Strategic Advisory
I advise CEOs, founders, and leadership teams in consumer-led businesses on the strategic decisions that shape growth, marketing effectiveness, commercial performance, operating models, and enterprise value.
My work sits at the intersection of brand strategy, capital efficiency, commercial growth, organisational capability, and AI-enabled operating improvement.
I help leadership teams identify where value is being created, where it is leaking, and what needs to change across strategy, structure, capability, and execution.
Not more theory.
Better judgement. Better outcomes.
BUSINESS STRATEGY & ALIGNMENT
Align Business Strategy, Brand Direction, and Growth
Many businesses do not fail through lack of ambition. They lose momentum when strategy becomes fragmented, brand direction is unclear, go-to-market choices are weak, and leadership teams drift out of alignment.
I help organisations define clearer strategic direction across business, brand, commercial, and growth priorities — ensuring investment, capability, and execution remain focused on what matters most.
This includes strategic direction, Brand Clarity™, go-to-market strategy, growth planning, portfolio choices, market expansion, and the commercial decisions required to build stronger foundations for long-term growth.
The goal is simple: create strategic clarity, sharpen brand direction, improve decision quality, and align the commercial system behind growth.
Clarifying where the business is heading and what the brand stands for, where future growth will come from, and what must change to compete more effectively.
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Clarifying the strategic choices that determine where the business is going, why it matters, and what must align behind it.
This includes defining priorities, trade-offs, investment focus, leadership alignment, and the commercial choices required to move from ambition to focused execution.
Strategic priorities
Growth choices
Investment focus
Leadership alignment
Decision trade-offs
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A proprietary advisory system for clarifying what the brand stands for, who it serves, why customers should choose it, and how brand direction supports business strategy.
Brand Clarity™ helps leadership teams align positioning, proposition, portfolio logic, distinctive assets, and commercial execution behind a clearer, more defensible brand direction.
Brand positioning
Proposition clarity
Brand architecture
Portfolio logic
Distinctive assets
Commercial brand direction
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Designing how the business reaches customers, converts demand, and scales growth across channels, markets, customers, and commercial partners.
This includes route-to-market choices, channel strategy, customer prioritisation, launch planning, commercial activation, and execution requirements.
Route-to-market choices
Channel strategy
Customer prioritisation
Launch planning
Commercial activation
Execution requirements
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Identifying the next growth levers once the core strategic direction and go-to-market model are clear.
This includes NPD, portfolio expansion, new markets, new channels, strategic partnerships, category opportunities, and the sequencing required to scale profitably.
NPD and innovation
Portfolio expansion
Market expansion
Channel growth
Strategic partnerships
Growth sequencing
Where Marketing ROI Gets Leaked
MARKETING EFFECTIVENESS
Strategic advisory and embedded tools to improve brand clarity, commercial performance, market share growth, and marketing ROI.
Commercial Outcomes
Proprietary Advisory Tools
Used selectively inside advisory engagements to diagnose leakage, improve outcomes, and embedded internal to build long-term capability.
Fix where your marketing is leaking profit — and turn it into a controlled growth engine.
Identify where margin, capability, and enterprise value are being lost— and what to fix first.
Commercially Focused We focus on what moves profit.
ROI-Driven Everything tied to measurable return.
Systematic Change We fix the system, not just the symptoms.
Sustainable Impact Embedded capability. Long-term results.
COMMERCIAL PERFORMANCE
Build Commercial Discipline into a Growth System
Growth does not come from more activity. It comes from clearer visibility, stronger control, and better decisions across the commercial system.
I help leadership teams improve how commercial performance is measured, interpreted, and acted on — across marketing investment, trade spend, pricing, channel execution, retail standards, and growth activity.
The objective is not more reporting. It is sharper visibility into where value is being created, where margin is being lost, and what needs to change to improve growth, control, and return on investment.
What gets measured gets managed — but only if the right measures drive the right decisions.
The work turns scattered data, campaign results, promotional analysis, and retail performance signals into a clearer commercial operating system — so leadership teams can take smarter, faster action.
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Designing the visibility layer leadership teams need to track growth, margin, investment, channel performance, promotion effectiveness, and execution quality.
The goal is not more reporting. It is a clearer commercial cockpit that shows where value is being created, where performance is drifting, and what needs attention first.
KPI architecture
Growth and margin visibility
Channel and customer performance
Promotion and campaign tracking
- Leadership dashboard design
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Turning fragmented data into sharper commercial decisions across markets, channels, customers, campaigns, pricing, promotions, and portfolio performance.
This includes identifying the questions the business should be asking, the data needed to answer them, and the decision routines required to act on the insight.
Market and customer analysis
Promotional analytics
Campaign and channel performance
Decision matrices
Insight-to-action routines
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Improving control over the commercial choices that determine profitability — including pricing architecture, discounting behaviour, promotional mechanics, channel economics, and margin leakage.
The aim is to protect value while still supporting growth, customer relevance, and competitive performance.
Pricing architecture
Discounting discipline
Margin leakage review
Channel economics
Customer and SKU profitability
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A structured approach to improving visibility, discipline, and decision quality across promotional activity and trade investment.
PromoGrids™ helps teams assess which promotions create value, which erode margin, and how to build a more controlled promotional planning and review system.
Promotion planning
Trade spend visibility
ROI discipline
Post-promotion review
Promotional calendar control
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A practical system for improving retail execution consistency across stores, channels, regions, and field teams.
Retail Standards™ helps define what good looks like, measure execution quality, identify gaps, and build the routines needed to improve commercial performance at the point of sale.
Retail execution standards
Field team routines
Store-level compliance
Channel consistency
Execution scorecards
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Improving how marketing investment is measured, reviewed, and connected to commercial outcomes.
This includes clarifying which activities drive brand strength, customer demand, market share, margin, and sales performance — and which activity is simply consuming budget without sufficient return.
Marketing investment review
Campaign effectiveness
Brand and sales linkage
Media and activation ROI
Budget allocation discipline
OPERATING MODELS & AI ADOPTION
Build a World-Class Marketing Engine Optimised with AI.
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Identify the right touchpoints across your marketing processes.
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Build reusable, brand-safe AI workflows.
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Practical training with strategic context.
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Evaluate what’s working, what’s not, and what’s missing.
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Shift from scattered tools to smarter operations.
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Choose solutions that serve strategy, not hype.
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Ensure control, compliance, and brand integrity.
AI only creates value when workflows, capability, governance, and decision-making change with it.
I help consumer businesses redesign how marketing and commercial teams work — identifying where AI, automation, MarTech, internal capability, and external partners should fit inside the operating model.
This is not about chasing tools. It is about building a faster, leaner, better-governed marketing engine that improves speed, quality, control, and commercial return.
Because the future of marketing isn’t AI replacing people—it’s AI empowering the people who understand modern marketing. Is your organisation AI ready?
“Michael H Cowan uniquely combines market expertise and operational experience, with the strategic rigour you’d expect from a top-tier consulting firm”
- CEO of Top 10 FMCG Company