That Guy From Marketing® is Shane Hunter. With the wax still not quite set on his uni degree, Shane started his real education at business “finishing school” – aka Unilever. In that blue-chip, process-driven, multi-national corporate environment he gained invaluable experience in direct sales, account and category management, and came to fully understand the age-old maxim, “rules are meant to be broken”.

Hooked by anything with a good back story, and a natural story teller, his transition to fully fledged brand marketing was serendipitous, kismet even. Spending the next dozen years or so years working across a diverse range of industries and business structures building brands, he started to formulate his brand and marketing playbook, “stealing with pride*” some of the more useful blue-chip processes and identifying what worked best in each environment. His parting gift to each brand owner – a bolder, bigger brand than the one he’d been entrusted with and a streamlined approach to continuing the momentum that was efficient, economic and effective.

His secret? A blended approach that relies on fully understanding the age-old maxim, “we have two ears and one mouth … “, in the context of customers, a good comprehension of the Law of Diffusion of Innovation, some knowledge of human behaviour and a little bit of neuroscience. Shorthanded: customers will tell you everything you need to know about how to sell to them, if you listen; market domination starts with 16.1%; for a connection to last it’s got to be human and memorable.

It’s that “secret” that took a natural head lice brand to the number one selling brand in a market dominated by chemical-based products since the dawn of head lice, in nine months post launch. It’s also the logic and strategy behind one of the most enduring brand ambassadorships of the 21st century. Ten years after her initial weight loss contract ended, Mel “Scary Spice” Brown is still spruiking Jenny Craig, and their phones are still ringing. And it was the thinking behind the reimagining of a small, legacy brand owned by a local snack food company into a multi-range master brand, capturing the hearts and mouths of consumers, and enough of a competitor’s attention to warrant the determination acquisition was easier than competition.

Why then, you may be thinking, is his own brand so … “meh?” Why isn’t it an eponymously named agency, being shouted from every roof-top? Because he used the same strategy on his own brand as he does for every brand, adapting it to suit the dynamics and nuances of its operating environment, and quite simply in this instance, it’s not meant to be. It’s not a typical agency, leveraging PR column inches for their own ego driven brand off of client brands. It’s not even an agency. It’s a scalable practice whose primary focus is working with challenger brands and get them punching above their weight. Creating the contexts that provide visibility with a value, in turn is building better brands for their owners, not competing with them. Plus, it makes it much easier to remember, when all you have to remember is, Shane Hunter is That Guy From Marketing®.

* a Unilever lesson that has not been discarded