Services & Resources for Brand Leadership, Strategic Repositioning & Leadership Alignment

Here we bring together brand strategy, positioning, methodology and leadership alignment resources from across the site.

It includes legacy brand-building services and tools alongside brand leadership work focused on strategic repositioning, decision clarity and organisational coherence.

If you are looking for senior-level work with CEOs, boards or leadership teams, start with Executive Briefings & Advisory. This is a useful starting point for work around strategic repositioning, leadership alignment or decision clarity—for when strategy is clear but priorities, decisions and direction are not.

If on the other hand you are looking for brand strategy, positioning, differentiation or market clarity, then start with Brand Strategy & Market Positioning. The is for when the business needs to sharpen meaning, differentiation and market signals to drive growth.

These are also useful leadership resources to start with:

 

Primary Areas of Work

Executive Briefings & Advisory

For CEOs, boards and executive teams when strategy is clear in principle, but the organisation is not moving with it.

This work focuses on:

  • Clarifying commercial priorities
  • Aligning decision ownership
  • Restoring strategic direction
  • Strengthening leadership coherence

See Executive Briefings & Advisory

 

Brand Strategy & Market Positioning

Brand strategy is often treated as a communications exercise.

In practice, it is where leadership decisions become visible in the market.

This work clarifies:

  • Market position and differentiation
  • Portfolio coherence
  • Alignment between strategy, behaviour and narrative
  • Consistency of signals across the organisation

See Brand Strategy & Market Positioning

 

Methodology & Capability Transfer

This work helps organisations develop shared language and repeatable ways of applying strategy more effectively.

It is particularly valuable where:

  • Alignment needs to be sustained over time
  • Teams need clearer decision frameworks
  • Internal capability needs to be strengthened

See Methodology & Capability Transfer

 

Clarity

Judgement

Trust

Brand Strategy Resources

This section contains legacy and supporting material focused on brand, positioning and differentiation.

These resources remain relevant because:

  • Market performance reflects leadership decisions
  • Clarity under constraint remains critical
  • Differentiation is harder under increasing similarity

See an example of one resource among many on the Persona Design site: Brand Differentiation

Speaking, Workshops & Sessions

Sessions range from board-level executive briefings to more focused workshops and capability-building programmes.

Most senior engagements now begin through an executive briefing or leadership session, with workshops and training supporting alignment and implementation where required.

See Speaking & Sessions

 

Legacy Tools & Programmes

This includes earlier brand-focused tools, programmes and structured resources.

They remain useful in specific contexts, but should be understood within the broader shift towards:

  • Leadership alignment
  • Strategic coherence
  • Decision clarity

 

Brand is Leadership Made Visible

Brands create cultures, enable conversations, build relationships, inform, entertain and generate value. When a brand’s identity is true — its purpose and passion are clear  . . .  and highly contagious.

At Persona Design work is collaborative—focussed on helping you make stronger a lasting impact and build more meaningful relationships with your customers through your brand. 

As an award winning, multi-disciplinary company with over 20 years experience, the expertise has come from working with brands from a multitude of sectors. These include product and service brands, national and international, small and agile challengers with ambitious plans and long established institutions reinventing themselves to revitalise and maintain relevance.

Each has their own unique perspective, challenges and story that potentially needs strategic re-evaluation, amplification or revitalisation to sustain relevance. The work also entails knowledge transfer so your team can execute confidently to make your brand highly visible, different, memorable and loved—become a more successful profitable power house. The question is, where do you potentially want to explore using this strategic capability and expertise?

 

Would you like to have an exploratory conversation with Lorraine Carter?

If any of the services and resources mentioned here reflect what you’re thinking about, the next step is usually a focused conversation to understand how to move forward more effectively.

If that would be useful, you can start a diagnostic conversation by getting in touch here,

email [email protected] or

schedule a conversation when it suits you best here.

 

Brand Strategy, Strategic Repositioning & Leadership Alignment Services & Resources

Elements of these services and resources relating to brand strategy and implementation scope reflect the ways this work has historically been delivered. They remain relevant in specific contexts, but are best understood within the broader work on strategic repositioning and leadership alignment, rather than as standalone activities.

Brand Strategy, Strategic Repositioning & Leadership Alignment Working Sessions & Training Programmes

If upskilling your team is one of your priorities then consider exploring some of the capability enhancement and knowledge transfer options available to you here. These programmes and workshops have robust track records through the results achieved, all of which is evidenced in their deployment in both private and public sector organisations. This includes global multinationals, universities and government state agencies.

The Persona Brand Leadership Framework™ is used to evaluate, define, realign, strategise, plan and map out leveraging your brand for greater success and increased profits. The modular systems within the framework are also used to underpin brand leadership knowledge transfer from 90 minute sessions to half or full day workshops. They are also used more extensively in the deeply embedding and mentoring programmes that are delivered over a number of weeks.

