Everyone nods.
Nobody moves.

You come with the symptom. Maybe people aren’t buying. Maybe they aren’t switching. Maybe the campaign worked but nothing changed. Maybe everyone inside the business has a different explanation for what’s wrong.

I start by working out which problem we’re actually dealing with.

I look at what you already have, what people are doing, what they’re saying, where the friction is, what competitors are doing, what the category keeps repeating, and what assumptions are being made internally.

Sometimes I speak directly to customers or the people you want as customers. Sometimes the useful evidence is already sitting in your research, reviews, support tickets, data or previous work. I use whatever gives us the clearest answer.

I question the brief too. If you came in asking for a campaign, rebrand, website or launch, I don’t assume that’s what you need.

What you get

A written diagnosis, usually 12 to 16 pages. Not a deck to sit through. A document you can read, keep and make decisions from.

• ·The behaviour that needs to change. What people do now, what you need them to do instead, and where the opportunity is.
• ·The barrier. The thing most stopping that change, and the evidence for it.
• ·The behaviour-change move. The shift most likely to change what people actually do. It might be what you say, what you make easier, what you remove, what you prove, or what you stop asking people to care about.
• ·What to lead with. The strongest proposition to build around, what people need to understand, believe and do next, and what the creative work needs to achieve.
• ·Where you can stand apart. What everyone else in the category is doing, saying and looking like, where the conventions help, and where following them would make you disappear. I’m not interested in a better version of what already exists. I’m looking for the angle you can credibly own.
• ·Where the idea could travel. PR, earned attention, partnerships, cultural moments, other places the story could spread beyond paid advertising. Not a media plan. The opportunities worth building into the answer from the start.
• ·What not to make. The campaigns, pages, features or content that won’t solve the problem, however good they look on the plan.

Plus a clear way to explain the recommendation to the people who need to agree. A good answer nobody can repeat internally is worthless.

Then a call to talk it through. That’s it. No workshop series, no sixty slides, no homework.

You can take the document and go. If the answer needs creative work and you want me to make it, that’s a separate project.

The Diagnosis. One week. £5,000 fixed.