Eric Knittel

If you're struggling with Comms Strategy, You might be missing these 10 tools… 10 tools and resources to use 1. Consumer Journey Research Template - https://lnkd.in/gtsmSMfA 2. The Noun Project - library of icons to make your deck look pro https://lnkd.in/gfWyCuAM 3. ToolboxToolbox - a treasure trove of process docs for workshops https://lnkd.in/gpbtxG7W 4. Data USA- The most comprehensive visualization of U.S. public data. Data USA provides an open, easy-to-use platform that turns data into knowledge. https://datausa.io/ 5. Miro - Consumer journey mapping tool https://miro.com/ 6. Hyper Island Toolbox - If you're running consumer journey workshops, there's a number of good activities in here https://lnkd.in/gQ_X8RAB 7. What Is Communication Strategy (video) - Definition an examples from Nike and Cole Haan https://lnkd.in/gJXhWkRX 8. How To Create A Campaign Plan (video) - Shows how to create a comms framework and ecosystem, example from FIFA https://lnkd.in/gQzD2AZS  9. Comms Strategy Stats - If you need to show the importance of Comms Strategy - https://lnkd.in/gQcXTihJ 10. How To Write A Comms Strategy (video) - Example from Chase Bank https://lnkd.in/gkvMrwXK 👉I’ll be doing a free workshop on how you get to a great comms strategy next week, Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/gnJ5_CbE 

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Every rebrand my agency does is built on the backbone of months of brutal repositioning strategy. Apparently, we are pretty unique there. As a globally award-winning brand agency, we’ve seen companies put millions on logos, websites, and color palettes when the problem wasn’t design at all. Because not every repositioning needs to be a rebrand. But every rebrand should be built on challenging which strategy is showcased to your audience. If you’re losing market territory and customer opportunities, chances are your visuals aren’t the issue. Your strategy is. Sometimes the smartest move isn’t a rebrand... it’s: >> Tightening the audience strategy >> Sharpening the market narrative >> Adjusting your go-to-market approach That’s where the competitive advantage gets rekindled. Not in Photoshop. My team and I don't keep winning awards because we have better graphic artists. Hell, I shouldn't even mention it but we aren't even "stellar artists". We let them paint on canvases. We build companies and our paintbrush is knowing where and how to undermine your competitor's strengths. Rebrands win when they’re backed by repositioning. But repositioning alone is often the cheapest, fastest way to win back ground. Before you spend a dollar on a new logo, ask yourself: Is it design that’s costing you customers, or is your strategy? If you’re not sure, that’s the conversation we should be having.

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SMMs, a gentle reminder: you cannot ✨legally✨ use Taylor and Travis’ engagement content (or any celeb photos/memes) on your brand channels without paying for rights. Even if they’re wearing your product, you still need permission. I expect brands will start getting sued more often for this. So before rushing to “join the moment,” ask: • Is the risk worth it? • Does this content even matter to your audience? Because honestly, too many SMMs are creating for their group chats, not for brand growth and community.

