My path to marketing began eighteen years ago.  I was reporting to the president of a $60mm point-of-purchase display company in St. Louis, MO.  A few weeks into the job, I found myself creating a marketing department's infrastructure to support R&D, sales, engineering, and design operations. Once that was up and running, I lead the efforts to reposition and rebrand 70+ product lines on a boot-strapped budget.
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Because I was a newbie to the CPG world, I leaned on sales to uncover real customer insights that would transform the selling experience.

‍Why do you [sales team] think we sell this product?
What problem does the customer believe we solve?
What problem does our sales team believe we solve?
Why hasn't the product received demand?

The incessant questioning became known as the “five whys" methodology.
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It turns out I was after a story.

Moved to NYC

I was afforded opportunities to impact marketing at incubators, startups, and notable companies such as Neiman Marcus, Bank of America, ADP,  Samsung and Instagram.
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I watched teams spend hours trying to come up with good content. Other times I'd overhear, "I got this idea from a couple talking on the subway." 
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Teams were hungry for a method that would help them plug the right story at the right time across the audience journey.

I sought to create an efficient process that easily defined product value while also inspiring the creativity for marketing assets like ads, videos, pitch decks, and other collateral.

Taught
workshops

Peers would ask:
- How should we conduct a workshop?
- What's the job of the headline in the ad?
- We need a tagline. Where do we start?
- How do we learn our audience?
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Vendors were confused:
- The pitch deck tells a different story.
- Your colleague gave us a different perspective.
- In two sentences, what's the product value?

Found a solution

Teams become compelling storytellers
when they are centered around a shared product vision.

Playbooks serve three purposes:

A repository of information so new team members and vendors can understand product value from the same perspective as the team who developed the product.

Accelerate the creation of product value and messaging with an intentional thought process that also inspires the creative.

Eliminate friction points across the audience journey by testing and tracking messaging.