No man is an island and we believe in collaboration and co-design. We are champions of having a design mindset and believe that creativity can be taught and work with our clients as if they were peers. So much so, they often become good friends (which is why we’re so picky about who we work with). We are driven to constantly strengthen our knowledge in our multi-disciplinary fields and gain perspectives from diverse sources. We always want to provide the best service and are constantly refining our services to best match our client needs. We know that change is constant and there’s benefit to iterative processes; we are always thinking of ways we can improve what we do and what you can do for your clients. We believe in honesty and that every opinion counts. Our clients matter, our team matters, and we want work with people that are equally passionate about creating impact. We love what we do, it’s a lot of fun, so it doesn’t really feel like ‘work’ a lot of the time.
The Entourage
As well as the motley crew of marketing experts you see below we work with a number of freelancers and contractors to provide our clients with human centred digital and creative marketing services. We strongly believe in making life your business not business your life and want to enable creative people the chance to work on their own terms. We have built an ecosystem of amazing creative and purpose-driven individuals and small businesses who want to create amazing customer experiences. We are always looking to expand our network to offer our clients unique ways of marketing themselves. If you would like to be a part of the team get in touch and let us know why you’re a perfect fit.
We also love to work with other businesses that help our clients reach their objectives, so have partnered with other organisations that have similar values to save you the time to find someone you can trust.
Some of our trusted partners include...
I always pride myself on being an ‘Ideas man’ - a strategist with expertise in brand, marketing and customer experience.
I have dedicated my professional career to helping people and businesses succeed through a human centred strategy, idea generation and brand expertise to improve customer experiences. During my global career, I have been fortunate to have had a wide range of roles working for, and alongside, some the world’s largest corporations and brands in over 130 countries. My executive roles have included Global Director of Customer Experience at Nokia and Global Head of Brand Architecture at Nokia Siemens Networks. In Australia, I have worked with major corporations such as Optus, Vodafone, ANZ, Australia Post, NBN Co, Danone, Coles, Bunnings and City of Melbourne. I have also worked with many Not-For-Profit organisations, profit for purpose and social enterprises with
In addition to being the co-founder of Marketing Entourage, I am also co-founder of Entrepreneurs&Co and global ambassador for Inspiring Rare Birds.
I am also passionate about helping the Australian startup ecosystem and act as a mentor, advisor and
Strategic Thinking, Customer Experience, Brand, Inbound Marketing, Sales, Technology, Product Development. Using my extensive network to connect people to those who can support each other.
Being with people, laughing and singing…… although nowadays more singing in the shower!
I co-founded Marketing Entourage after spending 18 years in senior sales & marketing positions for companies such as Lonely Planet and The Press Association in Melbourne, New York and London. I started out in a design agency and used a human centred design process to help develop a product that went on to revolutionise the media industry in 2002 so have remained a champion of design thinking ever since.
It feels like I have a scientist’s brain and an artist’s heart and liken myself to Alexander Fleming; in that I enjoy the structured, but unpredictable and creative, process of discovery, (although I have never had the urge to paint with living organisms) and hope that by working with purpose-driven businesses I am helping them to change the world. I get great pleasure in helping really nice people discover their path to business success using insights and tools to help them fully understand their customers. From a very young age I had always questioned ‘why’; which delighted my inventor father who made me, amongst other things, dismantle a toaster and rebuild it because I wanted to know how it worked, code my own computer games on an Acorn Electron (yes, I am really that old), and restore a classic car (to be my first car after I passed my test) at the age of 15. The constant questioning, discovering, understanding, and love of aesthetics are what lead me to work in senior sales & marketing roles internationally in the media and publishing industries. My ability to be agile in thought, creative and innovative is what has helped transform the companies I’ve worked with as quickly as the world changed around them.
