You Need Spring Thinking

Strategic Solutions For Clients In A Hurry

Spring Thinking is about using almost 3 decades of experience, helping businesses and brands across a myriad of markets. It’s about strategic support that delivers results. It’s about a strategic statement that acts as your North Star, to help you assess day to day actions and plans. It’s about the shortest route to good. And it’s about saving you time and money.

Get in touch now if that already sounds good. Hopefully it should: in a mid-pandemic survey, established companies cited ‘strategy’ as their biggest priority issue for the eventual recovery.

A useful working definition of strategy is: 

'a clear plan by which a particular organisation should logically be able to achieve a chosen business aim.'

Most organisations have a big strategy document. Just not necessarily with a strategy, as described above, in it. 

Yet, over time, we find most really successful businesses and brands demonstrate clear strategic integrity. Providing clear blue water between them and the other 95%.

So I, and my associates, work with clients to help you first of all choose good, credible business aims and then to identify your best strategic option for achieving them.

Yes, there will be a document. But your project will be summarised in a very simple strategic statement, using a template you will refer to over and over again in the decisions you make.

You can be confident this process will take less time than you might think. Most real strategic work is about striving to really understand your situation and then referring to experience; chances are, I've seen your problem or opportunity before. 

The aim will always be to help find your shortest route to 'good' and save you time, & money, to spend on executing the plans we develop.

And if you have a robust strategy but need experienced hands (and brains) to help with some of the workload? Spring Thinking can help there too. From customer insight and research to creative idea generation, marketing agency reviews and day-to-day project management, all bases are covered. See here.

Get in touch today and let's see what we can achieve together.  

 

 

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Go on, be honest, which is closest to how you feel?

Positive about work.
The sky’s the limit and you’re on your way there now

Busy busy busy.
Your job is fine, you just wish there was time to get more stuff done

Under fire.
You feel like you’ve joined the Soviet Army by accident – help!

Nice things people have said…Hover the mouse over the text to pause the scroll.

We worked with Danny on our future facing marketing strategy and he brought a wealth of insight, to the project, from his experience of working with a variety of sectors and brands. Danny seamlessly worked with the small project team to identify and help develop the required outcome. He lead two working groups with the Executive Leadership Team which resulted in the development of a five year marketing strategy for WMG.

Lisa Harding, Head of Marketing and Communications, WMG, University of Warwick

“We engaged Danny to help us with the brand positioning of our company. At that time, although we had a firm idea of business strategy, we were struggling to translate this in to a simple message for our stakeholders.

Judith Armstrong CEO Millennium Point Eastside Birmingham

“As Creative Director of FRA, a wayfinding and digital design consultancy, working on Grand Central Shopping Centre, Birmingham I worked with Danny for about eight months as he steered the project through as Interim Marketing & Brand Manager. Danny picked up the reins at a crucial time in the project and guided delivery of the Grand Central website and digital wayfinding. Danny’s clarity of direction and vision ensured that the brand mission and project aspirations were more than achieved. He displayed much skill, experience and drive in directing the team and coordinating the joint venture clients, many stakeholders. and a variety of agencies and consultants.

Fran Raybould Director FRA Shrewsbury

“It was a great pleasure to work with Danny who takes great pride in getting under the skin of a brand, its values, its territories and what it stands for.

Anthony Langley-Smith Co-Founder Proviz Sports

It is impossible to sum Danny up in just a few words. His professional integrity and creativity make him much more than a valued supplier, he very quickly becomes a vital collaborator and partner. Danny helped me to define, redefine, present to a myriad of stakeholders in a complex global matrix organisation, then redefine again, refine and launch! A long-winded way of saying that Danny supports at every step of the journey to implement and carry-out his recommendations, he doesn’t just recommend and leave. You will not regret your decision to involve Danny. He has an easy, honest style combined with his breadth and depth of knowledge, making him a constant source of relevance whether knowledge is drawn from your own industry or whether he brings learnings from other sectors. His appetite and capability for digesting complex data and applying or overlaying to add credibility and substance to thoughts and theories are impressive, yet he never loses sight of the overall objective. Unafraid of co-creation and happy to work with a flexible brief, Danny is a unique thinker that is undaunted by rolling up his sleeves. He has helped me to take a number of projects from research to brief to creative execution to ensure the integrity of thought remains, throughout. Danny is a thoroughly good egg. I cannot recommend him highly enough and genuinely very much look forward to working with him again in the future.

Nicola Green, Global Marketing & Communications Manager, Jaguar Land Rover

"Numark have called on Danny’s experience and advice on a number of projects: general marketing and advertising; research projects and trade marketing - all designed to help enhance our company profile to our trade audience, pharmacists, and to their customers/patients. Danny has delivered on all projects with the same enthusiasm and excitement he had when he first took the project on. He is trustworthy, instinctive, reliable and flexible. When contacting our members directly, Danny is professional and charming.

Lynne Henshaw Director of Marketing Numark Ltd

"Here at Massey Ferguson, as Market Services Manager for the UK and Ireland, I hired Spring Thinking as support for a long-running internal marketing project. This involved setting strategic priorities with our senior team and then ongoing project management to ensure delivery. All the input we received has been of excellent quality and I would recommend Danny highly as a result."

Tony Cox Manager, Dealer Development, UK & Ireland

"Danny provided truly excellent insights to enable Barclays to effectively target and execute our marketing campaigns. He is incredibly knowledgeable and his intellect is an asset in any project. But, perhaps more importantly, he’s just a great guy to work with. Passionate. Sensitive. Positive. Caring. I look back on our time working together with great affection."

Claire Salmons Head of Positioning, Barclays Bank plc London (2000-2003)

"I used Spring Thinking, whilst running my long established recruitment consultancy Big Fish, to help my senior team assess our competition and develop brand messaging for the future. Danny has a lot of experience working with different clients and can take on information and develop insights rapidly, as well as being great to work with. I’d highly recommend his company for anyone who needs an external viewpoint to help them understand their business and opportunities."

Nicola Kleinmann Managing Director, Big Fish Search and Selection (2003-2011)

"WPR is one of the largest PR agencies in the Midlands and has used Spring Thinking regularly since it was founded. Our staff have benefited from training in presentation development and delivery, as well as in strategic thinking, both being areas in which Danny offers genuine expertise. We also trust his judgement as an adviser to ourselves and our clients, when customer insight or strategic decision-making is required."

Jane Ainsworth Managing Director, WPR (Current)

"Shearwater Rock is a project management business operating across the industrial and property sectors. On behalf of the Design Council, Danny expertly helped our management team to review our overall business aims and ambitions. He approached this task in a structured and challenging way, which enabled us to gain a clear picture of where our company wanted to be and what needed improving to achieve it.

Susie Middleton Business Manager, Shearwater Rock (current)

"Danny Herbert’s insight, creative and planning capabilities have proven very useful to our retail business as we strive to understand and embrace the large and diverse consumer audiences that visit our destinations.

Stephen Brown Group Marketing Director Hammerson plc London

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