Jeff Flemings helps brands unlock inspiration and teamwork to create growth.
Business goals and marketing goals don’t have to compete.
I’m your fixer. I can get them to work together. To inspire you to grow.I call this making the elegant leap.
An elegant leap happens when you move from what you know to what you feel. From what’s safe to what’s unproven. From what’s already been done to what you’ve been dying to try. From what scares you to what thrills you. From a hunch to an urge. All with confidence, rigor and intention.
An elegant leap lights the magical match of meaning, unleashing the potential for empathetic understanding to inspire relevant creative possibilities.
This opens up incredible new possibilities for growth.
“Jeff is the rare combination of creative genius and business acumen. He feels at home with both the creative and money types.”
Michael Lazerow, Founder, Buddy Media
(sold to Salesforce for $800 Million)
I work with curious and passionate marketers.
They need to unlock the inspiring possibilities of insight and teamwork to grow.
But they get bogged down at key intersections.
Why?
You: creating marketing to move your business forward, excited by the possibilities.
Trusted tools have gotten you to a place you feel pretty good about. But you can’t quite reach the finish line - because you get hung up, for example:
you haven’t quite cracked the code on what motivates your audience, particularly on an emotional level
data & analytics aren’t getting turned into insight & inspiration
you’re not giving your creative team creative briefs that focus and inspire them
there’s conflict between what brand owners and marketing creators are solving for
These challenges can make risk taking seem like an expensive dice roll.
The good news is: it’s possible to get through these intersections and unlock brand growth.
You probably need to make a leap.
Ask yourself these questions about your current marketing approach:
Emotion
Do you have a tightly defined emotional insight about your brand - a deep, inspirational understanding of how your brand connects to your audience?
Are you giving your agency/creative team (and internal partners like analytics) what they need to hit it out of the park, every time?
Efficiency
Does your creation process predictably produce marketing that truly connects with your audience, in a differentiated way? Or is it more of a dice roll?
Are you confident your analytics are generating insights that help move into growth mode?
Is your brand strategy clear enough to inspire and focus all the creators who connect your brand to your audience? For messaging, product and experience?
Teamwork
Is your team across both brand and agency genuinely inspired to create and to do it together? Do they build off each other? Or try to stay out of each others’ way?
My approach
Working together, we’ll create a customized path to unlock
the power of inspiration for your marketing.
— We’ll fix what’s not working now, and make sure it doesn’t happen again —Step 1:
Diagnose
Identify how to unblock the flow of inspiration and teamwork
Stakeholder interviews
insight / emotion / inspiration, brand strategy, creative development process
Recommendations
root causes, priority leaps
Specific offerings include - teasing emotional insight out of existing research/analytics, teaching analytics how to connect and inspire
Step 2:
Galvanize
Get the team aligned around objectives and process
Team workshop
acknowledge how we’re doing with insight and inspiration, and where we’d like to be better (more reliable, more creative)
Identify pilot opportunities
brand strategy, creative brief/briefing process
Specific offerings include - Purpose Sessions (virtual workshops to create team alignment around brand strategy/briefing process)
Step 3:
Repair/Rebuild
Repair what’s not working & rebuild it so it never happens again
Launch pilots
new brand strategy, new creative brief/briefing process, new approach to generating emotional insight
Optimize
monitor progress, continuous improvement
Specific offerings include - writing your creative briefs/RFPs
“When it comes to passion, intelligence, wit, and energy, no one comes close. He is as analytical as he is creative, and driven to make a difference. I love this guy! And you will too.”
Kristin Volk, founding head of planning, Arnold
Client success stories
Saatva
“Our love language is math, but we need to build a brand.”
Navigating the intersection between performance marketing & brand building.
In 2020 I started helping Saatva CMO Joe McCambley and his marketing team lay the foundation for the transition from wildly successful performance marketer to upper funnel brand builder. This was no small task: there are 200 US mattress brands, and the brand’s “love language” was strongly rooted in the rational.
The productivity of search had been maxed out. How to grow? Move up the funnel, with branded communication that targets the right customers, and resonates emotionally.
We started by translating data and analytics into emotional insight, identifying a mentality as our key targeting device - the confident “smart shopper” whose behavior and confidence inspires less rigorous mattress shoppers, even if they don’t want to do the research work themselves.
We also developed a relevant & inspiring new brand strategy, and a new creative brief and briefing process. The in-house creative team developed a new big idea for the brand’s creative that’s rooted in a smart shopper character. The new video executions are delivering ROAS significantly above prior work, including search.
We also co-developed a training curriculum with WARC to teach Saatva’s marketing leadership about how successful e-commerce brands are created and built.
Brand growth continues to outpace planned levels.
"Every time I speak to Jeff I'm challenged intellectually, I learn, I'm inspired, and I'm reminded to focus on my customers, emotional storytelling, long-term thinking, and profitability. Notice I didn't use "or" there. All of that happens for me, every time.
He won't let me forget why I got into this business. How many people do you know who are brave enough to keep you true to yourself?"
Joe McCambley, CMO, Saatva
Liberty Mutual
“We need to engage shoppers at scale, but we’re late to the game — and we’re not funny.”
Navigating the intersection between New England conservative & pop culture leadership.
Over our 7 year relationship, Liberty Mutual has pivoted from a staid, quiet New England auto insurer to a bold, national creator of pop culture, all in an effort to attract more customers in the cutthroat US auto insurance market.
Liberty, Goodby and I all did it together, starting with creating language to describe the value prop (only pay for what you need), then developing the brand buddy duo Limu Emu and Doug. Our key task: pinpointing the “right” flavor of humor - enough to engage auto insurance shoppers without annoying them, while still telegraphing the brand’s DNA of empowerment.
