You’ve spent a career finding the insight and positioning that make brands impossible to ignore, so you’ll know the irony: doing it for yourself can be remarkably hard. When your capability and ambition have evolved but your reputation is still telling the story of the last chapter, that’s Identity Lag.
This is the work Zoe now spends her days on: helping founders and senior executives get clear on who they’re becoming, and build the positioning and reputation to match.
She brings twenty-plus years of experience leading brands from banks to Berocca, undies to tech: 30-odd brands across 15 categories, first inside creative agencies and then in marketing leadership at Google AUNZ, Bonds and Berlei. Her signature across all of it was the same: find the emotive truth that made a brand different and deeply resonant, get very clear about what it stood for, and build from there.
These days, she turns that lens on people.
Through her Brand Archaeology methodology, Zoe digs into what has always been true about someone, what has changed, and what they actually want from the next chapter, then turns the lot into an identity, positioning and reputation that fits the person they’ve become, with a clear plan for putting it into motion.
She works with leaders moving into bigger roles, building something of their own, contemplating portfolio careers, or reaching the point where another rung on the same ladder isn’t a particularly interesting answer anymore. She also works with founder and leadership groups on the identity shifts that come with growth and change.
Her work has picked up Cannes Lions, Effies, a People’s Choice Webby, the first ARIA ever awarded to an ad, and Mumbrella and B&T awards. She’s also spent seven years judging the Mumbrella Awards and, more recently, Cannes in Cairns.
As a Marketing Academy alumna and mentor, she’s particularly interested in what happens when very good marketers turn all that strategic firepower back on themselves. Sooner or later, “what’s my next role?” runs out of road. “What do I actually want my contribution to be?” is the question waiting on the other side.