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The Death of the Agency? Greatly Exaggerated. This platform is full of 'agencies are dead' posts lately. Industry pessimism seems to drive engagement, but most of it is hearsay and couch commentary. After 20+ years in (mostly media) agencies, consultancy, and client-side roles, I’m still boots on the ground transforming brand–agency relationships, as well helping agencies evolve themselves. Here’s my real-world battle-tested hot-take (with added deep-thought selfie) of where the agency world is headed: 🤔 Agencies ≠ Consultancies. They solve very different problems and operate with different economics. However, agencies are still shooting themselves in the foot by pricing on headcount instead of value. Services should be productised and commercial model designed to service short and long-term engagements. 🤔 Scale + Tech is a Competitive Edge. Agencies that combine size, data, and tech will dominate the future landscape. AI-driven efficiencies, integrated planning + creative + measurement = win for large Hold Cos - but they will grow by capturing market share from the mid-tier vs. growing the market. 🤔 Principal Based Buying is the New Growth Engine. Holding Companies shifting to a reseller model are printing margin. Example: Omnicom’s Media & Advertising division is up 8.2% YoY vs. 3% for the rest of the business. However, CMOs should beware that profit incentives and unbiased advice rarely mix well. 🤔 Independents Have a Big Opportunity. Consolidation creates gaps. Niche and specialist agencies can scoop up displaced clients and talent - winning on transparency, flexibility, and deep specialism. 🤔 Commercialise Thinking, Not Just Throughput. What only agencies could do five years ago, brands now do faster, cheaper, and closer to the business. AI will only accelerate this. The best agencies are already embedding talent in client teams, selling strategic expertise, and training brand-side talent. What does that mean for Advertisers? 💥 Interrogate the Model. Push for value-based pricing - it's better for both parties - know when your agency is reselling media and separate strategy from buying to keep advice unbiased. 💥 Balance Scale and Agility. Large holding companies bring buying power and tech, whereas independents bring transparency, flexibility, and deep experience. Use both where they’re strongest. 💥 Build In-House Strength. Many agency capabilities can now be done internally, faster, cheaper and closer to the data. AI will accelerate this - so evaluate opportunity and start investing in talent and tools. In Overline's new playbook, ‘Navigating The Fourth Wave of In-Housing’, we explore the impact on the brand-agency model and the practical steps brands can take to maximise marketing outcomes through right-housing. Link to download in comments section 👇👇 👇 #marketing #media #advertising #AI #Automation #ArtificialIntelligence #Transformation #DigitalTransformation #DigitalMarketing

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Today’s CMOs are doing more than managing a brand; they’re steering business strategy and unlocking growth. Their impact is undeniable. As the scope and influence of marketing leadership expand, so too does the dynamic between CMO and CEO. And beyond that, they've become something even more powerful: Culture drivers. This is what CMOs are today. And it's radically different from what CMOs were even 20 years ago. Recently, Klaviyo's CMO Jamie Domenici called herself the “Chief Market Officer,” and I thought this perfectly captured the moment we’re in. Drop the "-ing" and you represent and reflect the market you serve. The pre-social media marketing playbook taught CMOs to manage brands, control messaging, and dictate trends. Today's reality? Najoh Tita-Reid, Chief Brand and Experience Officer at Mars Petcare, shared with me, “I have absolutely no control. I am very aware of that." Instead, modern marketing leaders inspire teams, create guardrails for co-creation, and recognize that communities are infinitely more intelligent than any single voice. But this shift requires humility. And that’s not something that’s easily taught. Today’s consumers aren’t passive audiences, they’re active participants in shaping the brand. Through what they post, share, praise, and criticize, they have the power to influence marketing strategies, social media narratives, experiential touchpoints, and even the products themselves. The modern CMO's job is to listen and employ technology to amplify consumer voices. This means deep social listening. With enough attention to what consumers are saying and doing, you can predict their next moves weeks before they happen. Take Mars Pet Care, for example. They learned that while about two-thirds of people claim to hate cats, three-quarters of those have never owned one. So they tried something bold: Convert the “cat haters” into cat adopters, with the help of algorithms. By retraining algorithms to find cat-haters and continue offering them fostering opportunities for cats in need, they increased cat adoption by 200%. And proved a lot of cat haters wrong. The shift I’m seeing is that today's #CMOs don’t launch finite campaigns set in stone. They’re more malleable, recognizing that their combined community is infinitely more intelligent and powerful than any single post. I’m excited about the new generation of culture-driving CMOs because the technology exists to work with consumers in ways we’ve never seen before. What are some of the most innovative #marketing campaigns you’ve seen lately? Share them in the comments!

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💼 CEO Insights | Building Brands That Resonate 🌍 When I started East River, I wasn’t chasing awards. I was chasing impact. Today, we’re not just another agency. We’re strategic partners to some of the most ambitious brands out there—helping them turn noise into narrative, and content into conversations. Here’s what I’ve learned: ✅ A good brand sells. ✅ A great brand connects. ✅ But an unforgettable brand? It leads a movement. In a world drowning in content, authenticity wins. Not just the perfectly polished campaigns—but the real, raw, human stories behind them. To every entrepreneur, marketer, or founder reading this: If you're building something with heart—let it show. Your audience isn't just buying your product; they're buying your why. Let’s create work that doesn’t just sell—but inspires. #BrandStrategy #Leadership #MarketingThatMatters #EastRiver #Storytelling #LinkedInForLeaders #CEOThoughts #AuthenticBranding

