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.
5 Tips On Branding For Good From Successful Social Entrepreneurs
Just because you’re doing good work as a social entrepreneur doesn’t mean you get to skip on the more commercial parts of running a business. Your good story isn’t enough to grab customers and create more impact, you need to build a good brand. Every other month, brand innovation firm BBMG hosts Five x 5, a social innovation workshop designed to help five startups with their most pressing brand-related challenges. Five teams of planners, strategists, creatives, and entrepreneurs donate their time and expertise to delve into each challenge and then share insights and concepts before the networking continues. Read more about these five branding tips...
YouTube’s Content Strategy Tips Will Help Your Brand Stand Out
We were excited to attend DX3 Canada this year because of the access it provided to smart people doing big things. YouTube’s Dave Coleman is one such example, and his session about brand success on YouTube did not disappoint. In less than an hour, Dave laid out a video production content structure that any brand can use to find and engage with their customers. Previously, I had written about Volvo’s ability to split its marketing objective to create video content that effectively targeted each stage of its sales cycle. Volvo created a perfectly executed awareness campaign built around Jean-Claude Van Damme’s ability to do the splits that drove attention to targeted explainer video snippets designed to actually sell $100,000 trucks. It worked beautifully. Coleman not only agreed with my take on Volvo during his session, but used the company as the perfect example of YouTube’s recommended content structure for brands. This structure contains three content buckets – Hero, Hub, and Hygiene – all of which should align directly with a brand’s content strategy (defined by what your brand stands for and what your customers are interested in). Here’s Coleman’s recommended content structure as exemplified by Volvo’s YouTube...
3 Reasons Your Brand Strategy Always Comes First
Creating a company image involves a lot of different moving parts, from design and copy to marketing and branding. These components work together to present the buying public with the most complete vision possible of your company’s mission and products. The world’s most recognizable companies have one thing in common: Their brand strategy always comes first. Apple, Google, Nike, and LEGO built empires on public perception. Take Apple’s identity away—that of a company providing products for creative people—and it’s simply any other computer company. Building a brand is so much more than the sum of its parts. When creating graphics, content, marketing campaigns, and web design, you may feel you need to choose any one of these over your brand strategy, even if for a short period of time. Before you set aside your branding standards to concentrate on any other part of your company, remember this: brand strategy always comes first. Read more about the importance of your brand strategy...
Why Tech is Crucial to Esurance’s Brand Positioning
Esurance’s Super Bowl sweepstakes got a lot of attention, but the company’s marketing strategy uses technology in unique ways in the insurance industry. VP of customer experience and communications Lisa Ward explains how the company’s myriad partnerships and adoptions combine on a larger brand strategy. Find out what Lisa Ward had to say about Esurance’s brand positioning...
You Need to Add Video to Your Personal Branding Strategy
When you’re building your personal brand, you want to make sure you’re visible to the people who are making decisions about you. When building your brand on the Web, that means showing up on page 1 of search results for a Google search. Why? Because if you’re not on page 1, you’re nearly invisible. A Gravitate Online study found that 94% of Google users click on a first-page result, and fewer than 6% click on a page 2 result. So showing up on page 1 is essential if you want to get noticed. So how do you make that happen? Video. Read more about why you should add video to your personal branding strategy...
Marlboro Accused of Targeting Teenagers in its ‘Don’t Be A Maybe’ Campaign
The world’s largest-selling brand of cigarette is under fire for allegedly encouraging teenagers to smoke. Marlboro, which is owned by Philip Morris International (PMI), is accused of targeting youngsters across the globe through its ‘Don’t Be A Maybe’ campaign. Each advert in the campaign features young people – with some pictured partying, snowboarding and playing the guitar. Read more about this Marlbor campaign and see images of the controversial Marlboro advertisements...
Can Apple Help Make Hearing Aids Cool?
People wait in long lines and even camp out to get their hands on new Apple devices as soon as they’re available. But they drag their feet, sometimes for years, when it comes to purchasing another piece of technology that could greatly improve their lives: hearing aids. Hearing-aid manufacturers and audiologists hope a new collaboration between them and Apple will help. Find out more about Apple’s plans for hearing aids...
Get Crafty with Your Branding Strategy
Branding is more than just a smart logo with a catchy slogan. It’s personality, your customer base, and the quality of your products and services. With the boom in successful small businesses, and the rise in indie craft shops, setting your brand apart from everyone else’s can be a bit of a challenge. Be unique but not obnoxious. Be visible but not overpowering. Be intense but not overbearing. There are so many points to touch on for branding your business that it’s easy to lose sight of your goals. Katy Svehaug, Etsy’s content coordinator, recently published an article on Etsy’s blog about strategic branding. Read more about these branding strategy tips in this...
Traditional Reinsurers Must Remain Relevant to Survive Challenging Market Dynamics
Traditional reinsurers must remain relevant and be mindful of areas into which they are looking to diversify in the face of increased competition from the influx of capital markets capacity, Willis Re president Paddy Jago cautions in a video blog on WillisWire. Those traditional property catastrophe reinsurers that are responding to increased competition from the influx of capital markets capacity by diversifying into other lines of business should proceed with caution, Jago recommends. Read more about their need to survive challenging market dynamics...
8 Tips for Better Communication and Collaboration in Your Business
There are lots of ways that the good use of technology can help boost the levels and quality of communication and collaboration in your business. Read on for our handy tips on how to do just that… Twitter: If you’re not already on Twitter, you really should be. Start up a Twitter account for all your business updates and invite your associates to subscribe. This will let you contact the whole team from wherever you are via your mobile. Don’t fear IM: Instant messaging is an efficient method for getting answers quickly, and cuts down on distracting chatter. Encourage your employees to use IM – but remind them not to use it for anything confidential (conversations are saved on servers, and the messages are very easy to intercept). Refrain from email flames: Never send an email in the heat of anger – write your screed and save it as a draft, telling yourself that you’ll send it later when you’ve settled on your course of action. (You’ll probably never send it). This will result in fewer burnt bridges that could hurt your business in the long run. Read more about these communication tips...
5 Ways to Boost Innovation at Work
“Innovation distinguishes between a follower and a leader,” Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple had been known to say. In tough economic times, companies and teams need to innovate to survive. However, driving team members to innovate is not always an easy task for the modern-day manager. Shreya Roy speaks to a few managers on ways to get the best out of people. You can read more about the five ways to boost innovation in the workplace right...
Communication Specialist Shares Hope for Bad Bosses
Most managers and leaders worked their way to the top after being technically good at their job, and they were next in line for a promotion. Yet, most bosses do not know how to communicate because they were not formally trained in communication skills. The majority of these managers and leaders operate from their “worker mindset” background or by modeling themselves on their previous bad boss. The definition of effective management and leadership is “getting the work done through the actions of others.” This means every manager and leader must motivate, inspire and communicate their thoughts, vision and ideas to their team to get results. However most managers and leaders struggle to articulate themselves in a clear, concise and confident manner. Read more about the studies of this communication specialist...Ignite Lab Inc.
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