Advisory unloud works upstream.
Before the brief is written. Before the agency is hired. Before the decision is made. With the people who have the authority to act, on the things that will actually move.
No 50-page decks. No recommendations that dissolve in committees. Every engagement produces one thing: a decision-maker who is clear.
Clients engage when
Growth has plateaued and the diagnosis keeps changing depending on who you ask.
Leadership alignment is weakening under scale. Smart people in rooms producing noise, not decisions.
Market expansion is creating internal friction faster than the organisation can absorb it.
There is a decision that keeps circling without resolution. Everyone knows what it is. No one will name it.
Brand positioning feels crowded or diluted. The organisation has lost the thread of what it stands for.
Cross-market execution lacks coherence. The strategy makes sense at the centre but loses meaning in translation.
How the work takes shape Engagements are shaped around what the situation actually requires.
The right starting point is always the first conversation.
Workshop Directional Workshop A half-day working session followed by a strategic memo. For leadership teams that need to get in the same room and resolve what they stand for. Includes pre-work interviews, the facilitated session, and a written directional memo delivered within one week. Retainer Strategic Advisory An ongoing relationship with a founder, CEO, or senior executive. The external thinking partner who asks what no one internal will ask. Minimum 3-month engagement. Structured around your decision-making calendar, not a fixed session format. Diagnostic Organisational Diagnostic A structured entry engagement for organisations where the strategic challenge is not yet fully defined. unloud diagnoses where the noise is coming from and what decisions are being avoided. 4-6 week engagement. Delivers a precise diagnostic memo — an articulation of what is happening and what needs to happen next.
If you’re not sure which applies, that’s what the first conversation is for. Enquire
Selected experience
Global FMCG Led strategy across 15+ markets during a period of significant category transformation. The work was about closing the gap between what the centre believed and what markets could actually execute, and making that gap productive rather than political.
Spirits, Europe and Asia Held strategic direction across a multi-brand portfolio through COVID-driven structural disruption. The work was about staying clear when the operating environment made clarity feel impossible.
Global Automotive Appointed after a pitch win to design the strategic playbook across 15 markets. The challenge wasn’t the strategy. It was the coherence, getting 15 regional teams to make decisions from the same centre of gravity.
Luxury, Asia Brought in when two of the most commercially important markets in the world were approaching relationship breakdown. Reset the strategic standards, rebuilt trust, and extended a partnership that was close to ending.
“ Shona combines great strategic thinking to challenge the status quo; the courage to challenge clients and partners to strive for a better solution; and the personality to deliver all this in a trusted and likeable manner.
Malcolm Devoy Chief Planning Officer