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It’s easier than ever to start an agency. It’s never been harder to stay in business. As we near a decade in the space, I’ve been thinking about what’s changed and why I think the average agency life expectancy keeps shrinking. The barrier to entry is low. But so is the ceiling if you're not intentional. It’s easier to deliver something that feels valuable without ever asking if it is. Easier to confuse activity for impact. Easier to fall into a cycle of reactive service delivery instead of building toward deeper strategic value. Meanwhile, client expectations? They're rising. Quietly but steadily. Clients want more insight, more clarity, stronger outcomes. Not just outputs. The danger isn’t in failing to deliver. It’s in delivering work that ticks the box but doesn’t move the needle. Outcomes, not optics. Partnerships, not projects. Consistency, not just campaigns. Trust, not transactions Meaning, not just marketing #itsaboutpeople

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Influencer marketing is the backbone of growth for many brands, but effectively measuring it is the number 1 blocker for scale. A 2024 eMarketer study asked CMOs and marketing executives "What's preventing you from spending on influencer marketing?" The number 1 answer? Measurement (32% of all responses). That's a massive plurality, and one that I've seen personally dozens of times for our clients at fusepoint and Power Digital. Why is measurement so tough for influencers? • "Influencer" is kind of a catch-all, more on that in a sec • Attribution and trackability is a major hurdle • Affiliate / coupon codes can leak • Tough to split test/control • Brand maturity First let's talk about why Influencer is too big of a term. "Influencer" generally means some kind of advertising where an incentivized spokesperson -- presumably with some kind of organic audience -- discusses or recommends a product. In practice there are all kinds of influencer programs though: • Affiliates • Larger partnerships • Influencer handles paid by brand ads • Influencer content run as creative by the brand • Faux-influencers with no audience (UGC-style ads) • "Closed loop" influencer/affiliate programs (like TikTok Shops) And the reality is that most of these sub-tactics have nuances in terms of their execution, benefits, and measurement. Try explaining all of that to a CFO and why measuring the ROI isn't so easy. Traditional measurement is also tough: • Click-based attribution is just inherently flawed across ANY channel • Using coupon codes is most common, but, it's "leaky" • Influencers often sit higher in the funnel than "ads" • Data required for MMM is hard to get at (more below) • Influencers are very hard to geo target (outside of some ads) This causes influencer to kind of be treated as an "other" thing, often similar to PR where it's reported on separately and has its own expectations. Closed loop systems like TTS make it arguably "easier" since they have all the data, but, most influencer programs aren't focused on social commerce. So how do we actually recommend you measure it? • Pre/post pulse experiments • Incrementality geo tests (through ads) • Marketing mix models (if you can get the data) • Customer surveys and self reported attribution If you're running "organic" influencer content or affiliate style influencer, it's incredibly difficult to lock that down at a geo level. However, you can take that same content and run a holdout/plus up geo test to measure incrementality. You can also push intense flights and track the overall lift in brand awareness, share of search, or blended metrics like MER/CAC. That variability is also helpful for more sophisticated MMMs, but you need a high degree of data of when influencers posted content, what amount of impressions/spend you used, etc. So the "easiest" is just straight up: ask your customers. But, you need a combination of all to be effective. #incrementality #attribution #influencers

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We’re the only operating partner in the agency space that does both: 1) Ops/Org transformation 2) Founder to CEO/COO transition That’s because you can’t separate structure from leadership. Here’s what know about agency operators: Most sub-midmarket (£/$1–3M): smart, gritty, but largely improvising. Accidental COOs, founders doing ops they never signed up for. Planning is reactive, cadence is ad hoc, and execution depends on constant involvement. Most midmarket operators (£/$5–10M+): experienced and capable, but often spread thin. COOs are managing across functions, juggling priorities without a unified planning rhythm. CEOs are focused on growth but lack a clean bridge between strategy and weekly execution. So sometimes it’s a full systems reset (when the foundation just isn’t built to scale). Other times, tightening the structure, sharpening roles, and aligning the operator to drive growth. Either way, the work is the same: Align the team, the structure and the operator behind the strategy. That’s what we do. Because no system survives a founder stuck in founder mode. And no COO can lead if they’re stuck firefighting.