Unlike
Quite ironically I am allergic to Penicillin (Alexander Fleming’s discovery that changed the world)
Strategic Thinker, Strategic Planner, Strategic Foresight, Master Facilitator, Human Geographer, Ethnographer, Creative, Design Thinker, Scrum Master, Data Nerd
Breathing & Learning
I am a creative at heart, my Masters is in Digital Media and my degree is in Visual Communications. I’m passionate about all things design, marketing and digital technology. I’m particularly interested in UX and how
I have worked in a diverse range of marketing and graphic/digital design
I love being involved in the creation of strategies and delivering creative work that really ‘speaks’ to the customer. I love seeing all of the elements of a project come together, seeing it in action and watching the results come in; it’s like connecting the dots and having a beautiful picture of the future painting in front of you.
If Phil is the face of Marketing Entourage and Sam is the brains, I’m the engine!
Creative, Graphic + Digital Designer, Digital Marketer, UX/UI, CX, Motivator, Social Media Guru, Networking, Getting things done!
Exercise and learning
Despite a thoroughly enjoyable time at school, I had no idea the journey that my career path would take. I was born into a family who excelled in their professional careers (lots of lawyers and engineers, so no pressure at all!) so I started on the 'sensible' path of analytical accounting (via University and a degree in Accounting Finance) and became an accountant. This fed my inner nerd to the max but I soon realised that the right side of my brain was feeling unloved and unused. Therefore to stimulate my creativity I decided to enter the world of marketing and completed my Masters in Marketing. My career took another unplanned but amazing turn when working internationally with employers that included Sony and other marketing agencies. My passion for marketing continues to grow in particular around brand, strategy and digital. To measure marketing effectiveness requires data so fortunately my inner nerd is still happy on a daily basis!
I am fascinated by people and am always curious to understand the underlying motives behind their actions. This is the reason why I am so passionate about human-centred design and marketing where an entire strategy can be developed around a customer.
Not everyone can say they love what they do but it is true for me. I also love to sing and make people laugh so perhaps the next career stage will include being a part time comedian or auditioning for The Voice.
The Digital Dynamo of Marketing Entourage - converting data into customer experience gold!
Strategy, Digital, Social, Content, Relationship Management, Brand, Copywriting
The same as Phil (only I’m better at singing!) and listening to music 25/8!
Seems like yesterday that I started in this business.
Oh, no, wait a minute – it was more than thirty years ago. Seriously.
If you’re wondering how someone can do that for so long and still love it, the answer is actually quite simple.
The creative challenge.
It’s the challenge of helping a client making the most of what they have to offer.
Of identifying every advantage, no matter how tiny. Of distilling all those advantages down into a pure, powerful, unique positioning. Then combining it all together into a story that is so memorable, so compelling and so relevant to life that our prospect must act now. Right now.
I’ve been lucky. Along the way I’ve been taught by the very best in the business – in some of the best agencies in Australia, NZ, London and New York. I was able to work with some legends of the business as the ‘Mad Man’ era moved into the digital revolution and on to today. I learnt a lot – and at some stage I’ve helped to create some pretty famous campaigns and picked up a few awards for clients and agencies.
There has never been a more exciting time. But it’s also the most challenging. In the digital age it’s so easy to mistake ‘activity’ for ‘results’. My mission is to make sure that the results we achieve for clients are the results we really want – sales, a change of attitude, a refreshed image, or a whole new crowd of customers.
Thinking. Planning. Creating the most compelling story - and converting that story into clear ROI.
Waking up and Spotting typos
With a broad suite of skills spanning across multiple industries and organisational environments, I’m certainly not your vanilla-type consulting professional.
A natural enthusiasm for human motivation, engagement, mastery, teamwork and high performance shaped my early career in elite sport as an athlete and coach. My eventual sea change from the sporting sector to the corporate sector turned out to be a critical one. Hardwired with big picture thinking and curiosity, my sporting days may have been over but my career as a workforce strategy professional had just begun!
I quickly realised that we can’t solve today’s complex problems with the same thinking that created them – we need to go slow to go fast and start thinking more deeply about the future, today. Forewarned and forethought is forearmed I thought.
So, here I am today, a hybrid of things, insights and experiences; a strategic foresight practitioner. Helping organisations think about tomorrow’s business, today – a critical component of any 21st century business armoury.
