Case study
Innovation & Experience Practice
Signal Theory · Practice Building
Situation
Signal Theory was losing ground: large agency networks blending marketing with upstream management consulting from above, nimbler competitors winning on relevance from below. The digital world and fractured media landscape had changed what clients needed, and the existing model wasn't keeping up.
The agency's first response was to spin up a separate design consultancy, free from client conflicts and positioned to chase new business.
Complication
It never found its footing outside, and it wasn't being welcomed back inside with open arms.
Practice.
Design was seen as a creative function, focused on conceiving and laying out advertisements, packaging, and the occasional website. There was no shared vocabulary aside from aesthetic benefits, let alone a way to meet human needs and solve business problems.
Structure.
The agency was a matrixed org with a strong bias toward its traditional marketing-oriented departments. Teams outside the core trio of account, strategy, and creative operated as internal service providers, often bolted on after approaches were already developed.
Traction.
What reputation the prior attempt had internally ranged from skeptical to dismissive, and externally it had none at all. There wasn't an existing client or body of work to point to, and teams had little to no exposure to the approach or its potential value.
Action
I rebuilt the practice from the ground up: redefining design, integrating it operationally, and proving its value with clients. Then I turned it on the agency itself.
Redefining.
Immersed everyone in the agency in design workshops, building a shared, human-centered vocabulary and a network of champions throughout the org. That focus on design, human behavior, and human needs became the centerpiece of the agency's reimagined offerings.
Embedding.
Built a small, multidisciplinary experience design team, then activated it alongside a broader champions network to find inroads into live projects. When the rebrand gave design a mandate, co-created new operations and team workflows for the full breadth of the agency's capabilities to match client needs and market demands.
Proving.
Built momentum by informing strategy and framing problems to sharpen existing solutions, then helping accounts expand what they could offer clients. Eventually, the practice became the throughline in the agency's approach and its key differentiator in securing new business.
Outcome
- Built a practice and a network of champions that changed how the agency understood and delivered design
- Co-created 8 new service offerings and the workflows to deliver each, spanning a range of outcomes and outputs
- Won a $2M John Deere engagement on the strength of the practice as the agency's key differentiator