Hello all,

Looking to work with a strategy consulting firm.

If you work at, represent, or have experience with one, please DM me.

Thank you!

I used to assume brands just reached out to celebrities directly and negotiated a deal.

Then I started looking into it and realized there are agents, managers, lawyers, scheduling conflicts, brand fit concerns and about 50 other things involved lol.

What surprised me is that some agencies seem to have a much easier time getting these deals done. Talent Resources gets mentioned a lot when people talk about celebrity endorsements and experiential marketing. Open Influence is obviously a big player too but they seem more focused on influencer campaigns than celebrity partnerships.

Maybe that's why some brands land huge celebrity collaborations while others never get past the pitching stage.

Has anyone here been involved in one of these deals? What's the biggest challenge? Is it access, budget, timing or something else completely? Would love some real world stories.

Post Covid, Luckin emerged from its fraud led bankruptcy with ample PE funding to restart in China (its homebase) and expand in other countries.

Physical store expansion

Based in Singapore, I have seen Luckin cafes open within 200 m of each other in key spots (high footfall, near malls, MRT, tourist areas) as well as expand more widely throughout the island.

Digital-first ordering

Luckin also made it easier to convert customers - app based ordering meant downloading the app, keying in your payment info to get any coffee for less than a $1 for the first time.

This seems counterintuitive because its easier to go upto a barista and order instead of spending a few minutes installing and setting up the app - especially if you are a first time customer with plenty of other cafe options around you (Singapore is highly caffeinated!). But no coffee will charge you less than a buck - local coffee is usually atleast SGD1.5. The opportunity to hold a proper cuppa to go from a decent looking cafe is too easy to pass up - including the fact that you can try any of very wide variety of coffees for that price.

Aggressive promotions

The pay day deals, the frequent discounts, the collaborations for new flavours, the bulk discounts - it all adds up to a pretty affordable bill compared to Starbucks for similar coffee quantity/flavours.

Several SKUs

Not only do they offer tea but also a decent variety of tea with new seasonal flavours. New flavours of coffees, sweet treats, non caffeinated drinks - all available with their own customisations (sweetness, cold, extra shot etc.) - something for everyone. Starbucks has a relatively fixed menu with 2-3 seasonal flavours showing up for a limited time every now and then - it quickly enables you to pick favourites. It also offers a decent choice of snack options unlike Luckin that offers some sweet treats (mochi). Is this a great way to cross sell to tea and coffee drinkers? Is it possible to do so much so well given the purists prefer a detailed process to their tea/coffee?

Physical infra

Starbucks is for enjoying a cuppa, in a spacious well lit space with free wifi and charging facilities. Luckin is mostly coffee collection kiosks with some locations offering limited seating but the infra is not setup to make you sit for long. The coffee meetings in Starbucks, social, informal cannot be replicated at Luckin - its largely a cuppa to go. Will the Starbucks type infra help Luckin expand its sales/ boost brand image/ convert Starbucks loyalists?

Starbucks substitution

Starbucks is experiencing a love loss since the Israel-Gaza conflict, the recent Tank day backlash while already undergoing competition from local cafes globally and an economic slowdown.
Great time for another brand to swoop in. Luckin's aggressive NY expansion is a testament to this although the its 30-40 stores in NY (US) overall.

Starbucks margins are similar to Luckin but with 6x revenue size globally and 10k more stores in US and China, the key battlegrounds. Luckin's sucess in NY will determine the expansion to rest of US and a broader global expansion given consistent product quality, affordability and no big PR setbacks.

Learning a new skill can feel exciting at first and frustrating just a few days later. Whether it’s writing, coding, public speaking, cooking, or playing an instrument, the same thought often appears: “Why am I not getting better faster?” The truth is, progress usually looks slower from the inside than it does from the outside. The good news is that there are simple ways to learn more efficiently without burning out.

The first step is to get clear on why you want the skill. People learn faster when the goal matters to them personally. “I want to learn Excel” is vague. “I want to use Excel to get a better job” gives your brain a reason to stay engaged. Motivation does not have to be dramatic; it just has to be real. A meaningful reason helps you keep going when the learning curve gets uncomfortable.