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You can’t build marketing mix models that truly help clients make better decisions unless you understand the decisions they’re making. A big part of that comes down to understanding media: what to spend, where to spend, when to spend, how to balance upper funnel and lower funnel, how to manage the impact of creative, targeting, platforms, inflation, seasonality, competitors, the whole thing. If MMM modelers don’t understand how media is actually planned, bought, and optimized in the real world, they’ll always fall short. Let me give you a simple example. Say you’ve got a client running paid social. You notice that ROIs seem to be dropping over time. You could say “pull budget from there” based on the model. But if you’ve spent time with the media team, you’ll know that this drop might coincide with a change in creative strategy, or a shift in audience targeting, or simply platform algorithm changes that the team is still adapting to. If you don’t know that, your recommendation might do more harm than good. But if you DO know that, you can ask better questions. You can model more intelligently. You can guide them with context, not just numbers. This is why, in my view, MMM practitioners need to be media people too. Not necessarily media planners or buyers, but they have to be media-fluent. It also changes how we communicate our results. If you’ve sat in media planning meetings, you know how decisions get made. It’s fast, it’s messy, and it’s based on tradeoffs. So our job isn’t to throw ROIs at people and walk away. It’s to give them actionable, timely insights that fit into how media is actually managed. The future of MMM belongs to people who can bridge that gap. People who can take all the modeling know-how and layer it with a real understanding of media strategy. That’s how you move from being a ‘data person’ to becoming a true partner to the business. And honestly, that’s the work I find most rewarding, when I know the insights I’m giving are not only robust, but also relevant. So if you’re starting out in MMM or leading a new MMM team, my advice is simple: don’t just hire modelers. Build media expertise. Read media plans. Shadow planners. Ask how campaigns get built. Ask what decisions they find hard. It’ll make your models better, your end-clients happier, and your work way more useful.

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The Overlooked ROI of CEO Branding: Six Ways to Unleash It's Power Markets are volatile, information is overwhelming, and AI-driven content is everywhere. For CEOs, this raises a critical question: do you stay silent and risk irrelevance, or do you speak up and risk blending into the noise? The answer lies in how you show up. The most effective CEOs today aren’t chasing likes or shares. They’re building authentic visibility that drives trust with investors, employees, and the market. That’s the overlooked ROI of CEO branding. #1 Visibility Is A Growing Leadership Currency Gone are the days when leadership communication was confined to press releases. Visibility signals stability, and in uncertain times, stability is priceless. CEOs who embrace visibility as a leadership duty are building reputations that endure beyond any market cycle. #2 Earned Attention Beats Algorithms Social media metrics often mislead executives. Actual influence doesn’t come from chasing algorithms but from earning attention through authenticity. Jon Gray at Blackstone shared a simple, unscripted LinkedIn video walking through his office. It wasn’t polished, but it felt real, and it resonated with thousands. The lesson: authentic stories and insights cut through the noise far more than recycled content or corporate spin. #3 Investor Confidence Is Personal Investors aren’t just betting on companies, they’re betting on leaders. When Andrew Irvine of NAB faced scrutiny, he addressed concerns openly at an industry event, acknowledging the challenges while reaffirming the bank's long-term focus. That clarity reassured investors more than any glossy presentation could. The ROI isn’t a vanity metric; it’s investor trust that directly influences capital and growth. #4 Employees Follow Leaders, Not Logos Research shows that employees who trust their leaders are more motivated, more productive, and far less likely to leave. CEOs who share their thinking, especially during difficult decisions, create alignment and loyalty. The ROI here is retention, motivation, and stronger employer branding. #5 Storytelling Creates Strategic Advantage The best CEOs are storytellers. They explain the “why” and “how.” This humanizes decision-making, builds alignment, and makes strategies relatable. #6 The Compounding Effect of Consistency CEO branding is about compounding credibility over time. Each authentic message builds familiarity. Each moment of clarity deepens trust. Over months and years, these interactions accumulate into an influence that can’t be manufactured. That’s the ROI. Beyond Likes and Shares CEO branding is about being clearer. The leaders who communicate with authenticity and intention aren’t just winning engagement metrics; they’re earning trust, shaping perception, and anchoring reputation. CEOs who invest in visibility with purpose will be the voices people listen to when the noise dies down.

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