Our elegant leap process included hours of deep engagement with consumers, the agency, and the Liberty marketing team, as well as the inspiration of improv comedy and consumer video diaries.
Liberty’s now in the top echelon of US property & casualty insurers who have been spending a lot more money, for many more years.
“Jeff is as good as it gets when it comes to capturing deep consumer insights and translating them into successful marketing strategy. What makes Jeff exceptional is his ability to understand, engage, and energize every person in the room — the consumer, agency partners, and clients at all levels and roles in the organization.”
Ryan McManus, Liberty Mutual
Conservation Labs
“We can help change the world, but first we need to build engagement.”
Navigating the transition from engineering brilliance to customer empathy.
My friend the analytics wizard Mark Kovscek invented internet-enabled water tracking device H2Know to help consumers and businesses reduce the 2 trillion gallons of water that are wasted annually in the US.
The trick was making all this technology irresistible to early-stage investors, and key vertical adopters (e.g., insurance companies trying to reduce the $10 Billion in property losses water damage creates annually).
We gave the product a name that emphasized the end benefit (H2Know - you don’t have to wonder if you have a costly leak). We created a launch campaign to drive initial investment that generated 10x the industry average response, and developed a video to encourage insurers to test the product.
The company’s well on track to take a big piece of the $2 Billion water conservation market - which is why Amazon’s Alexa Ventures Fund became a lead investor.
“Jeff has a super-human ability to see patterns and connections between consumers and brands and crafting exactly the right words and ideas to create brilliant marketing. He took disparate pieces of data and information to help us understand and make connections with potential customers. We were able to achieve ad results 10 times the industry average!”
Mark Kovscek, CEO/Founder, Conservation Labs
The Fountainhead Residency
“We know artists can change the world, but how do we get a broader audience excited about them?”
Guiding the transition from Miami artist resource to nationally-known cultural leader.
I’ve been passionate about contemporary art for 2 decades, so it’s been an honor to work with Fountainhead, which has brought more than 400 artists to Miami for month-long residencies where they work, recharge and share their craft with Miami’s culturally curious. For the past 5 years I’ve helped Fountainhead as board member, donor, and advisor to the executive director.
Our founder Kathryn Mikesell sensed the opportunity for a higher profile - which would establish as a national leader (not just a local treasure), as well as attract support from prestigious, well-heeled foundations.
Step 1 was taking a fresh look at our mission - putting it into a larger context, and tapping into its emotional dimension. Quickly we realized it’s not about the art, it’s about the artists, and how their ideas and work help make the world a better place. Step 2 is happening now - a new logo and identity. And Step 3 is an enhanced approach to fundraising.
We can’t wait for Art Basel to come back this December.
“Jeff’s ability to ask the right questions, listen, learn and then translate that into a clear strategy is unparalleled. We struggled to define ourselves with a single mission and vision from which we could rebuild our brand. With patience and perseverance, Jeff kept digging, asking more questions, talking with artists and our community until the answer was obvious. He then helped us build a strategy to define our communications and our brand voice, as well as provide the foundation from which all future programming would be built. His support, guidance and direction were truly invaluable.”
Kathryn Mikesell, Founder, Fountainhead
Enough about me…
“Jeff is a superstar whose right brain continuously competes with his left brain for brilliance. Working with him is unbridled intellectual stimulation and great fun!”
Marianne Oglo, Digitas
Unicorns exist
and I’m one of them.
I offer brands a powerful and unusual combination of right and left brain thinking.
I find the inspirational color in data & analytics, and the rigor in empathetic consumer understanding.
I inspire the collaboration that's key to get today's divergent disciplines to work together.
This brings inspiration, predictability and impact to your marketing development process.
And most importantly - growth for your brand.
“Jeff is brilliant. There's nobody I would rather have lead a brainstorm. He sees the possibilities. Jeff is a wonderful source of insight and inspiration.”
Baysie Wightman, VP Strategic Marketing, Fidelity (former head of planning at Arnold)
I have honed my craft with the world’s leading agencies & brands.
Agencies
Arnold Worldwide
Digitas
Firefly
Kantar / Millward Brown
Morning Consult
Publicis Groupe
Sapient Nitro
Starcom Mediavest Group
Vivaki
***
Manufacturing / Durables
Brunswick Boat Group
Conservation Labs
GM
Saatva
Financial Services
Capital One
Citibank
Liberty Mutual
Mastercard
PNC
***
Tech/Media
Android
AT&T
HP Enterprise
HP Inc
Microsoft
Squarespace
The Weather Channel
YouTube
CPG & Retail
AB InBev
Baileys Irish Cream
Campari
Colgate Palmolive
Keurig Dr. Pepper
McCormick
P&G
Publix
Revlon
SC Johnson
Storck
The Home Depot
***
Hospitality
Baskin Robbins
Crowne Plaza
Holiday Inn
Intercontinental Hotel Group
McDonald’s
”Jeff is a strategic and creative genius. He's managed to master both the art and science of marketing and knows when to lean one way or the other. Jeff instantly gives any team or organization a huge advantage with his passion, intelligence and creativity.”
Laura Rollins, Digitas/Hill Holiday
“Jeff is one of those rare colleagues who make you want to come to work, roll up your sleeves and start thinking differently. His enthusiasm and passion for the business is as contagious as the swine flu. He is a true partner and collaborator and someone I learn from every day.”
Chris Andrew, SVP Media/ Digitas
About the artists
Artists help me understand the world in new ways - in exactly the same way I try to help clients envision new marketing and growth possibilities. These particular artists are among my favorites. And, this website was created by Dan Hardy at Mutiny, Inc.
Artist: Pelle Cass
Artist: Chris Wood
Artist: Ryan Roth
Artist: Jessy Nite
Artist: Pelle Cass
Artist: Chris Wood
Artist: Pelle Cass