I was actively involved in developing and teaching marketing, strategy, and leadership content at Procter & Gamble. While at Abbott Nutrition, I led an initiative to put a more formal training system in place for our marketing staff and was actively involved in developing the approach and content. I also guest lecture at the Fisher MBA program at The Ohio State University. My goal is to help your team build the necessary skills to drive your long-term business results.

Topics of Instruction include:

Brand and Product Management: Brand/product Audience: Who to target? Brand/product Benefit: What to say to them? Brand Communication: Where/how to reach them?

New Product Testing: How to gather relevant information before you test; Writing strong concepts (Insight, Benefits, Reasons to Believe) What are “testably” different ideas; & Inputs for volume forecasting

Brand Equity and Architecture Development: What does your brand stand for? Points of win, lose and draw vs. the competition. How to develop a meaningful and differentiated positioning and brand character, based on business drivers. Aligns the organization and partners to deliver consistency in communication and new products or upgrades.

Target Audience Development: Who should you be targeting and why? What are the most important drivers of purchase and where do you have a right to win? Who should you not be targeting? Is your target sufficient to reach your business goals (generally 2-3x larger than your share goal)?

Annual Business Review and Annual Business Planning: Learn how to run a 1-week annual business review or planning workshop. What are your key business questions? What are the key drivers of success? What should we stop doing? A cross functional, unique approach to business reviews and annual planning.

Development: Leading Up, Coaching, Role of a Manager

People as brands: What are people saying about you (or your team) at the water cooler? What do you want to stand for, how can you focus on your key drivers, what is your desired brand character?

Commercial planning: What is your available market (TAM, SAM, and SOM)? Can you clearly articulate the problem and solution that your product is addressing? What is your elevator pitch and is it sufficient to meet your startup or new product goals?

Custom: I can develop custom courses to meet your training needs

I am also a Principal with thoughtLEADERS, LLC, a unique training and coaching organization with experts across many topics and areas.

I look forward to learning more about your training needs, please click the link below to connect.

Connect

Training

“We engaged Steve for a brand positioning project where he empowered the internal and agency partner teams to rethink our consumer target and brand positioning. I recommend Steve for any consumer insight and brand management project that requires fresh thinking and teamwork. If you’re stuck, I’m pretty sure Steve can get you unstuck.”

Sara Engber, Vice President Retail, Chinet Brand

"Steve is an experienced, innovative, savvy marketing executive who helped SafeWhite by providing excellent input and insights into our respective market segments and helped us establish valuable relationships with several of the world's leading consumer brands. I would highly recommend him to anyone looking for strong CPG marketing consulting or advisory board services."

R. Shealy, CEO

“Steve and Brand KBD bring a very structured and disciplined approach to developing brand strategy. Steve's thinking and recommendations are always data based and strategically sound. Steve and his firm will help you build a stronger brand by focusing on the core fundamentals of brand building. Steve has helped us build a foundation for the Cruise brand which will improve our marketing effectiveness in 2019 and beyond. "

Lucas Watson, Chief Marketing Officer, Cruise Automation

“Steve did a terrific job for us – he developed the customer and market strategy, analyzed our competitors, and developed the pricing, business model, and volume forecast for our market entry. He has a unique approach that truly gets to the key drivers of our business – would highly recommend him for any type of marketing and strategy work”

R. Sears, CEO, Sight4All

“Steve did an excellent job for us in developing a consumer facing strategy for our business…he developed a strong understanding of our business, in a very short amount of time, and led the strategy development and go to market plan for our customers.”

TRAINING