Directional shifts

Every business evolves, but that isn’t what you’re going through. You’re experiencing the type of change that will break and reset the bones of your business.

  • Unwelcome pressure

    • For reasons outside of your control (consumers, competition, technology…), you’ve found yourself in a change-or-die type of situation. It isn’t pleasant or desired. But it is reality, and you aren’t going down without a fight.

  • Game-changing opportunity

    • Congrats, you might just be the victim of your own success. A breakthrough innovation or runaway product could mean big wins. The only problem? It wasn’t part of the plan. You might have struck gold, but mining it requires you to shift your focus and point the business in a different direction.

  • Whitespace conversion

    • You’re in a competitive market, and it’s only getting more fierce. If you’re honest, relative commoditization is category-wide, but you see an opportunity to hard-pivot into an adjacent category or whitespace niche.

Sound familiar?

You’ve had decent success, but you know you haven’t realized your true potential. Your gut tells you that staying on the same path will likely bring more of the same. You need to shift gears, take a turn, and power down a new road to reach the next level. Your product, offering, or platform is going to change significantly. You must keep the right people and help the wrong folks transition out. There’s a mix of excitement and apprehension in the air. It’s hard to know which facets of your business—your purpose, values, successes, products, etc—should remain and which ones need to change.

We can help.

We work with private equity partners, CEOs, and leadership teams to navigate change, build solid foundations, and sleep soundly. After working with Parliament, you can expect:

  • Alignment & clarity

    • Your team will know exactly what you’re setting out to achieve, why it matters, and how they should behave.

    • Departments will be working from the same playbooks. Brand, product, operations, and financial decisions will align.

    • You’ll have one source of the truth. No more ambiguous directives. No more distracting sidequests. No more half-dead zombie PowerPoint strategies.

  • Speed & autonomy

    • With company-wide alignment and clarity, your team will make better decisions in less time. Debate and collaboration will be focused on areas that used to get kicked down the road.

  • Right culture

    • You will share a conviction about the qualities your staff must possess and the behaviors you will not compromise on.

    • The right people will be attracted to your business, and the wrong people will be repelled. You’ll have the framework to develop hiring techniques that identify the best cultural fits.

    • B.S. values—the ones everybody knows aren’t real—will be replaced by aspirational values. Your team will have a shared understanding of what is inherently true in your organization, and what you hope to be true in the future.

  • Excitement & confidence

    • Your team will develop or re-capture a strong belief in the company and themselves. Optimism and positivity will increase. Anxiety and cynicism will decrease.

  • Stronger & better-executed brand

    • You will have a shared understanding of your audience, their beliefs, and what emotionally drives them to purchase.

    • Your brand will align with and extend your purpose, vision, and culture. It will reflect the quality of your products and your team’s hard work.

  • Strategic, creative partner

    • Your internal creative team will have the tools to consistently execute your brand. Additionally, Parliament can serve as an extension of your team for creative services or executions that fall outside of your expertise.

What we bring to the table.

Parliament combines creative and branding services with foundational business strategy. We’ve tailored our approach to support companies experiencing significant change—what we call critical inflection points. It’s an approach that goes deep. It isn’t superficial, and we don’t do short-term fixes. This is what you can expect from us:

  • Transitional experience, expertise & perspective

    • By definition, inflection points aren’t the norm. So naturally, they’re hard to navigate without experience. Our focus gives us continuous exposure to transition. We’re always learning more about what works and what doesn’t. It allows us to effectively identify patterns, intuit pain points, and prescribe treatments.

  • Eyes on the big picture

    • From the get-go, we’ll be thinking about brand and business. Opportunities and challenges. Past, present, and future. Together, we’ll turn it all into one cohesive portrait that resonates with your team and your customers.

  • Curiosity and enthusiasm

    • We’ll bring a fresh set of eyes and a lot of energy to your transition. We’ll show up with questions, not answers. We’ve found that most of the time, the truth is somewhere in the org; it’s just fuzzy and spread thin—like a dream you can’t quite remember. We aren’t going to turn you into something you aren’t, but we will bring out the best version of yourself.

  • Pursuit of the truth

    • We’re going to do some digging. Down to the bedrock. That’s where we’ll set your new foundation, and everything we do—and you do—should be built on that foundation.

    • BTW, we’re comfortable blending universal, relative, and future truths. You aren’t the priesthood, and we aren’t installing a religion. We’re defining a shared reality that is foundationally accurate, helpful, and actionable. That’s what pursuit of the truth means to us.

  • Accountability & candor

    • We’re comfortable with chaos. The nature of transition—of an inflection point—is flux. We’ll sit in the mess and work through it with you. Of course, our goal is to help you get to the other side, but we won’t rush the process. It takes what it takes.

    • The toughest questions—the ones that keep getting sidestepped—will get answered. We will all practice candor, challenge assumptions, and embrace criticism. Kool-Aid will not be served. This is the path.

  • Emotional support

    • Companies are made of people, and people have emotions! Going through change can be thrilling and exhausting. We frequently hear that our process feels like therapy, which makes sense. You’re working through issues, and solving deep, meaningful problems. Through it all, we’ll push when appropriate, and provide encouragement throughout.

  • Confidentiality

    • Our clients have secrets—internally and externally. In fact, it’s common for CEOs and private equity partners to share sensitive details with our principals that their staff—and ours—aren’t privy to. This arrangement allows our engagements to be directed and protected.

How it works.

Our offerings are organized into three phases: foundational frameworks, brand systems, and creative services. Within each phase, we offer a range of services.

01

Foundational frameworks

We’ll begin our relationship by working directly with your CEO and leadership team. Objective: unified, directional clarity for your entire business. An in-person workshop—ideally at your place—is the perfect way to kick it off, and from there, we’ll Zoom weekly to review, debate, and discuss progress. And, yes, we know you needed this work done yesterday. We’ll work diligently, but we’re going to prioritize long-term impact and give the process the time it needs. We’ve seen it take anywhere from 5-22 weeks, but 12.6 weeks is the median.

    Related services

  • Alignment
  • Positioning
  • Architecture
02

Brand systems

For some organizations, a crisp, well-articulated foundational strategy meets their needs. But typically, we also define, update, or evolve their visual identity and messaging systems. When appropriate, we offer internal creative teams templates and training to ensure consistency and executional standards are met.

    Related services

  • Naming
  • Identity
  • Messaging
  • Standards
03

Creative services

With foundational strategies and brand systems in place, we can support your internal resources or own creative executions from kick-off through launch.

    Related services

  • Campaigns
  • Design
  • Copywriting
  • Photography
  • Motion
  • Illustration

Let’s talk