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.

shari@ignite-lab.com

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.

steve@ignite-lab.com

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Ignite is brought to the table when senior level, objective, thought-partners are needed to help provide clarity, focus decision-making & optimize opportunity.

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Our business model allows for intimate, hands-on engagements that are flexible & provide meaningful business outcomes.

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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.

This Is What’s Wrong With Your Content

Communication development/evaluation, Communication strategy, Market dynamics

From a marketing perspective, the content landscape is a mess. Sure, there are companies out there publishing meaningful digital content that truly adds value for their customers, but there’s a flood of content that has no value for the reader or the author. How did the conversation get so convoluted and spammy? I hold these two clichés responsible: Traditional marketing is dead. Content is king. Read...

Brand Dracula: Four Branding Lessons From the Undead

Brand identity, Brand strategy, Brand targeting & positioning

Tod Browning’s production of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, from 1931, is one of my favorite of the Universal horror collection. And Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of the creepy count from Transylvania continues to inspire moviegoers and enthusiasts, as well as inform all other depictions of vampires on stage, screen, and in books. Because of that consistency and memorability, Dracula can actually teach important lessons about branding for small businesses, associations, or entrepreneurs. Read...

How This Small Employer Finds Great Tech Talent

Brand strategy, Concept development

Himanshu Sareen was just 22 when he started web development and IT services company Icreon Tech in New Delhi in 2000. Despite launching just before the tech bubble collapsed, the company has grown rapidly. It now employs hundreds of people on multiple continents and is thriving from its new headquarters in New York City. Read...

To Be Successful You Have To Decide What Not To Do

Brand strategy, Innovation

As a business owner, if you don’t keep a short leash on your time, the day quickly slips away. You have to make the most out of every hour to succeed, Hello DesignCEO and Creative Director David Lai says. Read...

The Secret to Closing More Sales: Talk Less

Communication development/evaluation, Communication strategy, Market dynamics

Most salespeople talk way too much. In today’s market, chatty salespeople are champing at the bit to swamp prospects with information. My research shows that the average salesperson talks over 81 percent of the time in a selling situation. Not only is that approach ineffective, it’s losing you sales. You can close more sales, simply by talking less. Here are seven ways to do it: Read...

It’s Your Data — But Others Are Making Billions Off It

Market dynamics

It’s hard to mandate laws around privacy. Privacy is a right as well as a preference, but when you’re in public, precedents have been set as to where you can be photographed, recorded or otherwise tracked. Similarly, online we’re used to signing terms and conditions to quickly utilize a service, not fully comprehending how our data will be seen and by whom. Read...

9 Tips To Get The Most Out Of Your Accelerator

Brand strategy, Concept development, Innovation

Not every accelerator is right for your startup. For example, most accelerators require you to set up shop in their space. You want to be sure you and your partners like the vibe and can gain value from the space itself in addition to the program. Read...

What changes with women in the boardroom?

Brand identity, Brand strategy, Innovation

(CNN) — Just as I began covering parenting and women for CNN, a college friend pointed out that the company where he’s president is far outside the norm: eight of the company’s 15 executives are women. Eight out of 15? That’s a management ratio rarely seen in corporate America — a ratio this women’s issues reporter dreams of for every company. Read...

Here We Go Again: What Entrepreneurs Need to Know About Hummingbird, Google’s Latest Update

Brand strategy, Communication strategy, Market dynamics

You might have heard that Google recently released the biggest change to its search algorithm in many years. It’s called Hummingbird. It allows Google to handle “conversational search,” meaning it can quickly parse entire questions and complex queries. It also means that entrepreneurs will need to make some adjustments to their online publishing strategies. Read...