Persona Brand Leadership Programmes™

Whether you are a business leader, entrepreneur, business owner, SME, SMB or brand manager each working session or programme is built around your specific needs and objectives. They are tailored to your preferences and can, for example, be used to lead you through the brand building process to reevaluate, identify, research, define, implement and deploy:

  • What your brand stands for
  • Who your ideal target customer is (Purchaser Persona)
  • How to categorise your primary target audience
  • Find out what customers think about and expect from your brand
  • The brand narrative of how you want to talk to your ideal customer
  • How to give your ideal customers a compelling reason to buy
  • How to develop and implement your brand strategy
  • How to create unique customer experiences to build brand loyalty
  • What you need to consider to build your brand reputation positively
  • Grow your business e.g. portfolio, people, culture or market impact
  • Increase your sales and profitability based on your commercial objectives
  • Become №1 in your niche target market

so that you can create and build your brand through developing a deeper understanding of your customers, marketplace and competitor landscape aligned with your business objectives.

The purpose of these workshops or deeper knowledge transfer programmes are to enable you to make your business more successful by ensuring your brand strategy, and its deployment, makes a positive impact on your team, your customers and most importantly your bottom line.

You can discover more about the different types of brand leadership workshops and programme themes here.

Strategy does not usually fail at execution first.

It fails where leadership friction accumulates.

Strategic Repositioning & Leadership Alignment Working Sessions & Training Programmes

The Leadership Friction Framework™ is a leadership model that explains how leadership misalignments and friction builds, where it originates and why it ultimately shapes whether strategy succeeds or fails in organisations. It is used as a diagnostic lens, strategic alignment tool and leadership navigation model. Its modular systems are also used to underpin leadership working sessions and programmes. Leadership friction is the hidden resistance that slows decisions, weakens alignment and reduces execution quality inside organisations.

As markets move faster and strategic demands become more complex, leadership systems frequently struggle to keep pace. The results of internal leadership friction are not always visible failure at first. More often, it appears and becomes more prominent as slower decisions, mixed signals, fragmented priorities and weakening execution accumulate and become more obvious over time.

The Leadership Friction Framework is designed to be directly usable by leadership teams. Its common for many organisations to recognise elements of the model in their own context: slowing decisions, fragmented alignment, unresolved trade-offs or execution that weakens despite clear strategic intent. However, recognising the pattern is not always the same as diagnosing it clearly—that’s where the diagnostic lens and strategic alignment tools become very useful in strategic leadership working sessions.

Leadership teams are part of the system they are trying to understand. The dynamics that create friction—interpretation differences, delayed choices, unclear ownership or structural drag—are often embedded within how the leadership group itself operates.

That is why the framework can be useful both as a way of understanding what is happening and as a way of working through it in practice.

Leadership Friction Framework™ Programmes & Leadership Working Sessions are used to:

  1. Clarify strategic priorities
  2. Strengthen decision ownership
  3. Improve leadership alignment
  4. Define judgement boundaries
  5. Reduce hidden internal friction
  6. Improve execution clarity
  7. Protect differentiation and trust
  8. Identify risk earlier
  9. Strengthen governance coherence
  10. Restore strategic momentum

You can discover more about leadership alignment working sessions and programme themes here.

Want to have a diagnostic conversation with Lorraine Carter?

You can start a conversation by getting in touch here,

email [email protected] or

schedule a conversation when it suits you best here.

    Top 10 Ways These Brand Building Programmes Help You Grow Your Business and Increase Your Success

    1. Raise your visibility so your brand becomes the front-of-mind preferred choice
    2. Define and create what makes your brand different, distinctive and memorable so you can add perceived value and command a premium
    3. Reduce customer acquisition costs so you increase your profits and performance
    4. Attract high performing employees while also reducing recruitment costs and employee attrition rates
    5. Increase customer brand loyalty and referring so they increase their spend with you and influence others to buy from you too
    6. Position your brand, product or service, as the best leading solution in your sector so you are seen to be the No.1 choice
    7. Develop an intellectual property asset so you have more choices in terms of selling or investment
    8. Create a strong brand so you can leverage other new products, services and line extensions
    9. Increase engagement and market impact so you extend your reach and grow your business / organisation
    10. Stops commoditization so your brand commands a premium and sustainable competitive advantage

    If a DIY course appeals to you more then take a look at the Personality Profile Performer™ Programme here. It’s a step-by-step ecourse empowering you to build your brand.

    “I recently organized a large Business Forum for business owners and stakeholders entitled ‘After the Storm – New Business Opportunities’ to highlight the challenges and changing face of doing business in 2013. I was delighted to engage Lorraine Carter to speak at the Forum as I have seen first hand her expertise in Branding and Design.

