- The assumption
- A plant-based nutrition brand's stated target audience, in their brand book, centered on various interests and lifestyles.
- The drift
- The data showed the customers who actually converted and stayed were a specific segment that over-indexed heavily in urban metropolitan areas.
- The realignment
- Refocusing on geography as the first audience filter, then breaking down lifestyle within it, sharpened the entire acquisition approach. The suppression and redistribution made the 7-figure marketing budget both more effective and more efficient.
Experience
- Director of Digital StrategyRethink
Digital and media strategy for top-tier national brands across QSR, telecom, apparel, automotive, and more.
- Director of MarketingNo Days Wasted
Led all marketing functions across DTC, Amazon Retail.
- Digital Marketing LeadNative Shoes
Led all digital advertising and e-commerce, managed all external agency partners.
- Senior Digital & Media ManagerVega
Led all external digital communications on all channels across paid, organic, and earned.
Experience across
The hybrid marketing leader
I've sat at the altitude of strategy, as well as in the weeds of execution, and I've learned to see the gap between them. The place where the marketing strategy and its execution have drifted apart.
Most performance problems, rising CAC, weak conversion, retention that won't hold, don't start where you see the metric. They start upstream, in the strategy misalignments that quietly break the execution downstream.
I find it, I fix it.
How I work
A diagnosis before a prescription.
Every engagement starts with the Basin Diagnostic, a systematic method I developed that reads the five currents running through the business, and exactly where they've drifted apart:
- who you're actually for
- what you stand for
- how you're built to sell
- how you show up
- what your data really says
That's how I find the real problems before the next dollar is spent going after the wrong one.
Selected work
Audience vs. Evidence
Architecture vs. Expression
Belief vs. Audience
Three misalignments I see often.
- The assumption
- A direct-to-consumer "bed-in-a-box" mattress brand led its cold, prospecting ads with technical product specs.
- The drift
- A first-time buyer doesn't care to learn what "HD Visco-Elastic foam" is. They cared about being able to try the mattress without risk.
- The realignment
- Reframing the message around that buying anxiety, at the stage where it mattered, changed how the creative performed.
- The assumption
- A female-forward, mission-driven brand had a strong, clear point of view of what a powerful woman was.
- The drift
- It hadn't pinpointed where its own convictions and its customers' beliefs genuinely overlapped, and a brand holding a belief isn't the same as a customer sharing it.
- The realignment
- Mapping where the two actually met revealed white space no competitor had claimed, and became the foundation for how the brand positioned itself.
Let's talk.
Whether you're placing a fractional role, weighing a hire, or want a sharp outside read on your marketing, I'd like to hear from you.
Get in touch