Different businesses.
Different industries.
Different opportunities.
Over 35 years and across very different businesses, markets and situations, we’ve helped identify opportunities worth pursuing and turn the right ones into action.
Here are a few stories of where looking beyond the obvious answer led somewhere different.
YEARS
BUSINESSES
OPPORTUNITIES
NORTHERN MINERALS
ASX RESOURCES & RARE EARTHS
The strongest
opportunity isn't
always the
most obvious.
Northern Minerals was one of a growing number of companies talking to investors about rare earths.
The problem wasn’t that investors couldn’t understand rare earths. It was that more companies were talking about them and increasingly sounding similar.
So rather than simply finding a better way to tell the same story, we looked deeper into the opportunity.
One element stood out: dysprosium.
It was a high-value heavy rare earth, and China dominated global supply. Northern Minerals’ Browns Range project represented a high quality Australian source.
That gave us something much more distinctive to build around.
Australian
Dysprosium.
It wasn’t something invented by a communications campaign. The opportunity was already sitting inside the business.
The difference was recognising what to make important.
Rudy worked closely with Managing Director George Bauk and the Northern Minerals Senior management team as the company developed Browns Range, helping shape its positioning and making a complex opportunity easier for investors and other stakeholders to understand.
During this period the company progressed significantly. Doubling its market cap over the next 2 years. Northern Minerals secured tens of millions of dollars in new investment, made the Final Investment Decision on the Browns Range Pilot Plant and ultimately constructed the $67 million project.
Those achievements took far more than positioning or communications. The project had to be real and George and his team had to deliver it.
Our role was part of that broader effort: helping identify what was distinctive about the opportunity and making it easier for other people to see it.
Rudy just gets in there and makes sure he understands the business, understands what we’re trying to drive, and then gives us what we were wanting, but in a way that presents it better than we could imagine.
Because that’s not our skill; that’s Rudy’s skill. We work together, and he’s just fantastic.
George Bauk
Former Managing Director & CEO, Northern Minerals
MOTORCHARGE
AUTOMOTIVE & PAYMENT SERVICES
Growth
needed more
than promotion.
Motorcharge wanted to grow its national customer base.
Rather than simply looking at how to promote the existing offer more aggressively, we worked with the Motorcharge team on a different way to grow the network itself.
Together, we developed the concept of co-branded cards, allowing participating organisations to put their own brand alongside Motorcharge and giving them a stronger reason to actively promote uptake to their own customers.
It wasn’t simply another marketing campaign.
It represented a significant change to the business model.
The result was equally significant.
Motorcharge more than doubled its customer base.
FITFEET
PODIATRY & ALLIED HEALTH
FitFeet wanted to
grow the business.
On the surface, the opportunity seemed straightforward: attract more patients and generate more enquiries.
But before recommending how to market the business, I wanted to understand what was actually happening inside it.
The business already had a lot going for it – strong Google reviews, experienced practitioners and capabilities that extended well beyond what most people would think of as traditional podiatry.
But there were also some important gaps.
Enquiries weren’t being consistently tracked through to appointments. There wasn’t a clear picture of where patients were coming from or what happened after they made contact. Rebooking and follow-up presented opportunities. Different types of patients were largely being treated as one audience. And some of FitFeet’s strongest capabilities – particularly around movement, rehabilitation and addressing underlying causes – weren’t being clearly communicated.
None of those problems required more advertising to uncover.
In fact, putting more money into generating enquiries before addressing them risked simply sending more people into a system that wasn’t yet making the most of the opportunities already there.
My recommendation was not to begin by increasing the marketing spend
Instead, I identified where I believed the immediate opportunities were – improving visibility over enquiries and conversion, tightening follow-up and rebooking, thinking differently about key customer groups, and sharpening the positioning around what FitFeet actually does particularly well.
The marketing could then be built around a clearer proposition and a stronger business underneath it.
Since that work, Gemma has said the business is already starting to feel more streamlined and settled, and is already doing better – before spending another dollar on additional marketing.
Sometimes the opportunity isn’t getting more people through the door.
