WE WORK BEST WITH LEADERS WHO WANT GAME-CHANGING
IDEAS
CHANEL
THE CRAFT OF CONSISTENCY
To sustain their status as one of the most iconic brands in the world, a storied fashion and beauty house quietly ensures their retail service and environments are as luxurious as their products.
Working with their ready-to-wear team, we devised a system that collected and assimilated a massive amount of data that was historically overwhelming to boutiques and transformed it into a single report for each storefront.
The result? An incisive depiction of current performance and what to do next.
And when the brand underwent a key beauty counter redesign, we helped decode the impact of the renovation as well as unearth the hyper-nuanced and fickle decision-making process of beauty shoppers.
TOP 3 MANAGEMENT CONSULTING FIRM
PEAKING IN THE VALLEY
A storied firm wanted to increase its relevancy and impact in the Venture Capital arena.
Silicon “V/Alley” is a complex, nuanced culture, and the organization aspired to better understand the mores and norms of Founders and Funders.
We fielded a broad academic literature review, ethnographic study, and social listening scrape to generate useful insights into the community—going deep into the concept of time, which holds much sway given the immense growth pressures within the category.
Collaborating closely with the client team, we used this competitive intelligence to craft a successful re-launch that included a new positioning, go-to-market plan, and content strategy.
MERCEDES-BENZ | MAYBACH
ULTRA-NUANCED ULTRA-LUXURY
When Mercedes-Benz re-launched the Maybach to compete with Rolls Royce and Bentley, its agencies lacked bandwidth and experience marketing to buyers who could afford the $400,000 vehicle.
Collaborating with brilliant client and agency colleagues, we spearheaded the launch and subsequent plans for the next 8 years, creating wildly diverse programs ranging from $500,000 to $20 million.
With hyper-local tactics and innovative brand partnerships, we enticed new aficionados while educating dealers on how to cater to a vastly wealthier clientele.
WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART
THE ART OF BELONGING
When the Whitney asked for help understanding how to stem member losses, we saw an even bigger opportunity: transform the industry.
All museums offer the same rational perks. Yet going to a museum is an emotional experience. We worked with their forward-thinking leadership to field research that uncovered the unmet desires of museum audiences.
The insights inspired the creation of a new program where members could tailor their experiences to their emotional expectations.
The launch of the Whitney’s Curate Your Own Membership program—which we helped their talented team imagine, test, name, and create materials for—earned strong press coverage, won industry awards and grew membership by 25% within the first 6 months.
THE ECONOMIST
INTELLIGENT MANAGEMENT OF UNCERTAINTY
Along with subscriptions, The Economist’s advertising revenue is the organization’s economic engine.
With requests for multi-million dollar proposals from advertisers due within days, the pace at the media company is intense and stakes are high.
We worked with their talented team multiple times, helping them re-engineer their proposal structure and think like a nimble creative agency.
By establishing a prolific pipeline of ideas, we helped create a serious competitive advantage and turned pitches into selling machines that won out-sized assignments.
Along the way, we launched their lifestyle magazine in the U.S., winning revenue from first-time-ever luxury advertisers.
ONEWORLD
CREATING A SECURE TOMORROW
OneWorld is a sustainable development consultancy headquartered in Cape Town with outsized global influence.
Following a history of important projects on the African continent, OneWorld suddenly hit the global stage. It needed an image refresh to reflect its status as a regular advisor to the United Nations and other donor institutions.
We worked with OneWorld’s executive team to articulate a vibrant positioning as ambitious as their global assignments.
We then carried this thinking through to a visual and verbal identity that ensured the world would see them for the transformative, forward-thinking, force majeure firm they are.
SOTHEBY’S
APPRAISING NEW PROFITS
Sotheby’s brokers the cultural trappings of ultra-high-net-worth individuals. The auction house is constantly battling within a rarefied and complicated duopoly for single-point gains each auction season.
As their go-to planners for over a decade, our experience decoding Elite audiences helped cement critical client relationships by launching into new categories like Sotheby’s Diamonds.
And when they decided to court their most valued buyers, we worked with their team to create the Sotheby’s Preferred loyalty program.
Our research studies on e-commerce and digital platforms shaped how they communicated with clients as they sought new ways to pare expenses in an ever-evolving digital world.
THE UNITED NATIONS
UNDERMINING SUPPORT FOR LAND MINES
When the U.N. wanted to create a public service announcement denouncing the proliferation of landmines, we jumped.
Partnering with colleagues across the industry, we produced two :30 spots and a new site.
Together, we donated over $1 million in services, launching a campaign that generated broad PR coverage and won 12 domestic and international awards.
MEND TOGETHER
PICKING UP WHERE DOCTORS LEAVE OFF
We all know what to do when someone gets married or has a baby. But what about when someone is diagnosed with cancer? Patients are too shy to ask for help and loved ones don’t know where to start. Mend Together set out to solve this problem.
Using our professional skills and painful life experiences, we raised $5 million and built a novel social and e-commerce platform that helped people learn what to say, do, and give to loved ones going through hardship.
With 40,000+ signups from a protected and hard-to-reach audience, we delivered 50%+ month-over-month engagement growth and 30%+ month-over-month revenue growth— far exceeding industry benchmarks.
Our marketing campaigns outperformed a dozen industry standards by 2-20x, and we secured corporate partnerships with Target, News Corp, and others.
E-COMMERCE CLIENT
BLUEPRINT FOR PROFITABLE GROWTH
An online home furnishings store was chasing Wayfair, but running into unsustainably high customer acquisition costs (CAC).
We fielded quick qualitative research that also showed the company lacked differentiation and an ownable brand strategy.
The insights—together with underlying theory from the Human Sciences—informed an attitudinal segmentation study that revealed 6 distinct customer subgroups in the category. Our client was overindexing in the 2 least profitable.
This data laid the groundwork for a new growth strategy, one that accommodated retaining current revenue streams but also picking up higher profit, more loyal customers.
We also established a new brand strategy, “the perfect white t-shirt” to inspire higher-converting paid ads, content, marketing pages, and product features.
TRUSTHOUSE
A CUSTOM REBRAND FOR CUSTOM HOMECARE
A successful in-home care provider wanted to enter a new market, which required it be taken seriously by affluent individuals and their sophisticated network of wealth, legal, and medical advisors.
Rebuilding the brand from the ground up, we repositioned, renamed, and relaunched the company, pivoting from an outdated identity, stock imagery, and overly long copy to a sophisticated, novel look and feel.
The new logo, refreshed site, brand videos, custom illustrations, sales collateral, content strategy, and CRM campaign set the team up for success in a new territory.