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.
A Brand Strategy Template for B2B Startups
This post is geared towards B2Bs building their brand strategy for the first time and/or wanting to get to market quickly, but it can also be used by businesses wanting to rebrand or go to the next level. Before delving into your marketing and sales communication plans, you must have a framework for what your company’s brand is about and how you want to be perceived. Everything you build, say and do as a company should be based on your Brand Strategy. There are many ways to approach this. Read more about an effective brand strategy template and how to use a brand strategy...
Ask the Mompreneur: 5 Tips for Marketing to Mothers
This week’s “Ask the Mompreneur” features an interview with Samantha Kurtzman-Counter, president and co-founder of The Mother Co., which specializes in safety and social skills media for kids. QUESTION: A lot of companies would love to tap into the mom market, but your company really puts “by moms, for moms” at its very core, right down to the name. What advice do you have to folks like myself who are trying to capture the attention of this incredibly important consumer? ANSWER: As a company fully founded, funded and focused on moms, it has been our utmost priority to establish a strong, authentic connection with the mom market. We are The Mother Co., after all. Read more...Twitter Takeover: How to Use a Hashtag in Your Branding Strategy
Everyone is talking about social media marketing these days. As the world is becoming more and more integrated into the virtual world of the internet, social media is becoming an increasingly vital aspect of marketing strategies for all businesses. Twitter can be a powerful marketing tool, with an estimated 15 million users in the UK in January 2014; this is a potential audience that cannot be ignored. Twitter works based on a hashtag basis, with short phrases of 140 characters or less used to convey a message and link messages to different social media platforms. Read more about using a Twitter hashtag properly...
Social Listening: Is it Making or Breaking Your Brand’s Digital Strategy?
Social listening has become an important facet of every brand’s digital strategy. With the world moving online increasingly, its importance cannot be overstressed. In this article we take the views from a few social media experts on the do’s and don’ts when it comes to social listening. Read more about social listening and its value...
8 Instagram Tips For Business Marketing
Instagram was launched in 2010 and no one projected that it would grow exponentially leave alone be sold for 1 billion dollars in 2012. It is not strange that Facebook thought the purchase was worth every cent. Instagram has grown to be a big social media giant with millions of users. So, what has this got to do with your business? Humans are more interested in picture and video representation of anything, still, what has this got to do with your business. Well, Instagram, being a photo sharing social network, presents your business with endless opportunities to market your products and services in a way your audience will find interesting. Here are important tips to get you started on Instagram. Read about all of the 8 Instagram tips for business marketing...
Social Media Marketing Tips and Tricks for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and More
The world of social media is ever-changing. It’s important to keep current on best practices to ensure that you’re doing all you can to keep your marketing campaigns and initiatives fresh. The team at Vocus has researched the latest and greatest trends in marketing on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Flickr, Pinterest, Instagram, Vine, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Here’s what they found: Read more about these social media marketing tips...
Yogurt Body Wash, Anyone? Uptick in Co-branding Brings Some Unusual Combos
Kellogg‘s is one of the most recognizable brand names in food. Yet when the breakfast powerhouse recently decided to launch a peanut-butter cereal, the brand apparently came to the conclusion that the Kellogg name itself wouldn’t be enough. So it struck a licensing deal with J.M. Smucker Co. to create Kellogg’s Jif Peanut Butter cereal, whose boxes carry the familiar red, blue and green stripes of the Jif brand, along with Kellogg’s red script. Read more about this uptick in co-branding...
What Branding is NOT
I came across a number of people over the years who have positioned themselves as branding experts and persons who can help build your brand. And while some of them have been quite good at what they do, some are just confused; these are the ones that believe that they can help you design a logo and a website and a tagline and call it your brand. I have come to realize that branding is more than this. In my definition your brand is who your customers think you are, and you basically have no control over this. You can try to manage your brand image, you can try to manage what people think about you, but essentially it’s up to them. Read more about what branding is not...
5 Branding Tips for Small Businesses to Stand Out from the Crowd
Small business owners tend to think that branding is something only large companies need. However with small businesses accounting for as much as 95-99% of private sector entities in most countries, branding is crucial for small businesses to be able to stand out and capture potential clients. No matter how amazing your product is, no-one will hear about it until you create an identity that is recognizable amongst the massive crowd of competitors. Here are five branding tips that will help your small business stand out from the crowd. Read more about these branding tips for small businesses...
Six Great Analog Communication Tricks
Lately I’ve been feeling ashamed and mortified by my digital incompetence, which I won’t belabor other than to say that I started to run into trouble around the time that MS-DOS came on the market. I’m still trying to memorize my Compuserve email address. I haven’t been fully comfortable with computers since Radio Shack stopped selling the TRS-80. Remember Commodore word processors? Now that was technology! Or am I dating myself. I can never remember my passwords — Thank God I’ve got the NSA as backup! Seriously, like many people I’m perturbed by the rise of the Surveillance State, but my major concern is that I haven’t done enough that’s worth surveilling. It’s a painful realization, knowing that you’re not very surveillable. You are a dull man when not even the NSA is paying attention. Read more about these six great analog communication tricks...
Building Your Brand: Proving and Differentiating Your Small Business
Your small business doesn’t need to be a world-famous household name in order to have a strong brand. There’s more to your “brand essence” than just your logo and a snappy slogan. Your brand is the entire sum of what you do, what you excel at and the experience your customers have with you. It determines whether customers join your loyalty club and refer you to friends — or don’t bother with you again. In this article, we offer guidelines for building a strong brand that positions your small business clearly and effectively in the marketplace, and helps attract repeat business and referrals. Read more about building your brand through proving & differentiating your small business...
7 Personal Branding Tips for Introverts
In the workforce, having a successful career can often be about personal branding and forging connections with others in the industry. But these things can be tough for introverts, who are naturally prone to desire time alone, prefer personal reflection and thought, and are often very shy. This can be intimidating when entering a professional world where you must compete with extroverts, who are typically very sociable and draw their energy from other people. Still, the workforce doesn’t have to be a daunting place for those who aren’t as comfortable spending a lot of time around others. Read more about these personal branding tips for introverts...Ignite Lab Inc.
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