A boutique consultancy dedicated to delivering relevant insights that guide clients through complicated decisions and uncover new ways of thinking.
Shari Allison
Principal
Shari has spent the past 20 years helping clients refine the way they look at their marketplace, their customers & their business. Co-founder of Ignite in 2011, Shari focuses on challenging convention, redefining context & delivering clarity to client partners. Although she holds advanced degrees in consumer behaviour, Shari’s expertise extends well beyond research & insights to thought-leadership & true strategic-partnership.
Stephen Tile
Principal
For the past 30 years Steve has been helping some of the biggest brands refine their target, define their messages and build their businesses. He is a consummate strategist who uses an array of research tools to deliver crisp & meaningful insights that inspire and transform.
Ignite is brought to the table when senior level, objective, thought-partners are needed to help provide clarity, focus decision-making & optimize opportunity.
Our business model allows for intimate, hands-on engagements that are flexible & provide meaningful business outcomes.
While Ignite can of course execute basic research, our sweet spot is really those issues that are strategically significant to the organization.
We focus on strategic, high-touch engagements related to…
- Market dynamics
- Brand strategy
- Brand targeting & positioning
- Brand identity
- Innovation
- Concept development
- Concept evaluation/execution
- Communication strategy
- Communication development/evaluation
Specializing in retail, travel, packaged goods, alcohol, technology, financial services & luxury goods segments.
- Ignite employs a creative range of methods to uncover insights…from traditional focus groups & online surveys to inventive interactive, observational & ethnographic approaches.
- Emphasis is on driving insights deep into organizations, either up or down, where they can be actioned — use facilitation & workshopping methods to ensure organizational enculturation.
Develop a Strategy for Branding Your Own Best Self
We have a love-hate relationship with image management. The virtual world now offers endless opportunities to brandourselves through visual images, clever phrases, family photos, sound bytes and videos. Yet, we continually question, critique and dismiss the validity of people’s branding attempts. Before you launch your own public relations campaignthrough social media and face-to-face encounters, you’ll want to develop a strategy for “Branding your own best self” that can withstand skepticism about your intentions, your capability, and your contributions. Your brand incorporates the qualities and characteristics that people associate with you. Read more about it...
Invest in Your Branding
A brand is not just a name. It is an asset. Here’s how you can take the first steps toward owning a truly world-class brand. What do the most valuable brands in the country—and in the world—have in common? They have consistent, purpose-driven and meaningful brands. They are treated with care, monitored and controlled, tended to and tightly guarded. In other words, a lot of conscious effort is put into building and preserving the essence of the brand. Sadly, branding isn’t taken seriously enough by many of our small businesses. The reason: far too many entrepreneurs assume that branding is just a matter of choosing a trade name for their products or services. Read more about how to invest in your...
5 Keys to the WWE’s Hugely Successful Social Media Strategy
Stephanie McMahon, the Chief Brand Officer of World Wrestling Entertainment, is a fourth-generation wrestling promoter. Her great-grandfather, Roderick James McMahon, booked boxing and wrestling matches at New York’s Madison Square Garden and started Capitol Wrestling Corporation in 1952. Her grandfather Vince McMahon Sr. took his father’s company over in 1954. Stephanie’s father Vince McMahon bought the family regional grappling business in 1982, built it into the global entertainment company that took in over $500 million in revenue last year, and remains its chairman and CEO. Read more about her social media strategy...
Can Coach Rebuild Its Brand Image With New Promotional Strategies?
Leading luxury retailer Coach has announced that it plans to close as many as 70 stores in North America. The company, which operated 351 full price stores and 193 factory stores in North America as of June 2013, had been facing criticism for diluting its brand through a high outlet presence. The closure of these stores will reduce its North America store count by 13% and the global store count by 7%. The company will also be combining 13 standalone men’s stores with existing women’s stores. This announcement comes on the heels of a quarter in which revenues from the company’s North America operations fell by 18% for the quarter with comparable store sales declining by 21%. The company management attributed this decline to the overall retail slowdown from weather and the Easter shift. While a part of the decline was attributable to the overall slowdown in retail spending, the rest of it was of a piece with the poor performance of Coach’s women’s handbags and accessories business over the last few quarters. Read more about it...
Facebook Admits ‘Terrible’ Communication Gaffe on Study
Facebook communicated “terribly” about a controversial study in which it secretly manipulated users’ feelings, the social network’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg admitted Wednesday. Sandberg’s comments came as British authorities said they would question Facebook over the experiment to see whether it broke privacy laws. Read more about this study and the terrible communication gaffe...