It’s seeing more clearly what’s already happening once they’re there.
When we started working with Rudy, I thought the next step was to do more marketing and bring in more patients. Instead, he looked at the whole business and showed me there were opportunities I needed to address first – how enquiries were handled, how we followed patients up, how we measured what was happening and how clearly we communicated what makes FitFeet different.
The difference has already been noticeable. The business feels much more streamlined and settled, and we’re doing better before we’ve spent another dollar on additional marketing.
Rudy helped me see things that were difficult to see when you’re inside the business every day. He’s given me a much clearer idea of what needs attention and where the opportunities are.
Gemma Stevens
FitFeet
UNITED SOLAR GROUP
SOLAR ENERGY
Before you execute
the brief, question it.
United Solar came to us with a clear project in mind.
Rather than move straight into execution, we stepped back and looked at what the business actually needed the investment to achieve.
What did prospective customers need to understand? What would make the company more credible and easier to choose? What should stand out? What impression should people take away?
Those questions changed the brief.
United Solar had previously worked with providers across very different price points. Some projects had looked acceptable but hadn’t properly represented the business. One had ultimately needed to be done again.
The problem wasn’t finding another company capable of producing what had been requested.
It was making sure what was being requested was the right answer in the first place.
We clarified the positioning, message and customer experience before moving into execution.
Richard was ultimately prepared to invest considerably more because he could see he wasn’t simply buying another execution.
He was buying a better answer.
A capable execution company can give you exactly what you ask for.
That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve asked for the right thing.
A good execution of the wrong brief is still wrong.
You certainly did your research on our company, on myself and the potential clients that would be researching our company online.
We’ve been in business for nearly 16 years and we’ve had our website redone many, many times. We’ve been at the low end of the market, the mid-tier and we’ve also paid at the high end of the market. I don’t think we’ve ever been happier with the results we’ve received from you.
Rudy took the time to explain the process. He asked a lot of questions.
I would highly recommend Rudy and his team to anyone who is really serious about their business and how it is portrayed.”
Richard Vargas
United Solar Group
TOURISM WA
TOURISM
Sometimes,
communication
isn’t the problem.
Tourism WA needed existing tourism operators to renew through a new online process.
On the surface, it was a communications task: explain the new process and encourage people to use it.
But many of those operators were busy small-business owners. An unfamiliar online process could easily become something to put aside and deal with later, particularly when they were already receiving plenty of communication.
The challenge wasn’t simply How do we explain it? It was what will actually make people act?
The resulting campaign was built around overcoming that behavioural barrier rather than simply providing more information.
The response was extraordinary:
73% response rate.
Approximately 3,800% return on investment.
The communication mattered.
Understanding the
behaviour that needed
to change mattered first.
ADVENTURE WORLD
TOURISM & ENTERTAINMENT
The end goal
isn't
always the
first goal.
Adventure World wanted more corporate functions.
The obvious approach was to market the venue to companies and ask them to book.
But there was a problem before the sale.
For many corporate decision-makers, Adventure World was a children’s amusement park some distance from the city, not somewhere they would naturally think about for a corporate event.
Before asking them to book it, we needed them to experience it differently.
So we changed the immediate objective.
Don’t sell the function.
Get the decision-makers
through the door.
The campaign focused on giving senior corporate decision-makers a reason to visit and experience the venue for themselves.
23% of the cold corporate audience responded and agreed to visit or tour the venue.
The ultimate objective hadn’t changed.
We simply recognised what needed to happen before asking for it.
WANNEROO TAVERN
HOSPITALITY
Sometimes
the opportunity is
to become
something different.
Wanneroo Tavern was essentially positioned as a male-oriented drinking pub.
Trying harder to market the same proposition wasn’t necessarily going to substantially broaden its appeal.
The bigger opportunity was to reconsider what the venue could be.
The business was repositioned around a family-oriented Australiana restaurant concept, creating a reason for an entirely different audience to consider the venue.
The work went on
to win the AHA WA award
for Best Marketed Hotel.
ALH Group (Fosters Group)
So, what aren’t you seeing?
comes back to customers.