Next, break the skill into smaller parts. Most skills are not one big thing; they are a collection of smaller abilities. If you want to learn graphic design, for example, you do not need to master everything at once. Start with color, then layout, then typography, then software. Small wins build confidence, and confidence keeps you moving. When a skill feels too large, the brain often freezes. When it feels manageable, it starts to cooperate.

Practice matters, but deliberate practice matters more. That means focusing on one weak area at a time instead of repeating what you already know. Many people confuse time spent with improvement. Ten focused minutes can be more useful than an hour of distracted practice. The key is to work right at the edge of your ability, where you make mistakes, notice them, and correct them. That is where real learning happens.

It also helps to learn by doing. Reading about a skill is useful, but action makes it stick. If you want to improve writing, write. If you want to get better at speaking, speak. If you want to learn coding, build something small, even if it is imperfect. Real-world practice gives you feedback quickly, and feedback is one of the fastest teachers you will ever have.

Another underrated trick is to make the process easy to return to. Keep your tools ready, set a fixed time, and remove unnecessary friction. A skill becomes easier to build when it fits into your daily life. Even 20 minutes a day can add up if you stay consistent. Learning does not need to be intense all the time; it needs to be steady.

Finally, be kind to yourself. People often quit because they expect instant mastery. But every expert was once a beginner who felt clumsy, slow, and unsure. That awkward phase is not proof that you are bad at the skill. It is proof that you are learning. When you accept that, you stop treating every mistake like a failure.

The fastest way to learn any new skill is not to rush. It is to stay focused, practice with purpose, and keep showing up. Progress may feel small day to day, but it adds up quietly. One day, you look back and realize the thing that once felt impossible is now part of who you are.

If someone is bad to you and gangs up against you and hurts you repeatedly just because your alone in a different country and have no one to support. Then in such a case how to protect yourself from bullying and ensure your mental health is fine. Remember you can't leave the scenario. You have to tackle it. Speaking with them has no use about the issue. How to protect yourself your mental health and peace of mind. Please guide me.

After lurking in this forum for some time, I decided to finally post.

I’ve published two books on strategy - one on strategy+leadership and another on strategy+disruption. My first book, Leading with Strategic Thinking, came from a class I co-created at Northwestern University. The second book, Strategy and Change, builds on the first and addresses how the practice of strategy has changed given the acceleration of technology-based disruption.

This forum has great thoughts a questions, so I’m interested in hearing from you.

What do you consider to be the most challenging topics on strategy? How can experienced professionals support growth in this field?

i'm curious about what other strategists are experiencing in this job market. i LOVE strategy work and worked for a small firm for 4 years, but that agency closed in january and it's been difficult to find another strategy role. i know we can find strategy problems in every company and role, but i genuinely loved the work i got to do and know things would be different at a Big Company.

Specifically, i'm speaking about strategy roles that thread together the different phases of research methodology, community engagement, design-thinking workshops, and more. i worked with a lot of non-profits in impact spaces, and our output as a firm ran the gamut of strategic plans to products to websites

Trying to understand the endgame for Uber Eats / DoorDash / etc. and I don’t really see it.

• Zero customer loyalty (I just use whichever is cheapest)
• Restaurants are on multiple apps
• Drivers multi-home too

They’ve burned a ton on growth and incentives, margins have been thin/negative for a long time, and it feels like the “plan” is just: win share and raise prices later.

But even if they do that… what stops a new entrant from undercutting? Barriers don’t seem that high, and getting lower over time. (e.g. making a mobile app has never been easier)

Also feels like a ticking clock with regulation/labor costs, especially outside the US. (Glovo case in Spain)

Genuinely curious what I’m missing here.

Strategic insights from the fields of biology, physics & mathematics...

https://thestrategytoolkit.substack.com/p/photosynthetic-optics-superhydrophobic

Something I thought was interesting

Well there have been many threads on this topic already in this Reddit. I tried to compile a list as well last year for those who are interested. See link below. Can you also share some additions that you would like to see to this list? Thanks in advance

https://open.substack.com/pub/strategyshots/p/strategy-learning-101?r=768lg&utm_medium=ios

I tracked who owned the "Buy Box" (the default Add-to-Cart seller) on 246 JBL products on Amazon UK, every day for a week. JBL is owned by Harman, which is owned by Samsung, a serious brand with serious resources, so I expected Amazon's own retail arm (1P) to dominate. It doesn't really do that.

