The locked-out generation
“The threat to Britain no one's talking about is the generation we risk locking out.”
Brand strategy built from the helm.
Senior brand and marketing leadership for private equity-backed businesses and their boards.
I work at the inflection points that determine the future of a brand. A sale, new ownership, a merger, a new brand to create or an existing one to reposition or reinvigorate. I have sat on the investor's side of the table and worked directly inside portfolio companies. Examples of my work include a $621m sale, a $910m divestiture and a lasting 300% price premium for a new proposition in an established category.
$621m
Private equity exit
Snowfox Group, 2023
$910m
Divestiture
Western Union Business Solutions, 2021
12 years
Positioning still in use
Alquity
300%
Lasting price premium
The Macallan Rare Cask
Brands I've worked on
- McDonald's Nordics
- The Macallan
- Pizza Express
- Western Union
- Unilever
Simon is a highly strategic and commercially sharp partner who played a key role in shaping the strategic understanding of McDonald's/Food Folk's business and growth drivers in the Nordics. Through rigorous analysis and clear thinking, he helped translate complex market dynamics into actionable choices that unlocked long-term strategic opportunities while also driving tangible short-term growth.
I create new brands for businesses that don't yet have one, and strengthen existing ones from within the organisation.
Most recently I've done this from inside private equity-backed companies, where the numbers matter and delivering tangible impact is a given.
What I do
01
Create brand value for exit
Exit and investor narrative
Brand architecture and integration post merger or acquisition
$621m exit: Snowfox Group
$910m sale: WUBS
Build the brand
Brand strategy
Premiumisation and marketing effectiveness
300% lasting premium: The Macallan Rare Cask
03Find the growth
Customer insight and segmentation
AI-enabled marketing
McDonald's Nordics: the customer strategy behind continued market leadership
The Work
Snowfox Group: a brand built for a $621m exit.
By early 2021, Mayfair Equity Partners had assembled the largest Japanese food platform outside Japan: four brands, around 3,000 sites, but there was no name, no shared identity, no unifying story.
Read the case studyMcDonald's Nordics (Food Folk): the customer strategy behind continued market leadership.
Food Folk was already the market leader across the four Nordic markets, but needed to gain a deeper understanding of who the most valuable customers were and what they wanted, to unlock the next wave of growth.
Read the case studyuntypical: two housebuilders, one disruptive new brand.
Uniting two regional housebuilders into one disruptive company, in a sector with a trust deficit: 33% of consumers reported a low level of trust in housebuilders (Chartered Institute of Building, 2023). I led the work that identified the customer-first opportunity, built the strategy, and created the untypical brand for Terra Firma.
Read the case study
Insights
What I've been writing.
The AI Hall of Mirrors
“The AI Hall Of Mirrors That Will Trap Your Brand's Soul.”
In their words
“Thank you for the amazing support building out the untypical brand and team as we integrated Hopkins Homes Limited and Tilia Homes into a single, amazing organisation. You were instrumental in bringing together the right partners to launch our brand strategy - who knew we would end up with an upside down pink house... Epic! Your spirit, dedication and insight was very helpful navigating the buildout of a completely new brand.”
Chris Severson Principal / Chief Executive, untypical