    More importantly I know Lorraine as a Professional Speaker who delivers not only excellent content but is passionate about the positive financial impact of great branding and design.

    Lorraine’s talk entitled ‘Brand Your Way Out of Recession’ was extremely well received. Her clarity, eloquence and use of storytelling evoked clear examples of how both big, medium and even small businesses have reached the top with successful use of effective branding and design.

    I’d recommend Lorraine as a Speaker at your next event or conference. She is an expert in what she does but more importantly she is an expert who knows how to speak about it!”

    Sharon Cahir | Author Solicitor Lawyers and Leaders Coach and Trainer

    “I have had the benefit of working alongside Lorraine Carter with mutual clients and will happily do so again.

    Lorraine understands the power of brands for businesses in a way that makes practical sense to businesses. Her dedication to her craft is a great credit to her along with her attention to her clients and the details that matter.

    Lorraine understands how to work with people who don’t work with brands on a daily basis and above all Lorraine has a bottom line value orientation. I look forward to continuing working with Lorraine and her team at Persona Branding & Design.”

    Dave Gribben Enable Better Business

    SHS-500px

    “The Maguire & Paterson brand was established in 1882 and therefore the rebranding and new packaging had to be managed in a very sensitive and caring manner.

    Persona Branding & Design worked very effectively with the M&P management team ensuring that the findings of consumer research were correctly interpreted and factored into the brand revitalization and new range designs. We found their ability to steer us of significant benefit.

    Persona Branding & Design also ensured that we kept our focus on core objectives and diplomatically challenged us at various stages on our thought process, ensuring that any brand preferences did not stray from the core objectives.

    We would have no hesitation in recommending Persona Branding & Design and we would be very pleased to speak with any potential client(s).”

    Neil ScaifeHead of Commercial Control | SHS Sales & Marketing Ltd

    Rubicoin-500px

    “Lorraine Carter creates meaningful and immaculately designed brands based on a deep subject matter expertise.  She, through Persona Branding & Design, provides a world class professional services for all sized enterprises.

    Her understanding of target markets results in memorable and distinctive work that empathises with end customers. Lorraine brings a uniquely positive energy to every meeting that leaves her clients engaged and delighted.

    Emmet SavageFounder and CEO | Rubicoin

    “Lorraine Carter is a true marketing professional. She is highly creative and has delivered impactful, innovative brand solutions for my business for almost a decade.”

    Rita AhernManaging Director | Food Matters

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    “Persona Branding & Design supports our company with an excellent level of creativity in all areas of branding, design and marketing. They listen, understand and interpret our needs perfectly with a formidable proficiency in execution. It is only fair to say that our company expectations of original briefs have always been exceeded.”

    Andy MulloyManaging Director | Connemara Seafoods Ltd

    Caterhire-500px“I have worked with Persona Branding & Design for more than 8 years. They have become an invaluable extension of our team, working with us in a flexible, intelligent and pragmatic way.

    Once commissioned, they became part of the business extending their expert opinion and brilliant creative solutions in total harmony with our requirements which has achieved great results. This is important since it is often the detail that can make or break a business relationship.  Their work philosophy is the best contract a client can hope to receive.”

    Gavin DivillyManaging Director | Cater Hire Ireland Ltd

    Wavin-500px“Persona Design successfully applied their extensive branding experience from consumer goods directly to an important industrial B2B product range within our organisation. This was pivotal in the formulation of our brand communications strategy which also included design, packaging, point of sale material and brand promotional plan, all of which contributed to a very successful commercial outcome.”

    Michael O’DonohueCountry Director | Wavin Ireland Ltd

    “Lorraine is an excellent start to finish project manager with tremendous creativity and ability to work budgets and timelines effectively.”

    Kelley SpillaneSenior Vice President | Castle Brands

    Country-Crest-500px“I can’t say enough about the excellent work that Persona Branding & Design has done for us. They didn’t just look at our design requirements but challenged us to really look at the fundamentals of our brand and our target market.

    They fully engaged with our team and questioned our thinking, providing strong guidance when needed to keep us all on track. Not only is their work exceptional but it’s an absolute pleasure to work with them too.

    The end product has evoked huge comment from customers and buyers alike as to its thought provoking branding, design and uniqueness, thus putting Country Crest into a whole different zone of marketing.”

    Tony Doyle Commercial Director | Country Crest

    “Lorraine Carter from Persona Design recently presented at our Dell Social Media Event on the importance of Brand for Corporate and Self. Lorraine provided great tips, many of them thought-provokingfrom her vast experience in developing brands, as an individual, for customers and the importance of building relationships.

    I would highly recommend Lorraine as a trusted advisor on Brand Development and Management.”