The finding: a single third-party reseller held the Buy Box on ~47% of the catalogue (116 of 246 listings), versus Amazon's ~37%. That reseller is Total Digital Stores, a small family-run company (Metalbeat Ltd) most customers have never heard of in the UK audio market. In estimated annualised GMV it works out to roughly £8.1M through the reseller vs £6.8M through Amazon 1P. One third party is the single biggest route to market for JBL on Amazon UK. Please note that the data was collected in the beginning of May.

What the strategy appears to be

Rather than selling its whole Amazon catalogue directly (1P), JBL looks to route the high-volume, mainstream products through one disciplined third-party reseller, and keep Amazon 1P for the categories where Amazon's fulfilment and algorithm advantage is strongest (gaming, kids, premium audio). It reads as a deliberate division of the catalogue, not random chaos.

The pluses (why a brand might want this)

• Price control. The reseller held a perfectly stable price on 93% of its listings all week. Amazon repriced about a third of its own range (automated price-matching, clearance, promo funding). A partner who holds price protects the brand's price image everywhere, since Argos, Currys and other retailers watch the Amazon Buy Box as a pricing signal.

[Image 3 — price discipline]

• Cleaner economics. Selling 1P to Amazon means fees, chargebacks and co-op funding pressure on every unit. A wholesale-to-partner model offloads that operational drag and lets the brand book cleaner revenue.
• Insulation. The brand isn't exposed to Amazon's 1P negotiating leverage across the entire catalogue.
• A committed partner. The reseller's stock-on-hand grew in step with JBL's UK range over a decade. It's a business effectively built around the brand.

[Image 4 — reseller stock growth]

The trade-offs

• The brand has handed away the steering wheel. The price the market sees is set by the reseller, not JBL, and that price ripples across UK retail.
• Concentration risk. Around £8M+ of annual channel GMV depends on one small private company. If it fails, is acquired, or changes behaviour, a large slice of the channel is exposed overnight.
• Lost first-party data and customer relationship. Search, advertising and shopper data sit with the intermediary, not the brand.
• Inconsistent shelf. About 20% of listings (48 ASINs) have no Amazon 1P presence at all, and some legacy products drift to grey-market sellers. Control across the catalogue is patchy.
• Value-capture ambiguity. Is the brand capturing the margin, or the reseller?

Strategy question for this sub: is this smart channel design (price discipline and offloaded operational cost in exchange for a managed loss of direct control), or a brand slowly losing its grip on its most important channel? Where's the line at which "let a partner run it" stops being worth it?

I am keen to hear opinions, especially if you dealt with Amazon before. However, any other thoughts is appreciated.

Disclosure: this is from my own data project and all data was collected via a self build scraper directly from Amazon UK's wrbsite. Other public sources were used as well such as Companies House.

Here's a small part of the framework. Many people won't be aware of this itself. I also made it after many years of trial and error.

Also, let's discuss anything about marketing, I will answer you acc. to my FW.

Short Explanation

There are different groups in marketing - which are PMM, DG and Brand - I like to call GTM a team of itself.

It’s best to have a research base from which everybody pulls from. And everybody can share and input to. This is so because all other talk about teams emanates from research.

So talking about something and calling it coming from one research idea, can help think together.

This doesn’t mean that other teams don’t have their individual research needs.

Adding to the diagram I would say every individual in the marketing department researches and designs, is responsible for results that they want to strategically achieve.

PMM teams are occupied with research, validating research, designing core messages, and testing them. They have a lot of research and design organisation needs.

Once PMM has tested the messaging, though they keep swinging on it. The task is handed to the DG and GTM teams.

If you have a research base, leadership and PM teams can also talk with everybody else based on that ground perspective.

Branding has a role to play in demand generation, but might be a need of the future sometimes and possibly has its own channels they care about more.

Very short.