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We are marketing and sales practitioners who are commited to finding profitable ways to add value to customers.  We like to cut through the clutter to make it simple.  We prefer facts to fluff, we like ideas built on both customer insights and the experience of the business team.  We believe the strategy and the ideas must engage the whole business.

Core team

"I knew these guys from Pepsi many years ago and they seemed quite bright!!!"  Murray Darling, Starbucks

"Collaborative, challenging, robust and fun."   Simon Gore, Vibrandt

Chris Radford

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Differentiate Founder, MA Cambridge.  Worked in UB marketing, Pepsi marketing director and HEAD MD Created EGL delivered results with Mars, Scotts, and B2B clients

Shona Radford

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Workshop design & delivery, BA Bristol
Worked at Unilever UB and Mars in sales and marketing.  Marketing capability expert and workshop facilitator

Susie Amann

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Project direction & delivery, MA Oxford
Worked in Mars in sales and marketing, Director of 15 store greetings card retail chain

Our skills

We are a team with different specialisms who co-operate to complete client projects.
  • Marketing and sales strategy (includes analysis, research, structuring the thinking)
  • Creating and visualising the ideas so you can be sure they are right and communicate them to customers and colleagues 
  • Facilitation and training in workshops to engage your colleagues and make sure it happens

Industries where we work best

We come from a strong food and drink background.  We know a lot about consumer products in food, drinks and gardening/DIY.  The team also has consumer experience across, retail, restaurants, personal care and financial services.  

In the past 15 years we have built up considerable experience witjh B2B clients in finance, recruitment, property, IT and retail.

We work best if your business gives priority to adding value to customers rather than just extracting money from them.

Collaborators and advisers

But we do not believe in working alone.  We work with a range of specialist skills and bring them in when you need it.  We have worked with each of these collaborators in different ways.  One of the firms is even called, The Collaborators.  We all know each other well and share the same approach that focuses on adding value to customers and staying grounded in robust customer insights

Joseph Khoury - analytics

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Joseph founded ReachMass as a research agency focused on helping clients get business results.  Reach operates across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

Joseph's team provide analytic tools and analytic support to help us deliver the clarity that will enable you to go beyond insight and create products and services that your customers love

Joseph is our wise voice in designing the best studies and spotting the biggest insights

Emma Carter - design

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Emma is a designer who founded Beyond Creative Thinking She is also a recent author of "Beyond the Logo".

Emma has the creative skills to get your brand and message to work across multiple platforms such as web, print, social media and events.

Emma helps us bring the ideas of our B2B and franchising clients alive so that you can communicate them to your colleagues and customers.

Stacey Clark - franchising

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Stacey was a VP at PepsiCo and then co-founded Differentiate with Chris in 1996.

He now has his own consultancy s2s and focuses on helping businesses harness the talents and resources of others to get more  done than they can on their own.

He helped to design and run PepsiCo's franchise excellence programme.

Stacey is a huge asset in any project. 
In particular where you need to harness the resources and talents of others e.g. franchising

Anna Maxwell - pharma

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Anna is a pharmacist and an experienced marketer.  She is now working with clients to switch medicines from prescription to OTC.  

She works with pharmaceutical companies to make their products available to more people in a safe way.

Anna brings industry expertise to us in any healthcare area.  She is also a great marketing strategist.

Style and approach

We operate the kind of consultancy we were looking to work with when we were clients
  • Outcome focused, and comfortable with being held accountable for business results
  • Supports the clients and works with them to make things happen  (go beyond advice)
  • Understands how to translate the data and information into actionable insights
  • Works with your ideas and insights, not just what the research says
  • Can deliver everything you need to make a project succeed – strategy, insight, analysis, workshop facilitation, design and ideas 

What's important to us

Creating products and services that your customers will love by adding value.  We ensure ideas are based on what customers want or will need and engage the whole business in creating success
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We won’t just ‘take the order’.  We will tell you how we see it. We tell you the truth, not what will make us money. We’re brave enough to share the difficult messages.  

Relationships matter a great deal to us.  We work best with those we get on with and where there is mutual respect.

Differentiate

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Some things our clients have said

In a nutshell, Differentiate help me to see the wood for the trees. They help me to crystallise my plan of attack to grow and differentiate my business and brands.  
Michelle Frost:  Mars

Enjoyable and Invaluable. Refreshing change to see insights gained in more interactive and quantifiable way. No ambiguous summaries just clear actions & decisions. 
Michelle Quickfall:  Scotts Miracle Gro
Challenging, stimulating, really creates a new perspective on market and company. Significant but very worthwhile investment.  

Michael Meinhardt: Fridays