    Joan ByrneSaaS Portfolio Manager EMEA | Dell Inc

    Zed-Candy-500px“Persona Design has always exceeded the objectives of our briefs. Their level of interaction and creative rigour offering a range of fresh concepts is brilliant.

    Apart from being great people to work with, Persona Branding & Design offers an unbeatable combination in their level of service, lateral thinking, attention to detail, strategic focus and commitment to all projects undertaken. They are a key asset within my company and I would be delighted to personally recommend their services.”

    Donal KavanaghSales & Marketing Director | Zed Candy Ltd

    “Persona Design are very talented brand consultants and packaging design experts. They are knowledgeable, creative and highly dependable. My company has hired them for a number of projects and we have always been very pleased with the results.

    In fact, several of their projects for us have won prestigious awards. I highly recommend Persona Branding & Design.”

    Mark Andrews IIIChairman of the Board | Castle Brands Inc

    Robert-Roberts-500px“Persona Branding & Design has adroitly managed several of our most important brand design briefs over the past couple of years and in doing so brought a high degree of creativity plus in depth knowledge in dealing with packaging and print suppliers that was vital for the completion of the successful end product.

    Their attention to detail and open book costing consistently ensures no surprises on design or origination quotations.”

    Gerry MurphyMarketing Director | Robert Roberts Ltd

    “I was delighted to be a participant in Lorraine’s Master class on Branding, Packaging and Design. Lorraine has extensive experience is this area and her third party examples of clients she has worked with really drove the message home on the importance of one’s brand and how powerful it can be.

    She is passionate in her message and delivers it with conviction. I strongly recommend her as a trainer, speaker in the area of branding, packaging and design as she is truly an expert.”

    Margaret Hoctor Personal Coach | Trainer | Mentor and Facilitator

    Wavin-500px“Persona Design has worked with Wavin on the creation and development of the new branding and marketing collateral for the launch of a new range of premium products.

    They worked closely with our commercial team during this period to deliver a fantastic launch, on time and within budget. I would highly recommend Persona Branding & Design to anyone who is looking for a company that adds value through innovative ideas.”

    Brendan MurphyCommercial Director Wavin UK & Ireland | Wavin UK Ltd

    “Lorraine is a highly experienced and expert marketing professional. That’s just one way of putting it. She is an expert public speaker and her passion for subject matter shines though when she presents on a subject that is obviously close to her heart. Highly professional and credible, she is always looking for the best way to apply her talent for her clients best interest.

    Her firm is highly successful in delivering strategic marketing projects for their prestigious client base. I have no hesitation in offering my highest recommendation for Lorraine and her team at Persona Branding & Design”

    Paul C DwyerGlobal Cyber Security Expert

    “Lorraine’s depth of knowledge in branding is immense. I have attended some of her courses and also see first hand the benefits Persona Branding & Design can bring to a business. I am always happy to recommend Lorraine.”

    Ruaidhri PrendergastTechnology Sales Engine | Tech Marketing | Sofware | SaaS | FinTech | Hardware | 10x Return on Investment | Co-Founder | Ingenuity

    “I have known of Lorraine’s high quality work for a number of years and in late 2008 I finally had the opportunity to work with her in developing a brand and marketing strategy for an upcoming awards ceremony.

    Lorraine patiently guided the team through the process and was excellent in identifying the nuances, do’s and don’ts of our target market. We started out thinking a brand was just a logo but now know better!

    Before this however, Lorraine had sat down for coffee on an number of occasions with my colleague and I on a different venture and was very generous with her time and sharing her knowledge. I aim to call on Lorraine many times in the future and look forward to it.”

    Ian Lawlor New Business | Lotus Investment Group

    “I’d be happy to recommend Lorraine Carter and her company, Persona Branding & Design, to any client who wants an enthusiastic and passionate business partner to produce compelling brands built on a sound strategy.”

    Tim HealyMercator Marketing Research

    “Lorraine is both highly creative and strategic. Her professional and flexible approach combined with her attention to detail resulted in exceptional work which perfectly met the clients needs. A pleasure to work with. I’d happily recommend her for any brand project!”

    Alayne RooneyMarketing Consultant

    Depending on Your Preferences There is an Ideal Solution For You

    Whether you’re in the early years of rapid growth spurts or well established but sales have plateaued or hungry to seriously accelerate your business to the next level, here are some of the different ways you can work with us to build your brand, depending on your preferences:

    1. Build your brand for you – find out more here
    2. Enable you to build your brand – read about the Persona Brand Leadership Programme™ here.
    3. Want a DIY solution? check out our how to build a brand ecourse here

    There are other options, so if you’d like to have an exploratory conversation you can schedule at date and time that suits you best by getting in touch here,

    email [email protected] or

    schedule a conversation when it suits you best here.

    How to Rebrand

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