Independent strategy practice · Australia
Most strategy never gets done.
I work with leaders on complex challenges and build strategy that people actually want to act on.
Strategy that fits the organisation, not just the market.
I work on brand, marketing, customer and product strategy, and often the wider organisational decisions that surround it. Most of my work is with leaders navigating complex strategic challenges, where the answer has to fit the organisation as much as it fits the market.
Every engagement is designed so that the strategy doesn’t sit on a shelf. Not because I project-manage the implementation, but because how it will actually get done is part of the thinking from the start.
The result is strategy that opens up new directions, and gives leaders and their teams the clarity and momentum to act on them.
30
years across research and strategy
4
areas of work: brand, marketing, customer, product
1
senior practitioner, from first conversation to last
Range brings different perspectives.
Every category comes with its own blinkers. Working across clients this different makes them easier to see past.
- Kmart
- Vodafone
- Arcare
- Telstra
- Toyota
- L’Oréal
- NAB
- Dylan Alcott Foundation
- Perth Airport
- Honda
- ACU
- AustralianSuper
- Mastercard
- Coca-Cola
- Mattel
- Coopers
What clients say
The range of engagements I can help with.
Not every engagement is a full strategy project. I take on both substantial pieces and smaller, focused work with a clear strategic question behind it. For engagements that call for specialist depth, I bring in trusted collaborators I have worked with over many years.
Common types of work include:
Brand strategy
- Brand development and positioning
- Brand architecture
- Brand territories development and testing
- Category entry points and distinctive brand assets
- Brand health measurement frameworks and research
Marketing strategy
- Marketing strategy development
- Category and market entry strategy
- Communications development and testing
Customer strategy
- Customer segmentation and prioritisation
- CVP development
- Customer journey mapping
- CX strategy
- Audience understanding and growth
Product strategy
- Product proposition development
- Product portfolio strategy
- Product-market fit research
- Innovation strategy and pipeline development
If you’re not sure whether something you’re working on fits, get in touch - some of the best briefs start that way.
Two ways from here.
Too much strategy work fails in one of two directions.
It sits on the shelf
Well thought through, intellectually defensible, but disconnected from the people who need to act on it. No one feels any real ownership or excitement. It doesn’t talk practically about what to do differently on Monday.
It gets skipped altogether
Strategy is passed over in favour of tactical activity with no clear direction to guide it. Often, teams will do their jobs well in their own silos, without anything connecting their work to a common goal.
Both are common enough that a lot of people are now wary of the word “strategy” itself.
To some it means an ivory-tower exercise out of sync with the real world. To others, it means a boring intellectual thing that gets in the way of doing the work, or a constraint on their creativity.
I set up this practice because I wanted to do work that is properly considered, makes a real difference, and actually gets used. The practice is built to answer both failures.
The odds of a strategy succeeding increase the closer it lines up with three answers:
-
Who are we?
Identity. Values. Culture. What this organisation actually stands for.
-
What are we good at?
Distinctive strengths and capabilities. What this organisation can do better than others.
-
What do we want to become?
Direction and ambition. What this organisation wants to move toward, and how much appetite there is for the discomfort of getting there.
Good strategy lines up with all three.
Too often, strategy is designed against a category ideal, asking the organisation to become something that doesn’t fit how it actually sees itself.
When there is alignment, the response is different. Real energy and clarity. People know what to do and want to get on with it.
Every engagement I take on is built to find this fit.
My three commitments
I work as a partner
I take on work selectively, and the first conversation is about establishing whether the strategic question is one I can actually help with. This only really works when there’s a senior, influential project owner and stakeholders who are open to collaborating. Uncomfortable truths get raised early, not saved for the final presentation.
Implementation thinking throughout
I hold every strategic recommendation against the question of how it will actually get implemented, by whom, and with what. A recommendation the organisation cannot act on is not a recommendation, and finding that out at the end is too late to be useful.
Your people are active in the work
Rather than just being presented to, I bring your people into the process directly - in the field, in workshops, in the analysis. This means the people who need to act on the work have helped shape it. That is the only reliable way to get strategy to come to life beyond the meeting it was agreed in.
A different kind of strategy engagement
I specifically design engagements to be surprising and energising for the people taking part. This is not just for the good vibes. Participatory work only produces better answers if people leave having thought something they had not thought before.
The ambition is that each of my engagements gets remembered as one of the most creative and insightful strategy processes the people involved have been part of.
The thinking behind the work
I draw on five disciplines in different combinations depending on the question:
- Systems thinking
- Behavioural science
- Brand and marketing effectiveness
- Cultural strategy
- Innovation theory
I use these to start an argument. Take what behavioural science says about a problem, set it against what the category already believes, and the two will often point in opposite directions. Working out how both can be true is where the new thinking usually comes from.
About Mark Hobart
Thirty years working across research and strategy in Australia and the UK.
Senior roles at TRA, The Lab, Push Collective, and Kantar. Most recently Managing Partner of TRA’s Melbourne office, which I established and led from startup to a ten-person practice.
My work has spanned a wide range of sectors - telco, automotive, financial services, aged care, community services, retail, utilities, and FMCG. Much of the work has been at executive team and board level.
I set up my strategy practice because I wanted to selectively take on work that is properly considered, makes a real difference, and actually gets used.
The more complex the challenge, the more excited I get. I’m drawn to problems without an obvious answer, where you have to talk to a lot of people and bring in ideas from more than one field to get anywhere. The part I enjoy most is the moment a client realises something they were certain about isn’t true. It’s uncomfortable at first, but working through it together is where it gets interesting, because once that assumption goes, options appear that weren't there before.
Get in touch.
If you’re facing a strategic challenge worth getting right, I’d love to have a conversation.
- Email mark@markhobartstrategy.com
- Phone +61 406 482 715
- LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/mhobart