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.
Samsung Says Galaxy S5 Showcases “Meaningful Innovation” in Latest Ad
The Samsung Galaxy S5 launch is barreling toward us (going down on most major carriers this Friday, in case you don’t know), and Samsung’s looking to ramp up the advertising to get people excited. Their latest ad has hit YouTube, with the South Korean company touting “meaningful innovation” in their latest flagship. Whether or not you believe anything they’ve done is “meaningful” is up to you to decide, but we imagine those who aren’t expecting a rocket-sized list of improvements on a tight yearly release schedule are perfectly fine with the device. Be sure to watch the ad above if you’ve got half a minute to spare today. Once you’ve wrapped up, why not drop a poll below and head to the comments letting us know if you think the Samsung Galaxy S5 is truly innovative. Read more about the Samsung Galaxy S5 and its overall innovative design right here....
Integrated Marketing: 6 Quick Tips for Getting Started
Integrated marketing is one of the most important – and effective – ways for marketers to reach their target audience. A successful integrated marketing strategy uses a consistent identity throughout multiple marketing channels to support a brand’s marketing and sales function. Developing an effective integrated marketing strategy is a time-consuming process. The following marketing tips can help marketers develop an effective integrated marketing campaign that has a dramatic impact on how brands reach their target market. Focus on the customer. The customer has to be first. Know who your customer is, what your customer wants, and know a lot about your customer’s spending habits in order to utilize the right marketing mix. Learn the other five tips on integrated marketing...
Tips for Creating Videos to Boost Brand Awareness
In an age that celebrates storytelling and imagery, the use of videos to promote brand awareness has skyrocketed. B2B branding and sales-related videos–whether they appear on a Facebook page, YouTube channel or on short-format platforms like Vine or Instagram–are quickly becoming the content-marketing tool of choice among top brand marketers. Businesses also post branding videos on their websites, including on: Landing pages Product detail pages Virtually everywhere on the site as a sidebar feature Videos can be circulated via email, newsletter and virtually every way you communicate with current and prospective customers. So if you haven’t yet told your story on video, now’s a good time to start. Here are tips to get you...
Brand Bravery: Enabling Customers to Mold Your Online Brand Identity
Today’s digital ecosystem has clearly evolved the manner in which brands interact with their customers; communication between these two parties was once typically top-down, less of a conversation and more of a one-way dialogue. While this was acceptable in an analogue age, brands have had no option but to accept that in making the ‘digital switch’ their customers now expect a ‘flat hierarchy’; one in which they are able to interact directly with an organisation and help influence and shape the brand story. Find out more about how brand bravery can affect your digital brand identity...
Nine Ways To Use The Corporate Brand To Engage Your Team
In a previous article I provided information about your role as a leader and how to build employee engagement in support of brand-building. That article emphasized the importance of helping your employees build their personal brand and the company brand. In this post, I share with you nine ways leaders can connect their team to the corporate brand. This is the key to employee engagement, team building, and achieving corporate branding objectives. These nine recommendations apply to existing team members as well as the process of bringing new people on...
Nonverbal Communication Tips for Job Hunters
In this, the second of a three-part series on interpersonal communication in your job hunt, I’ll share more tips for improving how you come across to others. Remember, only 7 percent of communication is the actual wording you use. More weight is given to your voice (38 percent) — meaning your tone, pitch, volume and rate of speech. Even more weight (55 percent) lies in what others observe — meaning posture, body language, eye contact, etc. Observing body language is most critical as we form opinions, so what can you do when a phone interview removes that variable? Read more about why nonverbal communication is important as well as how you can master nonverbal communication when searching for a great...
Strong Market Dynamics Fuel Micron’s Growth In Q2’14
Leading memory products manufacturer Micron Technology reported a strong Q2 2014, driven by favorable structural changes in the industry, as well as positive market conditions and solid operational execution. At $4.1 billion Micron’s revenue grew by 1.6% sequentially and 97.6% annually (last year did not include Elpida earnings), and its net income more than doubled sequentially. DRAM revenues were flat sequentially as both sales volumes and average selling prices remained stable. NAND Flash revenue grew by 11% sequentially on account of a 35% increase in sales volume which was partially offset by an 18% decline in average selling price. Read more about these Micron market dynamics...
How Can We Best Innovate to Drive Economic Growth?
To many people innovation is seen as the key to getting the economy moving, creating jobs and solving the energy crisis. It’s harder to define exactly what innovation is, how it happens and whether it actually translates into economic growth. Last month I attended the EU’s flagshipInnovation Convention in Brussels , a huge event formally opened by José Manuel Barroso accompanied by the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, with the Commissioner Maire Geoghegan Quinn also in attendance. Read more about an effective way to innovate to drive economic growth...
5 Ways Leaders Enable Innovation In Their Teams
Leaders are accountable to assemble teams and lead them to optimal performance outcomes. An effective leader recognizes the importance of embracing differences in people and knows how to connect the dots amongst those differences to get the best outcomes from the team. This is what cultivates a workplace environment of continuous improvements, innovation and initiative. Leaders must foster a commitment from the team to embrace an innovation mindset where each employee learns to apply the differences that exist in one another for their own success and that of the organization. Find out more about the different ways leaders can enable innovation in their teams...
Tips for Creating a Profitable Small Business Concept
When people find out that I have a background as a business consultant, they will often tell me that they would love to own a business, but have no clue what type. These are the tips that I give for coming up with a profitable small business concept. Even if you have a small business concept already, these tips will help fine tune it. Do What You Know Your small business concept should circulate around what you know. A former client of mine opened up a business that supplies products to car dealerships, and he came up with this idea after working at dealerships for 15 years. He went into a field that he knew and where people knew him. It has ensured his future growth. Read more of these tips about creating a profitable small business concept...5 Great Tips For Pitching Your Business Concept To Investors
1. Your Appearance Matters When pitching your new start-up idea you should always be dressed in business formal clothes, with an appropriately professional haircut, and no distracting accessories. A business pitch is one of the most formal and important occasions in business and needs to be treated with care. Since your first impression will be based on appearance, it’s very important to make sure that this impression is a good one. However, you also need to be aware that business conventions do differ in different areas of the world, and there are even some industries such as the IT industry that are more casual than others. Read about the four other tips for pitching your business concept...
The 10-point Guide to Effective Employee Communication During a Company Crisis
1. Plan ahead and be prepared A successful response to a business crisis typically demands making and effectively communicating far-reaching and emotionally difficult decisions while under pressure and perhaps lacking complete or fully accurate information. Proper crisis preparedness planning therefore inevitably calls for putting the necessary organizational structure, processes and tools in place before a crisis hits. Develop, implement and continuously improve a crisis communication strategy and matching crisis communication plan tailored to the company’s needs. Assign responsibilities and thoroughly train the designated employees and their back-ups. Put communicators on the corporate and, if applicable, the regional and local crisis management teams. Conduct vulnerability audits and use the findings to build realistic crisis scenarios upon which recurring media training and crisis management drills are based. Remember that effective employee communication is a crucial component of any comprehensive crisis management strategy and indispensable to minimizing crisis-related damage, seizing the opportunities a crisis may present and converting resulting organizational change into competitive advantages. Learn about the remaining nine points in this guide to effective employee communication during a company crisis...Ignite Lab Inc.
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