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.
Nokia Soon To Be No More As Microsoft Re-Brands Smartphone Strategy
Leaked documents suggest that Microsoft will be ditching the Nokia brand and starting to brand mobile devices as Windows devices instead. The documents say that the Nokia brand will give way to the “Microsoft” brand and that “Windows Phone” will simply become “Windows.” Not only that, but the Windows logo will now be used on Microsoft’s mobile devices as the home button, essentially reducing fragmentation across Microsoft’s phone efforts. Read more about the end of the Nokia brand...
Acura Luxury Brand Becomes More Independent From Honda
After high school in the 1970s, Mike Accavitti worked the first shift at Warren Truck Assembly, a Chrysler plant near Detroit. When a production cutback suspended the second shift, the young card-carrying member of the United Auto Workers union knew someone with more seniority from that shift would bump him off his. And they did. But taking advantage of a UAW educational program, the son of a dry cleaner started classes at Western Michigan University. He graduated as an industrial engineer. He later earned an MBA and law degree. Read more about it...
Google Makes Push As Brand Marketer With Android One
Before the new iPhone debuted, dozens of rumors circulated. One was that Apple, trying to broaden its global reach, would lower prices. Apple did not, holding its place as the premium smartphone brand. A week later, Google, Apple’s larger software foe, moved the other way. On Monday in India, Google launched Android One, a uniform operating system platform it plans to spread across developing countries to cement the next billion plus mobile internet users into its world. The move — a partnership with three Indian hardware companies — is also a direct hit against Microsoft and Samsung. Read more about how Google has pushed themselves as a brand marketer...
General Mills Hires Fallon Executive to Enhance Brand Strategy
General Mills Inc. on Thursday named Fallon executive Michael Fanuele as its first chief creative officer. Fanuele, Fallon’s chief strategy officer, will report to Chief Marketing Officer Mark Addicks as part of a strategy to centralize brand management at the Golden Valley-based food giant. Read more about it...
Nationwide Names Executives, Divisions Under One-Brand Strategy
Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. has realigned its internal structure and named new division leaders, one week after announcing it is bringing all of its product lines under the single brand, Nationwide. Last week Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. said it will use the Nationwide brand for all of its products and subsidiaries and drop the use of the names Scottsdale, Harleysville, Allied and those of other units. Read more about the one-brand strategy for Nationwide...
How DAM Tools Can Improve Brand Strategy
Digital asset management can have far-reaching benefits for brand strategy by helping to connect creative processes to business processes. Theresa Regli, managing partner and principal analyst at the Real Story Group, compared a successful digital asset management (DAM) process to a well-run kitchen, using famed chef Dan Barber’s restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, as an example of operational excellency. Her session last week at DAM Chicago 2014, “In the DAM Kitchen: What’s Cooking in 2014?” explored the potential of digital asset management technology in the enterprise, at a time when process and information siloes can be more and more detrimental to companies’ marketing and branding efforts. Read more about how DAM tools can improve brand strategy...
Why and When to Re-Evaluate Your B2B Brand Strategy
Building and maintaining a strong brand require constant monitoring and nurturing. And, on occasion, a brand strategy needs to be refined or rejuvenated—or even reset to conform to an entirely new direction by the business. This article details the signs that indicate it may be time to re-brand your business. Usually, that time comes during one of the following three circumstances: When it’s clear: Your company is about to undergo a Big Change. When it’s fuzzy: The brand hasn’t been evaluated in some time. When in a growth spurt: You’re trying to just get through today and don’t have a chance to think about tomorrow. Read more about re-evaluating your B2B brand strategy...
How To…Deal With a Brand Identity Crisis
The most successful brands have strong and distinctive identities that can be described in one or two words, and they are rarely fazed by the competition. But if that’s not the case with your brand, you might well be facing a “brand identity crisis”. So how can you recognise and deal with this before it’s too late? It’s time to give your brand a little therapy. The warning signs. People are confused about what your brand stands for and who you are. You can’t see how your brand is different from the competition – or, worse still, you feel your only option is to copy it. When a brand isn’t sure for whom or what it stands, it’s likely its customers won’t either. Read more about dealing with a brand identity crisis...
A Positive Brand Identity Turns Consumers Into ‘Frands’
Franding is a new and exciting concept, and it will help you develop your brand into a consumer loyalty magnet. Simply defined, a frand is a loyal fan of your brand. While the definition is elementary, the results can be dramatic. Everyone has read stories where consumers line up for hours, even overnight, to purchase a sale-priced popular brand item. Because of the product’s brand, a loyal following of “frands” appear whenever there are new product releases or sales. The brand defines the product, and frand defines the devoted fan of the product. Read more about it...
How to Give Your Brand Identity a Makeover – Without Alienating Your Consumers
Brand identity is a powerful tool and messing with it is a risky business. Even the slightest alteration can cause an altercation and affects the target market in terms of their perception of the brand and even their love towards it. From Jif’s change to Cif, Opal Fruits to Starburst and identity overhauls like that seen with Airbnb of late, nothing goes without comment – or in some cases outcry. Positioned and developed correctly, new identities add significantly to a company’s long term success and the change is necessary for many reasons, namely as an expression of progression. Yet how do you know when the time is to rollout with a refresh and how can the embarrassment of an identity disaster be avoided? Read more about it...
Why Precise Interest Targeting on Facebook and Native Advertising Are a Natural Fit
One of the biggest advantages that Facebook offers to advertisers is the ability to conduct precise interest targeting. Brands have the ability to target their Facebook updates directly to precise niche audiences based on people’s interests that they have shared with Facebook. There are many benefits to advertisers from precise interest targeting — finding new fans, engaging with a wider pool of Facebook users, recruiting brand evangelists and increasing conversion rates — but one of the biggest benefits that is still being discovered by many advertisers is how precise interest targeting can complement brands’ native advertising strategies. One of the biggest changes to Facebook’s advertising platform is that the social network isencouraging brands to rely more heavily on paid engagement, instead of relying on organic reach. Facebook recently made some changes to its rules and News Feed algorithm so that a much smaller percentage of people who like brands’ pages will actually see each new post. Read more about it...
As P&G Looks to Cut More Than Half Its Brands, Which Should Go?
Two decades ago, the last time Procter & Gamble Co.undertook a massive brand culling like that announced Aug. 1, it tried to consign White Cloud toilet paper to the dustbin of marketing history. Instead, White Cloud became a billion-dollar brand — for Walmart. Proving one company’s trash is another’s treasure, Boca Raton, Fla.-based entrepreneur Tony Gelbart claimed the White Cloud brand for himself, then won a challenge from a remorseful P&G before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to keep it. He sold Walmart on using the brand as a private label. And today it has White Cloud products not only in toilet paper but also paper towels, facial tissue, diapers, training pants, baby wipes, chlorine bleach, cotton balls, cotton swabs and laundry detergent. Read more about it...Ignite Lab Inc.
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