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.
Carnival Shifts Strategy Without Losing Brand Identities
A small storage room stuffed with torn-up mattresses in the Doral headquarters of Carnival Corp. offers a glimpse into the evolution of the mammoth cruise company. In an effort to create the most comfortable and durable beds for the operator’s 101 ships, a global sourcing manager at the corporate office has ripped open mattresses from across the company’s 10 brands to see exactly how they deteriorate. Using that information and carefully mined customer feedback on beds, Carnival Corp. and its brands are working with manufacturers to come up with ideal cruise ship mattresses — and then order directly for all the lines, cutting out distributors and getting a better deal for the mass purchase. Read more about how Carnival shifted strategy without losing brand identities...
8 Tips for Using Color to Communicate an Event’s Message
“Colors and color combinations create moods and feelings, consciously and unconsciously,” says Kate Smith, president and chief color expert at Sensational Color, a color consulting firm in Ashburn, Virginia. Check out Smith’s tips for using the psychology of color effectively at events. 1. Clearly name the message or mood you want guests to experience at your event, and use color to support it. “If the message isn’t clear, color can’t make it work,” Smith says. “Color is wonderful, but it’s not a miracle.” Read more about the remaining 7 tips for using color to communicate an event’s message...
Avoiding PR Disasters: Five Tips For Integrating Social Media Into Your Communication Plan
A recent survey by Continuity Insights showed that 60% of respondents do not have a social media strategy to respond to a disaster. This avoidance of social media is mainly driven by the fear of exposure to reputational risk … witness the US Airways “Tweet from Hell” that rocked the Twitter world earlier in April. And, that tweet was just the latest of the mega-mistakes tweeted by corporate America. But think about it from a business continuity standpoint: social media has the power to move information faster than traditional news outlets and is available on nearly all internet-connected devices. As such, it has the opportunity to aid your organization during a crisis to communicate quickly and effectively. Many enabling technologies in business carry inherent risks, but given appropriate mitigation strategies, you can avoid most of them. Here are five steps you can take now to improve your communications strategy using social media. Read more about these five tips for integrating social media...
HTC Hires Former Samsung Marketing Chief Who Developed “Galaxy” Brand
HTC Corp. (TPE:2498) made a rather bold move this week, poaching former Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KRX:005930) (KRX:005935) U.S. mobile marketing chief Paul Golden. Mr. Golden helped round up the talents of 72andSunny, leading to a highly effective series of parodies mocking Apple, Inc. (AAPL) “fanboys”, a campaign that emails recently made public in court reveal had Apple’s top executives very rattled. I. Fresh Blood In his profile on LinkedIn Corp.’s (LNKD) internet resume hub, Mr. Golden cites one of his chief accomplishments during his 2008-2012 stint at Samsung Electronics as: Created and launched the highly successful Galaxy brand for Samsung. Paul Golden will report directly to HTC chairwoman Cher Wang. It’s unclear how he will share responsibilities with HTC’s current chief marketing officer Benjamin Ko. But it seems obvious HTC needed help. Read more about this smart business move...
The Changing Face Of Grocery Shopping: From Downsizing Supercenters To Brand Identity
Completing your weekly shopping trip used to mean going to one store and purchasing the one brand of tomato sauce offered. Today, consumers are bombarded with a plethora of decisions before they even write up their grocery list, from hitting up the health food store or the supercenter to going with the tired and true name brand of the generic store brand products. Consumer trends have always shaped grocery shopping. When we wanted more options we created supercenters, when we wanted healthy foods we created health-food stores. And the evolution of grocery shopping doesn’t appear to be letting up anytime soon, Business Insider reports. Read more about this topic...
5 Tips On Using Social Media To Promote Your Employer Brand
If you run or are part of a business, chances are you already have some sort of social media presence, as well as a pretty effective recruitment strategy. But what if I told you that, by bringing these two elements together, you could improve your recruitment ten times over? Making sure that potential candidates view your company and work ethic in a positive light when checking you out online might just be the difference between them applying for that role or not. Some big brands have already taken to social media to promote themselves as an employer people should aspire to work for, and there’s no reason why you can’t do the same, no matter how large or small your business is. This social promotion approach isn’t so much recruitment as it is marketing, but it will encourage candidates to want to work for you without you having to sell a role again and again. With this in mind, I’ve come up with a few tips on how you can use social media to promote your employer brand. Read more about these five tips on using social media for effective brand promotion...