I help address four critical concerns; who are we, how might our future business/workforce environment be different, what are our preferred strategic options to succeed in these environments, and how might we align our workforce?
My goals are simple – balance the space in business where imagination and prudence are not mutually exclusive; where the intuitive mind is not a forgotten gift; where creativity and foresight is admired and embraced in the workplace, and where people are recognised as the heart and soul of the organisation.
Let’s cut to the chase - what can I actually help with? Strategic thinking, strategic planning, futures thinking and strategic foresight, organisational visioning, strategic workforce planning and development.
I couldn’t split them - I have two.
Reading tidbits of interesting insights and articles, or micro reading as I like to call it, to consume as much knowledge in one days as humanly possible! And, planning my weekend road/mountain bike riding routes on Strava!
Working in the data-driven world of digital marketing had always appealed to me. I’d always been very good at understanding what people want and providing it (I funded my Masters degree by importing steel exercise equipment from China), and I had a knack of understanding patterns in data and the patience to work through it. I went on to work on projects with E&Y and Fonterra and then secured a two-year stint with the United Nations Association of Australia.
This led me to be involved with Entrepreneurs & Co (one of Phil’s other ‘children’) and eventually Marketing Entourage as a Business Analyst, Big Data expert and all round social media guru. Working here is great, you get to meet a number of interesting clients, people matter, and everyone is included and contributes to the preferred future of the business.
As we are all entrepreneurs (this is the way of the future), I like to be actively involved in the Melbourne start-up community
Digital Marketing, Data Mining and Visualization, Business Intelligence (Insights Development and Reporting)
Cooking - especially paella (Ed’s Note: need to get Niro to cook us some paella!)
Craig doesn’t do words, he does graphics. Like leaving your Facebook open to mischievous friends Craig has left his bio in our hands. Rest assured though, because Craig doesn’t do anything other than graphics, he’s actually very good at creating experiences, brands, and whatever we ask him to do at the last minute. However, he’s not very good at writing about himself so what you’re about read may be false or true fact.
Craig once injured his best mate so badly he had to get a glass eye, they’re still friends though, in part to the fact he turned a blind eye to it.
Craig only eats orange food.
Craig was once dragged behind a boat on a giant inflatable island. The problem was the toe rope nearly broke the inflatable, so he had to hold onto it for the whole, painfully long, 50 minutes it took to get back to camp.
Craig spends two hours each day grooming his beard.
Craig thinks Sam is the most intelligent person he knows.
Craig once dressed up as a policeman at a fancy dress party and proceeded to write incriminating evidence against everyone in a little notebook. The one time he didn’t mind writing anything.
Anything Adobe Creative Suite
Grooming his beard
Words are my speciality. I’ve used them to create effective copy for a whole range of clients across all media from traditional to web and social. I’ve worked on branding, employer communications, B2B and direct marketing projects, so I understand how strong copy helps achieve business objectives.
I’ve written my way across three continents – Europe, the USA and Australasia – and enjoy the ability to work anywhere, anytime thanks to the magic of Skype, Google+ et al.
I pride myself on quality, on-brief work which entices your audience to engage with your product, service or brand positively and respond in the way you need them to.
Copywriter, copy editor, proofreader, grammar aficionado.
Knitting one, purling one
After completing my Bachelor in Commerce (Marketing) my marketing career began as an intern in a business consultancy. My role was highly varied and hands-on, which gave me a lot of experience with many forms of marketing and the very different channels to market. It helped me gain experience in the business environment and develop skills across a broad range of marketing functions. I was then lucky enough to be offered a position at Marketing Entourage as a Marketing Assistant. With a passion for marketing and a solutions-focused approach to projects, I have enjoyed developing my expertise in Search Engine Optimisation and Search Engine Marketing (Google Adwords). I have also gained a reputation as the resident DJ.
Outside of work I enjoy playing golf, catching up with friends, fitness and adventures.
Search Engine Optimisation, Search Engine Marketing, Web Analytics
Listening to music
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