We are an insight‑driven

strategy consultancy.

We are an

insight‑driven

strategy

consultancy

Clients trust us to solve their most important growth challenges.

The Forge is an award-winning strategy consultancy, delivering exceptional commercial returns for the world’s biggest brands. We help our clients create future consumer value.

Questions We Answer

Where are the biggest opportunities to grow our brands?
How do we reignite growth?
How do we increase our market penetration?
How do we accelerate growth through new products and services?
How is consumer behaviour changing and what should we do about it?
What is the optimal proposition and brand strategy to unlock value with customers?

Our Services

1

Customer &
Consumer
Strategy

Drive growth with actionable strategies to increase penetration, frequency and loyalty, and influence behaviour.

Projects include:

  • Customer Acquisition Strategy
  • Customer Journey Mapping
  • Customer Experience Development
  • Behaviour Change Strategies
2

Brand
strategy
 

Leverage the power of brands to form more meaningful and profitable relationships with consumers and customers.

Projects include:

  • Brand Positioning
  • Brand Architecture
  • Portfolio Strategy
  • Brand Creation & Development
3

Innovation
Strategy
 

Accelerate customer growth through the evolution of your existing products and services and accessing white space with category innovation.

Projects include:

  • Innovation Strategy
  • Innovation Platform Development
  • Foresight-driven innovation
  • Business model innovation
  • Idea and Concept Development
4

Market
Segmentation
 

Understand and quantify what drives choice in a market to reveal the largest commercial opportunities for growth.

Projects include:

  • Demand Spaces
  • Customer Segmentation
  • Attitudinal Segmentation
  • Market Sizing
5

Strategic
Insight
 

Make sense of your most complex customer and consumer questions to provide clarity, inspiration and clear direction.

Projects include:

  • Digital Shadowing
  • Semiotics
  • Qualitative Exploration
  • Quantitative Methodologies
  • Expert & Leading-edge Studies
6

Commercial
Growth
Frameworks

At a market, category and brand-portfolio level, we create robust, demand-focussed, board-level models that outline opportunities for future growth.

Areas of application include:

  • Transformation Strategy
  • Category Growth Strategy
  • The Big Framework for Growth

Our Director Only Model

We have a unique director only business model.

We bring deep reserves of experience, wisdom and practicality, and each of us has a proven track record of successfully delivering and embedding growth strategies across a diverse range of categories and organisations.

Importantly, we’ve all made the decision to remain hands-on, to use our experience and innate curiosity to help large and complex organisations move faster and accelerate the delivery of value to customers.

This means you benefit from:

A clear focus on commercial returns

We are outcome driven and always focused on how we can unlock true future value. Nearly all our work involves understanding how we can positively change or shape behaviour, so that we can influence how and where people choose to spend their money.

Hypothesis-led, helping you make more of what you already know

We always start with what you already know and use that to build a hypothesised solution. We then use fresh research to efficiently fill any gaps and test the hypothesis. This enables us to move at speed and develop agile solutions.

Landing actionable solutions in complex environments

We understand how to effectively collaborate with senior stakeholders, and how to secure buy-in across large and complex organisations.

Flexing to your working style

We don’t have a mandatory process, and neither are we wedded to a specific set of tools. We are confident flexing our approach to fit the challenge and your organisational culture and working style.

Delivering impact across a diverse range of sectors

We have developed a deep understanding of how to understand and influence behaviour across a wide range of business sectors, and we apply this to every engagement.

 

We build the solution with you

We act as a true partner to your business rather than a ‘black box’ solution provider. We bring you on the journey and transfer ownership at completion. 

Thinking

  • Article

Getting value from AI. Our learnings so far.

AI has arguably been the biggest conversation in marketing over the last 12 months. Much has been promised (and threatened) about its potential. We have been experimenting with it on several live client projects. It's clear that in certain circumstances it can be an incredibly potent tool, not only for creating efficiencies but for driving greater thinking too. Here are our learnings so far.
  • Article

Sustainability marketing is dead. Long live marketing in a sustainability world.

Sustainability marketing is based on a fundamentally false premise: because we are selling sustainability, people will buy sustainability. But this is not why people buy. They buy for reasons of 'what’s in it for me' - be that taste, value, utility or something else. The sooner we focus on these benefits, the faster we will sell out sustainable offerings.
  • Article

EVENT: Forging Perspectives: cutting through the hype – how will AI actually change marketing

AI is arguably the biggest conversation in marketing. We have all heard the dystopian and utopian futures promised; that we will all lose our jobs or we will never have to work again. At our most recent Forging Perspectives event, we assembled an expert panel to cut through the hype and understand how AI would ACTUALLY change marketing.
  • Article

5 questions to ask yourself before predicting the future

'Future Of' projects come in many shapes and sizes. Whilst the question is usually the same 'what is the future of X category', these types of project can be completely different depending on the outcome you are looking for. To help you decide what type of Future Of project you need we have created a set of five questions to ask yourself as you shape your next Future Of brief.
  • Article

Worth paying more for? Or worth paying for at all?

We regularly work with brands to help them develop and market products that command a premium price. However, our clients have recently started to ask us a different question. Instead of “How can we charge more for our products?”, we are hearing “How can we justify and defend our existing price point?”
  • Whitepaper

Unleashing Innovation:
Why Future Consumer Value is the unlock to sustainable innovation success

A Forge Whitepaper Free Download:Unleashing Innovation Take your FMCG innovation to the next level Download this free whitepaper to learn:  How to create short- and long-term innovation success How to…

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