Every business could use a jumpstart.

The recession is here. Growth has frozen. Skeptical and frugal consumers have slowed their spending. Real people are worried about real issues and don’t have a lot of time for anything else. It’s hard to get noticed. It’s even tougher to sell.

The market is like a treadmill, and the speed and incline has increased dramatically. Stand still and you’ll fall off. Walk and you’ll be going backwards. Only by running, hard, can you actually improve your position. Otherwise you need to find a way to get off that particular treadmill and find another creative way to regain your business’ momentum. That’s where we can help.

Sterling’s Jumpstart is a 30-day rapid response technique that delivers three big actionable ideas for re-igniting brand momentum. It’s based on the premise that most complex problems can be solved using new brainpower – a determined and experienced team of marketers, creatively seeking new business building opportunities. A team of marketing strategists that, because they’re on the outside, can see a problem in a new way, or uncover an opportunity that might otherwise have passed unnoticed. We see strategy as the box we play in. Any idiot can think outside the box, and the middle of that box simply won’t yield the kind of catalytic thinking your business needs. Our job is to find ideas that will very loudly band the heck out of the sides of that box. Ideas that will prove disruptive to the market and catalytic to the brand.

Why Now?

In a down economy, marketers are under pressure to boost sales. Fast.
It’s too easy to focus on price cuts and short-term promotions. Too easy to get into defensive mode and stop searching for opportunity. Business gains in a down market not only pull you through that market but also exert a multiplier effect on your business once the market returns to health.

It can take a catalyst to change the course.
Caught up in the day-to-day issues of a challenged business, it’s often hard to see the forest for the trees. It takes an outside catalyst, and a catalytic process, to challenge assumptions to see a new way forward.

How?

Day 1: Isolation
We take you away from the day-to-day treadmill and work with you to isolate the most pressing challenges and possible areas of opportunity.

Days 2- 20: Immersion
We look at your strategy and marketplace with a fresh set of eyes. Excavate all of your research and planning with only one thing in mind- the need for a few significant catalytic ideas. Conduct our own quick-audit of the customer and competitor landscape, also with that one, focused objective in mind.

Days 21-25: Ideation
We brainstorm a range of potentially game changing opportunities, using experience and intuition. Then, using a real-time iterative development process, we work with your team to reduce a long list of candidates to a few truly important ideas that can solve problems and create opportunities.

Days 26-30: Application
Together we’ll select the best three ideas and create a detailed action plan for each.