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.
Two Misleading Words Triggered GM’s Catastrophic Communication Breakdown
I resisted the temptation to write about GM’s internal report on the Cobalt ignition switch crisis until I had the time to review the entire 315-pages. The details of the report by Anton Valukas, partner at the law firm Jenner & Block, reveal a catastrophic breakdown in communication. Today’s column isn’t just for those readers who want to know more about theGeneral Motors failure to recall thousands of cars with safety problems. It offers valuable lessons for any leader who wants to improve the communication of critical information. “As a whole, from beginning to end, the story of the Chevrolet Cobalt is one of numerous failures leading to tragic results.” Most of those ‘failures’ can be directly tied to poor communication, according to the Valukas report. The investigation reviewed 41 million documents and hundreds of witness interviews. The report covers 15 years of failures and gets highly technical, but it’s clear that poor communication, information overload, and bewildering PowerPoint slides take much of the blame for the loss of 13 lives. Read more about these two misleading words...
6 Communication Tips for Advisors
Are you reaching out to clients effectively? Advisor communications techniques — both online and in the real world — are a key focus area in Pershing’s second annual study of advisor success, unveiled last week during the company’s Insite conference in Hollywood, Fla. Kim Guimond Dellarocca, Pershing’s global head of segment marketing and practice management, walked us through the report’s recommendations for client conversations — which, the report found, could use improvement. “It’s hard to call during the touchy stuff if you don’t have a rapport,” she notes. Read more about each of the 6 communication tips for advisors...
Become a Master Communicator With These 5 Tips
We live in a society where perception is reality and an opinion is formed in three seconds. We never get a second chance to make a first impression. The most effective way we have to control how we are known by others is through how we communicate. Practice the following tips to be more deliberate and intentional in your communication with others: 1. Craft your persona statement. We have a choice in how we want to be known. Identify and write down strategic elements that reflect your positive character traits and best attributes. Begin by completing the following sentence: I want to be known as … Read more about becoming a master communicator...
Innovation 101: Defining Innovation
I define it because I want to know what I am aiming at. How do we define innovation and why should we? My current definition of innovation is: Newness that proves its worth. The term innovation comes from the Latin word innovatus, which means “into the new”. So, innovation has movement or change that brings about “newness”. In addition there is an implicit element that exists in the modern use of the term. It is the idea that it must add value, whether to a company, society, government, or whatever context. The Latin root of value is vale, or val, strength and worth respectively. So, when ”newness” is created the change it causes must prove its worth. It must be strong enough to stand the test of time, and only things that people adopt and use, as a part of the fabric of their lives, will prove themselves truly valuable. Read more about defining innovation...
Mega-Mergers Are Killing Innovation
The latest mega-merger in the telecommunications sector, that ofAT&T and DirecTV, would be the fourth largest in history, and it comes only months after the nation’s largest cable operator Comcast announced that it was buying Time Warner Cable, the second largest cable operator. Nor is telecommunications the only sector to see such acquisitiveness. Microsoft purchased the devices and services business of Nokia for $7.2 billion late last year, Google snapped up Nest for $3.2 billion in January, and Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in February. Read more about how mega-mergers are killing innovation...
11 Communication Tips for a Healthy Workplace
Misunderstandings and communication problems remain one of the most common sources of workplace strife, and interpersonal difficulties are magnified when conflicting work styles coexist in one setting. Generational differences (baby boomers vs. GenX-ers), personal management styles, educational background, and cultural diversity are all potential sources of office misunderstandings. While conflict is inevitable, it need not ruin your workday or cause unbearable stress. Try these conflict resolution tips to make your work environment a less stressful, more productive place. You can read all of the 11 communication tips...
5 Tips for Communicating Assertively without Being Passive-Aggressive
All of us are passive-aggressive. That is, we use a mild form of passive-aggressiveness: “saying yes when we mean no,” according to psychotherapist Andrea Brandt, Ph.D, M.F.T. However, some of us use passive aggression on a regular basis. Brandt defined passive aggression as “a coping mechanism people use when they perceive themselves to be powerless or when they fear using their power will lead to bad outcomes.” Read more about this...
4 Branding Tips That Will Help Market A Business
A business’ personal brand is its story. Effective branding builds trust and security that leads to long-term sales and loyal customers. Brands distinguish businesses from each other and give customers a reason to choose one company over another. To properly market a business, a strategic company and/ or personal brand must be established. Read more about it...
Next in Line – Tips for CEOs Cleaning Up After Controversy
It was a busy week for high-profile turnovers at the top of major organizations. Last weekend, the National Basketball Association accepted the sale of the Los Angeles Clippers to former Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer, bringing an end to the Donald Sterling saga (sort of). Then, on Monday, President Obama announced Sloan Gibson as interim secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, replacing Gen. Eric Shinseki, who resigned last week following revelations that VA healthcare facilities had delayed care to veterans and covered it up. Read more about what CEOs need to do to clean up after controversy...
6 Communication Tips From Emergency Managers
Before, during and after an emergency it’s absolutely critical to provide information and communicate. Why? Because in an emergency, and in life in general, the vacuum created when nothing is communicated is filled with information that can be, and often is, incorrect.The principles outlined by organizational theorist Chris Argyris in his model, the Ladder of Inference, hold especially true in the domain of emergency management. Argyris’ proposition is that in the absence of information people make things up (assumptions) due to a need to make sense of something. Read more about these 6 communication tips from emergency managers...
How a New Medical Center Tackles Secure Communication
There is an array of items to deliberate for any healthcare organization that is looking to bring on a new clinical communications platform, let alone a hospital that has been open for about two months. Ensuring that the data being communicated is secure in a HIPAA compliant manner should be near the top of that list. Walnut Hill Medical Center (WHMC), a 100-bed facility with over 200 employees and physicians on staff, offers services such as cardiovascular, gynecologic, imaging, general surgery, emergency medicine and intensive care. The new organization knew that safe, secure staff communication was a must from the outset and chose to provide secure devices to staff members. The corporate-distributed devices have baked-in security features as part of Voalte’s mobile infrastructure. While the phones are currently limited to internal use with Voalte One, WHMC physician Ricardo Guerra said the organization is looking at ways to extend its use of Voalte outside of its four walls of hospital by being able to text information securely with Voalte Me. Read more about how this medical center is tackling secure communication...
Gwyneth Paltrow Was Right: America Turned Communication Into a Weaponized Battlefield
Communication in our culture has taken on not just the rhetoric of war but the psychology of battle. Props to Paltrow for saying so. As a reward for her attempt to depict the consequences of online commenters, Gwyneth Paltrow has become their latest victim. In a now-infamous impromptu speech, Paltrow told a tech conference… well, something about online hate and real-life war. “[I]t’s a very dehumanizing thing,” she lamented. “It’s almost like how, in war, you go through this bloody, dehumanizing thing, and then something is defined out of it.” Read more about what Gwyneth Paltrow had to say about communication being turned into a weaponized battlefield...Ignite Lab Inc.
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