Five Social Media Tips to Maximize Your Brand’s Online Presence
Social media – everyone’s doing it, but few brands get it right. As with most things in life, everyone has an opinion, and the majority of them aren’t necessarily right. Your approach to social media channels is crucial, and should be constantly monitored and tweaked according to your market’s response. If you’re looking for some fail-safe social media tips, you’ve come to the right place. If your content is unoriginal or boring, forget about it Your content plays the crucial role of showcasing your brand to the public, which means it’s absolutely imperative that you’re creating original content that people want to share. Crafting content that resonates with your audience relies on knowing what makes them tick. If you’re able to consistently produce posts that are engaging and of use, people will naturally want to share it – organically increasing your reach and influence. Remember that images count as content too, and the inclusion of them significantly up the ‘shareability’ of a post. Find out more about the remaining social media tips...
Rolex: How a 109-Year-Old Brand Thrives in the Digital Age
Last year, the decision makers at Rolex decided the time was right for a shakeup. Unlike with most “shakeups,” however, there wouldn’t be widespread corporate reorganization, and scores of merchandise wouldn’t be cut. Instead, Rolex executives decided that it was time for the company to launch its first branded Facebook page, a herculean leap for a brand that has, for decades, closely monitored its reputation and only made tweaks — in both its watches and marketing strategies — after subjecting them to significant scrutiny. Find out more about how Rolex has developed an effective brand strategy for the digital age...
How To Improve Your Communication By Up To 93%
You’ve scrutinized what you plan to say. You’ve mentally calculated every word that will comes out of your mouth in that big meeting, pitch, or presentation. That’s good – that’s the ante to play. But you’re only going to be 7% effective in your communication. Not to be blunt, but 7% isn’t going to get you that prized customer, deep-pocketed investor or key buyer – in fact, 7% won’t get you anything since we live in a world where results are often binary. So where does the other 93% come from? The author of Silent Messages, Dr. Albert Mehrabian, determined that 38% of your communicative effectiveness is deemed by certain vocal elements aside from words, while 55% comes from nonverbal elements entirely. Even if the math isn’t exactly accurate, the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of your communication style is not related to what you’re actually saying. Let’s look at each sub-section to read between the lines. Find out more about how to improve your communication by up to 93%...
To Teach to Test or For Communication – Or Both?
Which is more important: to communicate in a second language or to test well? Often in language education, skirmishes break out among parents, teachers — and even the students themselves — over this thorny question. Of course, being able to do both is the ideal, but how can we as learners and teachers ensure we keep a healthy balance between social and academic language acquisition? Linguist Jim Cummins believes that these two types of learning and the skills they involve are separable: On one side of the fence are social language skills, which are needed to communicate within society; on the other are academic language skills — those needed to succeed in a classroom or on an exam. Social language skills do not require any specialized vocabulary, Cummins argues, and often comprehension is aided by the context of the social situation. For example, a child in a playground or a university exchange student at a party would rely on various nonverbal social clues when seeking to understand and respond appropriately to a specific situation. Read more about teaching and testing for communication...
Communication is the Key to Career Success
Beyond specialized knowledge, employers today are interested in prospective employees’ ability to work as part of a team, their aptitude for critical thinking and their communication skills. No mater the area of work, these abilities are essential to success. A good example of such a career is journalism. And a good example of a person whose career has depended on these skills is Steve Jankowski. Jankowski, who was born in Rolla, Mo., obtained his bachelor’s degree in mass communications at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Today he is the director of alumni affairs and executive director of the SIUE Alumni Association. But his original goal was a career in broadcasting. Find out more about why communication is essential to career success...
Samsung Opens Museum to Own the History of ‘Innovation’
Samsung Electronics is marking its 45th anniversary today by opening the Samsung Innovation Museum in Suwon, South Korea. “The Samsung Innovation Museum brings together some of the true historical masterpieces of electronics innovation,” said CEO Kwon Oh-hyun at the opening event. “These inventions laid the technological foundation that allowed us to develop and refine products that enhance lives today. The museum gives visitors an opportunity to see where we’ve come from and also see where Samsung draws inspiration from to continue to create category defining products.” Find out more about this Samsung museum...Ignite Lab Inc.
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