A Lack of Communication on Cyber Security Will Cost Your Business Big
When it comes to cyber security, most CEOs don’t get it. That was the conclusion of a recent survey of IT security professionals on the state of their companies’ defenses against data leaks or malicious attacks. The survey, sponsored by Websense and conducted by the Ponemon Institute, exposes the lack of communication between IT and upper management about the importance of cyber security and the damage a data breach can do to a company’s public image and bottom line. More than half of security professionals believe that their organizations’ security controls don’t provide adequate protection against advanced cyber attacks, according to more than 5,000 IT professionals from 15 countries including the U.S. The same portion of IT professionals said that executives fail to appreciate the value of putting effective security controls in place, and do not equate a data breach with financial loss. This echoes a similar study conducted last year, also by the Ponemon Institute, which concluded that a majority of IT professionals fail to communicate security risks effectively to upper management. Read more about it...
Overcome the Seven Barriers to Communication
“I just can’t get through to them. They just won’t listen.” Have you ever said this or has someone said it to you? Communication is perhaps the single biggest drain on workplace productivity. Consider the following statistics: • Miscommunication can cost an organization 25 percent to 40 percent of its annual budget, according to estimates from Manchester Cos. • It’s estimated that 14 percent of each work week is wasted as a result of poor communication. • A study of more than 2,000 senior executives and managers in the U.S. found that 94 percent identified “communicating well” as the most important skill for executives and managers to have to be successful today and tomorrow. Read more about overcoming the 7 barriers to communication...
It’s the End of ‘Marketing’ As We Know It at Procter & Gamble
The end of marketing as we know it officially comes today at Procter & Gamble Co. Well, at least the title. As of July 1, hundreds of marketing directors and associate marketing directors at the world’s biggest advertising spender will officially become brand directors and associate brand directors. Read more about the end of ‘marketing’ at Procter &...
Logo Contests: Will They Work For Your Brand Strategy?
Whether you’re starting up or looking to refresh your image, having a strong brand identity is crucial. While brand strategies can vary depending on your business, goal and product, one central element is key when designing your brand and taking your company or product to market – your logo. The creation (or reinvention) of your logo will undoubtedly be a critical part of your brand strategy and in the design marketplace, an increasing number of businesses are utilising crowdsourcing platforms and creating logo contests in order to generate quality logo options that they can assess and review, ultimately choosing one to stand at the forefront their strategy. Read more about logo contests and if they are effective for your brand strategy...
Brand Journalism: A Killer Content Strategy
SAP has come a long way since it launched the SAP Business Trends space nearly three years ago. Our unique process of cultivating employee brand journalists on this thriving space and broadcasting the “best of” stories to our sister sites, SAPVoice on Forbes and theSAP News Center, is now recognized as an “elite” industry best practice (See recent Contently piece: “No Great Speeches to Empty Rooms: Inside an Elite Content Distribution Strategy). Judging from the reaction of recent events I’ve been asked to participate in, the industry-at-large is surprised by our success and curious to learn how we create killer content. Read more about why brand journalism is a killer content strategy...
Virgin Media Business Refreshes Brand Strategy and Identity to Differentiate from Consumer-Facing Sister Brand
Following a deep-dive review of its market perceptions Virgin Media Business, the largest B2B Virgin branded business, has refreshed its brand strategy with a new visual identity designed to better show the company’s vision and values in the world of business telecoms. While still holding onto the trademark red, the new visual identity introduces more vibrant and less traditional business colours, including shades of pink and purple, in a bid to stand out from the crowd. Read more about it...
How Annie Helped Popeyes Find Its Brand Identity — Louisiana
There was a time not long ago that many consumers wouldn’t have associated Popeyes with Louisiana. “We were missing the opportunity the brand had, which is Louisiana,” said Popeyes Chief Brand Experience Officer Dick Lynch, noting there was “spotty awareness” for the chain throughout the U.S. just five years ago. As it turned out, that heritage was the point of differentiation the chain needed to help fight stagnating sales and declining traffic. To communicate those roots, Omnicom’s GSD&M created the chain’s spokeswoman, Annie, played by actress Deidrie Henry. She allowed Popeyes to simultaneously advertise new products and highlight the brand’s heritage, Mr. Lynch said. “When Annie is talking, she is characterizing [Popeyes] as being from Louisiana, so we don’t have to spend time convincing people we’re different, because Louisiana is differentiation enough [in the chicken category].” Read more about Popeyes and their new brand identity...Ignite Lab Inc.
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