A note from the founder, with footnotes.
Every week, The Brand Report reads the industry in public — which brands are moving, which categories are turning, and what the great ones do that the rest don’t.01 And every week, someone running one of those brands writes back with the same question: so what do we do?
The Advisory is where I answer it. You bring the question — a new seat, a channel that’s shifting, a growth model that stopped working, a category moving underneath you.02 I bring the read, and then I make the call: what to do, why now, and what to say no to.03 If you want the call made tangible, I shape it — the concept, the brief, the narrative for the room. If you want it made, I cast the team from a network of senior operators04 and stay on as the thread from the first read to the finished work.
That last part is the difference. Strategy firms leave at the deck. Agencies need the answer before they can start. I’ve spent a career on both sides of that line05 — which is why the work here doesn’t stop at the insight. It finishes the thought.
Two things to know before you write. I advise the brands we cover, and I cover them exactly the same: nothing in The Brand Report is for sale.06 And most relationships start small — a thirty-minute conversation, a fixed price, a contained Read, an answer in days.07 Where it goes from there is up to the question.
Facing one? Start a conversation — or skip the form: dan@thebrand.report
Dan Coe
Founder & Principal Strategist, The Brand Report
Everything else you’d want to know.
The Brand Report covers outdoor, sport & lifestyle every week: The Article on Tuesdays, The Brief on Fridays, and the Index, which holds the category’s best work to a public standard. It’s how I stay inside the industry instead of beside it — and it means you can check the thinking before the first call. It’s also free.
Founders and brand and marketing leaders in outdoor, sport & lifestyle, usually at a moment of decision: a new leadership seat, a repositioning, a channel reckoning, a growth model that stopped working, a launch or a market entry or a category that just moved. Agencies write too. Most take the read and the call and carry the shape to their own teams.
Read — where you actually stand, grounded in coverage I’m already doing. Name — the call: what to do, why now, what to say no to. It’s the deliverable most consultants avoid, because it can be wrong; it’s also the only one worth paying for. Shape — the call made tangible: the concept, the brief, the narrative for the room, the prototype direction. Build — the team, cast, with me as the thread. Not every engagement runs all four. Every one ends with a point of view, never a report that stops short.
Senior operators I’ve worked beside over twenty years — studios, designers, researchers, fractional leads. There’s no bench. Each team is cast for the work in front of it, and I direct it. I don’t run production, which is the point.
Eight years at Nike, including Valiant Labs, its new-business incubator. Before that, Dick’s Sporting Goods and Burton Snowboards, with agency and founder work throughout — an agency I ran for eight years, a startup, strategy and design and digital on both sides of the table. I’ve been the strategist, the designer, and the builder on the same job, which is why the thought gets finished here.
Coverage in The Brand Report is never bought. No Advisory client gets a kinder read in the publication, and no story is shaped by who I work with. The separation is what makes the read worth having — on both sides of it.
A thirty-minute conversation to sharpen the question. A scope and a fixed price within 48 hours. Usually a Read: contained, priced to try, and it always ends with where I’d go next. Days, not weeks. Everything else follows from there.
Tell me about the challenge or priority you’re facing, in as much or as little detail as you have. I’ll come back with a time to talk.
Prefer email? dan@thebrand.report