I started my career writing ads.
Now, I help businesses think smarter.
About me
I'm Allie - brand strategist, commercial thinker, small business advisor, and recovering advertising creative. My background is in above-the-line advertising (the proper kind, with big global agencies, lots of late nights, and a fair few Cannes Lions on the shelf). But somewhere between being given the brief and delivering the buy-in, I realised the most interesting work wasn't the ideation. It’s in the room where the strategy gets made.
So I went back to school. Properly. MBA from Durham University Business School, Distinction, topped the class in my dissertation. I now work at the intersection of brand and business strategy. Which, it turns out, is where the most valuable opportunities hide.
What makes me different?
There’s a lot of people out there trying to offer advice. Why listen to me?
I speak creative and commercial. Fluently.
Most strategists sit on one side of the fence. Either they understand brand. Or they understand business. I've lived both. That means I can walk into an agency and build the brief, then walk into a boardroom and justify the ROI. No translation required.
I’ve sat on both sides of the table
Agency. Client side. Startup advisor. My own business. I've been the one writing the strategy AND the one being handed it at 9am on a Monday. Seeing different perspectives gives you greater understanding and changes the way you work.
I believe research isn’t optional. It’s the job.
IBefore the frameworks, before the slide decks, there's a conversation to be had. I find insight hiding in plain sight and build strategy around it. Data is useful, up to a point. But it’s no substitute for talking to real people. My approach always incorporates both.
My career in brief:
Founded my first agency (aged 25)
Allday Creative - digital, branding and web for SMEs, scaling up to Sony, Microsoft and Virgin. Exited via client roster sale.
Award-winning copywriter & creative at DDB, Grey, Iris, Analog Folk and others
Creative lead on global GSK / Excedrin account. Cannes Lions. Clios. Epicas. And the globally famous campaign that gave non-migraine sufferers a migraine - intentionally, using AR, on US TV.
Five years inside Specsavers in-house marketing team
Working in-house at the UK's biggest high-street optician. Created the first branded social content series (with the England Cricket Team), boutique store, pioneered AR campaigns, and helped reposition the audiology offering through proper research, not assumptions.
MBA (Distinction), Durham University Business School
Went back to school mid-career. Executive Dean's Scholar. BP Innovation Award winner. Highest dissertation mark in the cohort: a 15,000-word qualitative study on disruptive innovation, interviewing startup founders, PE investors and business leaders.
Senior Brand Strategist, Athlon (APAC region)
Delivering brand strategy for a global branding and design agency across fintech, wellness, facilities management and AI startups. From cashback apps to pest control. (Variety. It keeps things interesting.)
A few things about me you might not expect…
I love brands with personality
One of my favourite strategy questions is: "If your brand was a person, who would it be?" I've been asking it since 2008. It never gets old.
I’m a storyteller
Before going into advertising, I studied for a Creative Writing MA in the Department of Journalism, City University. I freelanced for various hipster magazines in the indie sleaze era and wrote short stories on manual typewriters which I submitted by hand. It was the 2000s. We were like that.
I like meeting real people
I've run focus groups in small town America, sat in research labs listening to nanotechnology scientists, and presented go-to-market strategy to PE-backed founders. Same skillset. Very different coffee.