University of Massachusetts
  • Vertex
  • Weber Shandwick
  • Women & Infants Hospital

 

Special Programs

While most of my work is customized to clients’ needs, I also offer these programs simply because I love the value they provide and how much clients have benefited from them.  Please click on the link to see program details and outcomes.

  • Uncovering the soul of your organization: uncovering and bringing alive what your organization believes in, wants to achieve, and the principles by which people want to work.  A creative, unusual approach to developing strategy that sticks.