Advisory

Notice-Differentiate Advisory

Build a more curious, creative and customer-connected brand

Strong brands aren’t built on strategy alone. They’re based on human connection, built by teams who stay close to customers, notice what is changing, understand what people feel, and keep developing better ways to create meaning, relevance and connection.

Brand & Experience Advisory is an ongoing senior advisory for founders and brand leaders making decisions about positioning, customer experience, brand expression, innovation and growth. The programme is designed to help you strengthen how your business thinks, learns, creates and connects.

BEST FOR:
For brands that care deeply about people, customers & real-life experience. Also for businesses that want to develop a strong human-centred culture in an increasingly automated world
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This service is for brands that need to stay close to the customer - and keep thinking originally.

Many businesses say they care about the customer. But fewer have the habits, rituals and culture that help them genuinely understand what people notice, value, feel and remember.

Over time, this creates distance. Teams become reactive. Ideas become safer. Customer insight becomes occasional rather than embedded. Decisions are made from assumptions, internal preference or competitor imitation.

Strategic Experience Advisory helps you build a more thoughtful, curious and creative way of working - so your brand can stay emotionally connected, commercially relevant and meaningfully distinctive.

What we might work on

The advisory is shaped around your business, and may include:

  • Customer closeness: Developing simple tools and habits to stay connected to what customers are thinking, feeling, and needing

  • Research culture: Making customer learning part of everyday decision-making

  • Experience strategy: Reviewing your brand’s emotional resonance across key touchpoints

  • Creative judgement: Helping leaders assess ideas with clear commercial criteria

  • Opportunity spotting: Noticing shifts in culture, customer behaviour and the market, and translating them into relevant opportunities

  • Team capability: Guiding teams to be more observant and confident in their own judgement

The method:

The engagement is built around three connected capabilities:

  1. Curiosity: Building a culture where everyone is attuned to learning, plus the systems to facilitate that

  2. Customer: Strengthening emotional connection

  3. Creativity: Creating a confident & continually innovative culture for developing ideas, experimenting intelligently, and moving beyond surface answers

What your business gains
A more customer-connected business

Build better ways to understand what people actually notice, feel, value and remember - so your decisions are grounded in real human response.

A more curious culture

You develop simple habits for asking better questions, observing more carefully and learning continuously from customers, culture and experience.

A more creative team

You strengthen your team’s ability to generate, test and develop better ideas - with more confidence, originality and strategic focus.

How it works

Strategic Experience Advisory is structured as a monthly engagement. The format may include:

  • A regular advisory session

  • Journey, product or campaign reviews

  • Practical tools and frameworks for research, customer listening or creative thinking

  • Live discussion of current brand, customer or market challenges

  • Short written guidance and prompts

  • Light-touch support between sessions for specific decisions or questions

The exact structure will be tailored around company objectives.

Some clients use this as senior counsel for founder or leadership decisions, while others use it to build stronger processes across a brand, customer experience or creative team.

Who this is for:

  • Founders, brand leaders, creative leaders or senior decision-makers

  • Teams already asking:

    • How do we stay closer to what our customers really care about?

    • How do we become more distinctive without chasing trends?

    • How do we create a more curious, empathetic and insight-led culture?

    • How do we encourage more original thinking inside the team?

    • How do we test ideas without overcomplicating the process?

    • How do we stop making decisions from assumption, habit or internal taste alone?

  • Especially valuable for businesses that depend on service, experience and quality

What makes this different

This programme is an active, ongoing relationship built around your most pressing strategic questions: how you position the brand, how the customer experience reflects your ambitions, how you maintain distinctiveness as you scale.

The aim is to help your business towards a way of working that creates distinctive and engaging brand experiences. Strong customer insight and better ideas will become part of the culture, rather than occasional interventions.

"Fiona brings a rare ability to translate complex customer insight into clear, compelling strategic direction. She played a key role in shaping our thinking around customer behaviour in the transition to sustainable energy, helping us better understand current mindsets and how to shift them."

— Fernanda Reyes, Head of Customer Experience and Insights, E.ON Growth Studio
Led by Dr Fiona Maciver

I’m a Brand & Experience Strategist, PhD in Design Strategy, and former UX Research Lead at Meta. I bring together experience from technology, innovation, customer insight and creative education, alongside practical techniques I teach at Central Saint Martins, London.

Get in touch

I’m based in London, and work with businesses in the UK and internationally who want to develop distinctive businesses.

My Advisory service is limited to a small number of clients at any one time, to maintain sharp detail and high quality.

Engagements are tailored to the level and scope of support you need. We will agree a rhythm that fits your business and budget.

Contact me