You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
That’s why you hire me. To figure it out, and to tell you.
Marketing is deceptively simple. As consumers, we’re exposed to hundreds if not thousands of marketing messages daily. We’re constantly battling newsletters, spam calls, junk mail, pop-up banners, riding past billboards, hanging up on telemarketers, convincing ourselves not to buy that pair of shoes that’s been following us around on the internet for weeks after we clicked on one Pinterest pin. We know it works, because it works on us. We may not buy most of what is marketed to us. However, it is precisely the familiarity with the output of marketing that can cause businesspeople not trained in this discipline to have a false confidence about their ability in the craft behind it. We all do our taxes every year, but we also know that a good tax professional is worth it. This same principle should be applied to marketing. As businesses grow in size and complexity, they should invest in a marketer with the skill and experience the business deserves.
And even if a CEO or investor is already convinced they need a marketing specialist, how do they know whom to choose? They may already have a resource in house or existing vendor relationships. If things are going well, how much better could they get? What is the cost of switching, and how do they make the decision? How do they determine whether or not to proceed with their current options or make a change?
You could bring in an agency that might have deep expertise in a particular medium or channel, but first you have to know it’s the channel that will bring you growth. Or you could hire someone like me -- a generalist with a variety of experience. But I’m not just any generalist. I’m not the person you hire to validate the strategy that you already have in place. I’m not the person you bring in to nod and smile and agree with the ideas that you’ve already come up with.
While I can come in to serve as extra hands to execute a plan already developed, I’m more useful as the person you hire when you don’t yet know what you’re missing. To listen to your difficult questions, ambitious vision, realistic budget and then to tell you the truth -- to give you an accurate assessment of where things stand, and what needs to change to get where you want to go.
Often investors and operating partners are surrounded by people who are incentivized to protect their own position. This is not malicious. It is the nature of the game. Employees with jobs and vendors with contracts would like to keep them, even if they are not the right answer for your business anymore. I am not playing a different game, but shooting a different shot. As an outsider, I’m comfortable revealing the truth even when it doesn’t lead to an ongoing relationship.
The Diagnostic Comes First
That’s why I structure The Diagnostic as a standalone engagement. It allows the truth to come through unobstructed. Without depending on an ongoing relationship, a retainer, or a bias toward a particular channel, discipline, or marketing tactic, I can review what’s going on in the business, reach my hands into the messy middle and find the truth of things.
Once I know the real problem, I can recommend a real solution. Sometimes that solution is me. Sometimes it isn’t. If, for example, what the business needs is purely social media execution, I’ll tell you that, and introduce you to a strategist I hired full-time at a previous company and trust completely. I know what I do well, and I have relationships with vendors who have skills I don’t.
How I Know What I Know
But I’m not a Lannister. I don’t just drink and know things. In addition to the set-apart structure of The Diagnostic, its effectiveness comes from the convergence of three distinct layers in my background -- academic, classical, and practical -- which together give me a unique, 360-degree perspective.
The first layer is academic, built on a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Harvard University and an MBA in marketing from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Together these give me a foundational understanding of consumer behavior and how markets work in theory. An understanding of how culture influences identity. How groups influence consumer behavior. How to spot trends, respectfully connect with diverse communities, and avoid missteps. What you can infer about people from the purchase decisions they make. But as businesspeople, we know that books and case studies can only tell you so much.
The second layer is classical marketing training, several years working in brand management at leading Fortune 500 companies -- Clorox, Ghirardelli, Jelly Belly. Here I learned up close what good looks like -- best practices for exceptional marketing at scale. How to manage budgets up to $500M across all standard vehicles (TV, print, digital, radio, out-of-home, social, PR, etc.). How to shepherd iconic American companies with over 100 years of brand equity ensuring consistent messaging in every asset, protecting cherished heritage with every execution. Some were large public corporations that had to report to the street. Others were family-owned and operated -- and just as closely watched.
The third layer is practical training, working in the heavily regulated cannabis industry for both small and large employers, and as an independent consultant for several years with nonprofits, medical equipment retailers, in-home care providers and more. While still doing good work serving their customers and clients, these companies consistently lacked the resources of the ones mentioned before. Driving growth required making quick calls on intuition, not spending years analyzing research or planning. Instead of working with an innovation department or an agency team, I often built the prototypes or wrote the copy myself. Which means I can scale the solutions I suggest to whatever budget is practical.
The Truth Can Come at a Cost
Sometimes telling the truth gets you more. And sometimes it can cost you. I’ve experienced both sides. In the summer of 2021 I did secret-shopping work on one of the brands I managed as Senior Director of Marketing at The Parent Company. I found clear areas where we were lacking in retail support and put together a case for what we needed to show up better within the four walls of the retailer. The findings I presented to my boss and later the CEO led to a large investment in my team -- headcount reporting to me increased from two to six, both brand management and trade marketing resources. With the larger team we were able to make a noticeable difference in just a few months, growing distribution of the flagship brand.
When leadership changed, the department was reorganized. Later, others on the team and I were laid off. Then the company partnered with Nabis, a licensed cannabis distributor with statewide reach. (1) My read is that the diagnosis held: the brands needed more retail support than we could build, and what changed was who would deliver it. Alcohol has run on the distributor model for decades: brands sell through a distributor, the distributor sells to retailers, retailers sell to the customer. In theory, the partnership gave the company statewide reach and consistency that a few more hires on my team never could, plus wholesale pricing that let each retailer run its own promotions instead of us fielding requests one store at a time. Same diagnosis, different delivery -- expanded to the whole portfolio. That change cost me a lot, and yet I still stand by the analysis.
What This Means for You
As I said earlier, I’m not just any marketing generalist. I have a particular point of view. A particular set of skills. And if you have a particularly messy problem, you need someone who can come in, diagnose it correctly and tell you the truth. This is candor with care, not an outsider’s uncommitted, careless harshness. A new perspective, ideally, to help the organization move in a new direction. The Diagnostic is structured to let my multi-layered perspective find what is blocking the business’s growth and reveal a prioritized set of decisions for forward movement.
While The Diagnostic is a standalone engagement, I don’t come in, hand you slides, and walk away. Depending on what we find, the next step might be introductions to the right specialists, or scoping a future retainer with me. The findings are the same regardless, and what happens next is your decision. Either way, you get a clear answer to what’s going on. And you walk away knowing what you didn’t know.
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