Strategic Advisory

Start with the right questions. Then build the right response.

Independent counsel for government, brands and complex organisations — before the money goes into campaigns, content or creative.

We help you define your objectives, understand the real problem, shape the strategy that answers it, and brief the right specialists to deliver it.

Most briefs describe a symptom.

By the time a brief reaches a marketing team or supplier, the problem has usually been defined by whoever wrote it — and the response is shaped by whatever the marketing team is set up to deliver or that supplier happens to sell.

We work upstream of that. What are the business objectives? What is the organisation actually trying to change? Who has to behave differently for it to happen? Where is influence genuinely available, and where is it being spent for no return?

Only then does it make sense to talk about what the work should be.

Structurally independent.

We don't keep a fixed team. We build the right people around each challenge — bringing together specialist partners based on what the work needs, not what we happen to have in-house.

No permanent team. No payroll to feed. No preferred answer waiting for a question.

And we stay through delivery. Strategy that isn't carried into execution isn't strategy — it's a document.

Our methodology

Four stages.

Understand

Business objectives and success measures. Deep audience and stakeholder work. The true challenge rather than the presenting symptom — quantified, with segments, barriers and behaviours mapped.

Strategic problem definition

Audience and stakeholder insight

Communications and brand review

Barrier and opportunity mapping

Behaviour change strategy

Strategise

A customer-first roadmap, media-neutral from the outset. An Ideas Brief rather than a traditional creative brief. Built around message, medium and meaning — and the right idea, not the biggest one.

The roadmap

Communications strategy

Campaign architecture

Message frameworks

Channel and content planning

Stakeholder engagement

Launch sequencing

Assemble and direct

The specialist team built around the challenge, briefed properly and held to the strategy. Senior partners selected for fit. Lean, tailored, accountable to outcomes.

Partner briefing and direction

Implementation oversight

Strategic project leadership

Creative and content review

Alignment across stakeholders

Measure

What's working, what needs to change, where can we improve, and what can we learn?

Campaign evaluation

Performance reporting

Message testing

Post-campaign review

Refinement planning

Evidence

Where this has been done before.

Twenty-five years of strategy, marketing and communications leadership across government, brand and behaviour-change work.

Photograph — to be supplied

James Trebilcock

Principal Consultant. Twenty-five years leading strategy, communications and engagement for Toyota, Ford, Commonwealth Bank, Australia Post, DFAT Smartraveller and the Electoral Commission of South Australia — campaigns that have reached millions of Australians.

Who we work with

Built for complex organisations

Government and public sector

Purpose-led organisations

Complex stakeholder environments

Brand and reputation challenges

Behaviour change programs

Projects needing strategy, alignment and implementation discipline

Related work

Start the conversation

Start with a conversation about the problem.

Not a pitch and not a capability presentation. A discussion about what you're trying to change and whether we're the right people to help.