I'm Nikki, a marketing and messaging expert dedicated to helping good people make good money doing what they’re damn good at. How? By teaching marketing that amps up your personality, prioritises profit, and reclaims your time. No need to turn into an internet sleazeball or sell your dignity for likes and leads. Stick with me, and I’ll show you how to build a Life-Friendly Brand that truly cashes in.
I’m a full-throttle marketer who loves big ideas, who came of age in the British 90s, feasting and famining like an ol’ pro, as both my parents were real, entrepreneurial hustlers in the true sense.
Back then, SHOCK AND AWE was my personality type.
When it came to branding, give me the kissing nuns, and shower me in rainbow condoms. My mother owned a Benetton clothing franchise, and those were their visuals, along with that of the young man dying of AIDS and the Black woman breastfeeding a white baby.
Benetton wasn’t just selling alternative clothing - they were selling the idea that everything from fashion to couples to families to love to compassion could look different.
That imagery likely wouldn’t shock these days, but for the era, it was out-there enough to bring the picketers and the egg launchers to the front of my mum’s store. From the get-go, Benetton had their gloves off. And aligning with their Message of different love and LOVING our differences required that you take yours off too.
They were “radical” in the true sense of the word. Their intoxicating idealism, mixed with my youthful impracticality, inspired my college trajectory of Fashion and branding degrees and landed me my first job in fashion PR. I worked 14-hour days, deriving my energy from diet coke and the thrill of attending fashion shows. Every project and challenge was a thrill and nothing too mundane - I didn’t even mind picking the mozzarella off my boss’s mozzarella sandwich or scooping off the extra foam from her cappuccino
All while making an insultingly shit salary.
But, you know what they say…all glamorous things must come to a crashing end when you aren’t made of money and instead have to pony up and MAKE some.
So, I switched the fashion lifestyle for something a little more corporate and spent the next decade as a Marketing and Brand Strategist, working with companies like Levi’s, Nike, IBM, Red Bull, Sony, etc. There, I positioned and shaped brands - all the work that precedes the sexy campaigns, reach, and momentum.
Brands at the top of their game don’t get this backwards. They know what they sell, and they know where they stand before attempting anything else. And the hallmark of a weakened brand is one that’s lost sight of that.
Nearly 10 years and a family with 2 kids later, I left corporate for the same reason most people do, including my clients – we’ve still got a little bit of intoxicating, romantic idealism in our bones…but this time, it’s mixed with grounded expertise.
And while I wouldn’t necessarily recommend Shock and Awe for everyone as a branding tactic these days, I certainly insist on a STANCE.
Because a stance not only informs your entire brand, it permits others to stand with you. PLUS, it protects you from the manipulative siren songs of gurus and high-priced masterminds selling overly-curated lifestyles over beautiful ideas that nudge a culture or an industry forward.
In short, there’s a difference between branding with your worldview vs. branding with a shallow utopia.
And whether your Message is radical, illuminating, or just exquisitely simple, once you know it, and create your entire brand around it - with or without rainbow condoms - it becomes unforgettable, because finally…you did what it takes to be seen.
Completely change the way you answer the question, “So what do you do?”
Free Template: The Magnetic Message Framework
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