Some nice things people have said about me

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

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“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.

Danny was excellent from the start, he did several workshops with our teams to help pull out our own personal views on what we thought the message should be. What was really useful, was his overall input as he made a number of recommendations and suggestions that helped us to define what we do as a business. This was really useful, as sometimes, when you are so involved in the day to day, it’s hard to translate it to others!

He then summarised our thoughts, took it away and created an excellent brand proposition document. It was perfect, and has massively helped how we communicate to the wider world.

How does this help? Quite simply, it translates our purpose, ultimately helping to drive sales and be a successful organisation. I could not recommend Danny’s services enough. Added to that, he is a lot of fun to work with making the whole thing a really fun and meaningful process, whilst also following up with us on a regular basis.”

Judith Armstrong
CEO
Millennium Point
Eastside
Birmingham

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“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.

Grand Central acts as a meeting place and a portal to the city. The digital wayfinding dovetails Grand Central with Birmingham New St Station and the wider city experience. Danny gave clear, high level strategic direction to ensure that this complex communication strategy worked consistently across all media; advertising, PR, web and touchscreen with flair and vitality.

Along the way he made the process fun even though deadlines were tight, kept the team focussed even when we were stressed, was calm and clear headed yet driven and hardworking. In short he was a delight and inspiration to work with and I hope we have chance to work together again.”

Fran Raybould
Director
FRA
Shrewsbury

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“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.

The process was enlightening and challenging and as a team we really enjoyed the process and Danny was not only very quick to understand everything to do with our business but great fun to work with too.

We are really pleased with the output from the process, we expect that this more focused approach with a brand direction will allow us to 'own' our space which will be good for sales and the business as a whole. We thought it was a worthwhile and valuable project and wouldn't hesitate to recommend Danny.”

Anthony Langley-Smith
Co-Founder
Proviz Sports

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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

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As our Design Associate Danny was able, using the Design Council’s methodology as we worked together, to show us that there was a lot more to 'refreshing our brand' than just the letterhead.

By challenging us to look at ourselves we were able to identify what it is that we do differently and how that runs through everything we do. This has strengthened our core values and that enabled us make the company ethos stronger. Two years on, we have selected with his help an excellent advertising agency, Chapter. They've taken Danny's original suggested task and cracked the brief in great style.

We now run the entire company by these refined and focused values, and customers can really see this. We can interview people and tell them about our values and what it takes to be a successful Embed employee - this has increased our pulling power with candidates and reduced churn. We are now doing business with some really big customers in areas of the market we wanted to break into, and we would put a lot of that down to our ability to communicate our values in many different ways. 

Embed Ltd is a specialist developer of automotive software, based at Warwick University's famous Science Park.

Ivan Wilson,
Company Director,
Embed Ltd

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"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.

I would have no hesitation in recommending Danny not only for his experience, intellect and insights, but also for his charming, embracing personality."

Lynne Henshaw
Director of Marketing
Numark Ltd

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"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

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"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)

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"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.

With the need to develop a new marketing strategy clearly identified, Danny helped us through the daunting task of selecting from several potential creative service suppliers. Throughout all this, the benefit of an experienced, external viewpoint became very clear, versus trying to do it all ourselves whilst running the business. Danny’s expertise and enthusiasm helped us immensely."

Susie Middleton
Business Manager,
Shearwater Rock (current)

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"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.

Danny has quickly built good relationships with several of our marketing team members, which speaks for itself"

Part of my role is overseeing both brand development/evolution and communications planning across all Hammerson retail schemes. As a business we are passionate about an insight driven approach to our communication planning – delivering strategic marketing plans that genuinely drive action.  We’re very selective about the partners that we use to assist us with this process. Danny has worked with us on many prime retail destinations like Bullring Birmingham, The Oracle Reading, Cabot Circus Bristol and Highcross Leicester. He has the all too rare ability of being able to turn data and research into clear, simple strategic proposals. He thinks commercially, whilst always championing the voice of the shopper and coming back to check on the ‘Why are we doing this?’ He’s also very personable, a pleasure to work with and popular with all of my team.

 

 

 

Stephen Brown
Group Marketing Director
Hammerson plc
London

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"Having worked with Danny on a number of destination marketing projects at CV One I would not hesitate to recommend him.

His ability to generate in depth and highly focused discussions, together with his energy and engaging good humour helped us to develop and deliver targeted and creative marketing solutions."

Liz Millett
Chief Executive
CVOne Limited. Coventry.

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Nice things

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