Hi! I'm Emma Folz,
Let’s position your brand for growth, together
I help founders and business leaders achieve brand clarity, develop impactful go-to-market strategies, and set up their marketing function for success.
Ways we can partner
I specialize in long term consulting engagements where I directly integrate with teams and lead high impact work streams to set up brands and marketing teams for success.
- Founders and business leaders
Let’s work together to ensure your brand and marketing strategies are set up to achieve your organizational growth goals.
Best for:
– Brand launches
– Unlocking the next chapter of business growth
– Building out marketing teams and operations
- Ad Agencies and Brand Consultancies
As an experienced contractor, I slot in as a Brand Strategy Director to lead brand strategy projects and teams.
Best for:
– Adding capacity at the leadership level
– Covering parental leave and sabbaticals
– Supporting leadership transitions
What we can do
Engagements are custom tailored based on client needs and stage of business. Below are examples of work we can do:
- Setting strategy:
- Assess current marketing for gaps and opportunities
- Develop brand positioning
- Audience research, profiles, and prioritization
- Competitive audit
- Marketplace trends research
- Naming
- Packaging and pricing offer
- New product development planning
- Executing strategy:
- Oversee development of brand visual identity, website, and core marketing assets (in conjunction with Standpoint Creative or other client-selected designer partner)
- Determining core marketing channels
- Developing annual marketing plan, budget, and resources
- Planning brand launch / relaunch
- Hiring go-forward marketing lead
Why work together:
With 12 years of experience and 6 years running my own consultancy, I’ve unlocked growth for over 25 brands across a range of businesses including CPG, international non-profit, B2B, and startups.
Corporately trained in retail, brand strategy, new product development, and marketing – I’m passionate about helping founders and leadership teams bring their vision to life and set up sustainable, growing businesses with strong brand and marketing foundations.
Leveraging my talents to drive social impact is incredibly important to me. I prioritize working with brands that are doing their part to help create a more equitable, sustainable, healthy, and enjoyable world for all.
My worldview is heavily informed by my experience living in Central America and working on international development initiatives for over three years. Bi-lingual in Spanish, I care about working with brands and founders that celebrate the beauty of our multicultural world.
About Emma
With a background spanning retail, brand strategy, and international development, I’m fueled by curiosity and a passion for people, culture and building businesses that make the world better.
Through my independent practice, I’ve developed brand and go-to-market strategies for over 25 brands, led departments, guided founders, and helped build out marketing teams and operations.
As a founder myself, I am particularly passionate about bringing best practice brand and marketing strategies to smaller scale founders and business leaders to help to take their business to the next level.
Currently based in Chicago, I work with clients locally, nationally, and globally.
Case Studies
Interested in hearing more about a particular project that’s not listed here? I’d be happy to share additional case studies.
Reversing multi-year sales decline post acquisition
When Bayer acquired the Dr. Scholl’s brand in 2014, the brand suffered from a 5 year sales decline, an unclear consumer target, a sprawling product portfolio, and an unstructured innovation plan. I played a critical role as a brand strategist and account lead on a multi-year, cross-agency effort to overhaul the brand top to bottom and build out the innovation pipeline.
Activities: Account Management · Brand Architecture · Naming · New Product Development · Product Claims · Brand Positioning · Brand Purpose · Consumer Segmentation and Insights
Results: The brand relaunch successfully reversed the sales decline and the relaunch advertising campaign won a Silver Effie.
Rebuilding communications post organizational rupture
In Fall 2019, Mayan Families (now Natün Guatemala) was rebuilding after a contentious split with the organization’s original founders. New leadership was working towards transforming the organization’s operating model to support locally-led, sustainable programming. I was hired for 6 months as the interim Director of Communications and Marketing to relaunch the brand, rebuild the Communications team, and develop Q4 2019 fundraising campaign communications.
Activities: Team Management · Department Operations · Q4 Fundraising Campaigns · Brand Strategy Guidelines · Brand Architecture · Digital Marketing · Website Relaunch · Naming Exploratory
Results: The brand strategy work served as a driving foundation for evolving the organization towards its new vision and mission. The communications team was rebuilt with new processes to support both internal and cross-functional collaboration. Natün had a successful Q4 2019 fundraising season with the highest grossing Giving Tuesday campaign in the organization’s history.
Transforming organizational strategy to unlock growth
FourSight is a 20-year old company with an academic background in the science of creativity that struggled to sell their proprietary assessment at scale. Without a dedicated sales and marketing team, sales were flat for 7 years despite intensive efforts to grow via new product development and investments in marketing tactics (SEO, inbound marketing, website). I was hired in a yearlong engagement as an Organizational Growth Consultant to help FourSight clarify their brand positioning, prioritize their audiences, lead their go-to-market strategy for their newly developed enterprise tech platform, and set up their organization to achieve ambitious growth goals.
Activities: Brand Discovery · Brand Positioning · Audience Prioritization · Pricing and Packaging Services · Go-to-Market Strategy · Website · 2025 Marketing Plan + Budget · 2025 Strategic Plan · Recruiting for Sales + Marketing Lead · Updated P & L · 3-Year Sales Forecast (first ever) · Sales Strategy · Team Operations
Results: FourSight is now forecasted to grow 3-5x in the next 5 years. New team operations improved transparency, collaboration, and accountability. Strategic plan mapped a path to having the right team, right product, right culture, and right operations to achieve ambitious 2030 vision.
Setting the stage for category disruption
Canary is a female-founded fintech startup whose flagship offering is Grant Circle, an enterprise emergency relief fund platform. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a surge of interest in employer-funded emergency relief funds. Canary needed a powerful brand and marketing strategy to position itself as a modern solution against the two incumbent brands dominating the market.
Activities: Brand Analysis · Brand Purpose · Audience Profiles · Brand Architecture · Brand Visual Identity · Website · Brand Relaunch Support · Recruiting · Project Management
Results: Armed with an updated brand and a shared vision, the Canary team was able to expand its client pipeline from smaller companies to contracts with recognized regional and national players. 3 years later, sales are up 3x and the sales & marketing manager I helped hire is still in place.
Get in touch
Interested in working together? Please message me below or email me directly. I look forward to hearing from you!