A Forward Deployed Marketing consultancy

Marketing meets AI. Greater together.

Forward Deployed Marketing puts a senior strategist inside your team to set your marketing strategy and build it into the AI tools your team uses every day.

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The problem

Two halves, kept apart.

Every organization is under pressure to adopt AI. Most run it apart from marketing strategy, and get less from both.

Without AI

Strategy that ends in a deck

Good judgment, slow to apply. The plan is handed over, the work gets made from memory, and the best thinking lives in a few senior heads.

Without marketing

AI with no direction

Speed without a point. Pilots that automate the wrong work, output nobody trusts, and tools the team quietly stops using.

Forward Deployed Marketing joins the two halves inside your team: senior strategy, built into the AI tools your team uses every day. One tool at a time, each with an owner and a measure agreed first.

Who we help

How Forward Deployed Marketing fits.

The budget is set, but the targets keep risingBrand marketersThe agencies, the media and the campaigns are working. You need more from the same spend: a sharper strategy, and tools that keep every brief, draft and review on it.
An agency wants senior strategy and an AI practiceAgenciesStrategy for a pitch or a key client, and help building AI into how the agency works, without hiring a head of either.
The busywork is crowding out the ideasCreative teamsVersions, resizes, rewritten briefs, the same feedback again. We build the repeatable parts into tools so the team's time goes to the work that needs judgment.
Your AI product has to fit how marketers workAI product & design teamsA capable tool that doesn't fit the workflow, the brand or the approvals goes unused. We bring the marketer's view of where it fits and how it gets adopted.
You pay for Copilot or ChatGPT, and little has changedMarketing teamsLicences bought, a few people drafting emails, no agreed use. We pick one job that matters and build the tool for it.
AI is on the agenda, with no clear ownerLeadership teamsPressure from the board or the market, scattered pilots and no agreed place to start.
Growth has outpaced your marketingGrowing businessesYou need senior marketing leadership now: between hires, or before a full-time CMO makes sense.

Two ways in

Start with either problem.

Marketing services

01

Brand & positioning

When the brand or the story has stopped working, we rebuild it: customer and market insight, positioning, brand architecture and messaging.

02

Go-to-market & launch

Take a product or service to market with a clear launch narrative, a channel plan, sales enablement and the measures that show whether it worked.

03

Customer experience & loyalty

Fix the journey and the communications around it, and give customers a reason to come back, from loyalty program design to the in-store and digital experience.

04

Marketing leadership & agency oversight

Set the plan, lead the team and direct the agencies, with a budget and measures your leadership team signs off on.

AI outcomes and deliverables

01

Research & insight

Agents that turn customer data, reviews and conversations into one clear picture of the customer.

02

Planning

Tools that pressure-test positioning, messaging and options against that customer picture before money is spent.

03

Team workflows

Complex, multi-step work turned into consistent workflows that close the handoffs between research, strategy, design and build.

04

Customer experiences

AI experiences built for clients' customers, running on live engagements.

Built by Keefe for Salient + Honeymoon's own teams first, then put to work on live client engagements. The details belong to those clients; on a call, we're happy to walk you through how the work was done.

You don't need to buy both. Either door leads to the same approach; we bring the second perspective when it changes the answer.

How Forward Deployed Marketing works

AI for marketing. Built by a marketer.

We won't force AI into work that doesn't need it. And we won't ignore it when it would change the answer. Whichever way you come in, the work follows the same three steps.

01

Connect

Break down the silos that stop value being realized. Research, sales, service, marketing and product each hold part of the customer picture. We get insight and work moving between them, with AI as the enabler, toward measures they share.

02

Identify

Choose. A short, ranked set of opportunities, weighed on value, cost, risk and time to impact, including what not to do. A decision, not a deck.

03

Activate

Make it real, usually as a tool your team runs: a brief drafted from customer research, an on-brand first draft, a check against the positioning. Sometimes a sharper strategy or a redesigned workflow. Measures agreed up front.

Work with us

Three ways to engage.

Senior strategic capability inside your team, without a full-time hire. Come through either door, or simply because you need a senior perspective in the room.

Fractional

Ongoing

Ongoing, inside your team: we start with your strategy, build it into the tools your team uses, keep them sharp and build the next one. Agencies included.

Project

Fixed scope and fee

A defined problem with a clear outcome: your first tool in about six weeks, a repositioning, a launch or a customer-experience fix.

Advisory

Monthly

A senior sounding board for a leadership team, or for a team already running its tools: we review, advise and plan the next build.

Tools run on AI you may already pay for, each with an owner and a measure agreed first. Keefe leads every engagement and designs every tool; technical partners build where it takes more than Copilot or ChatGPT.

About

Led by Keefe Lee.

I founded Greater Sum as a Forward Deployed Marketing consultancy: I work inside the client's team, start with the strategy and design the AI tools that carry it into everyday work.

It takes three disciplines that usually sit in different firms. I've led all three.

Marketing and creative services, product and experience design, and AI enablement and adoption overlap in Forward Deployed Marketing. 01 Marketing & creative services 02 Product & experience design 03 AI enablement & adoption Forward Deployed Marketing
Marketing & creative services01I built or rebuilt the strategy practice at four agencies, with creative and design teams in my mandate, and led the agency-of-record pitches that effectively doubled one agency's billings in two years.
Product & experience design02I led the product development and experience team behind the digital platform of one of Canada's largest retail pharmacy brands, and directed journey and loyalty design for restaurant and entertainment brands.
AI enablement & adoption03As a co-founder of Salient + Honeymoon, I led customer experience strategy and founded the agency's AI practice: research, insight and planning tools used in production on live client work.

I started Greater Sum so a good strategy doesn't stop at the deck.

Shameless Obligatory Logo Board26
  • Sweetgreen
  • Tilley
  • Dove
  • Coors
  • Labatt
  • Shoppers Drug Mart
  • Kraft Heinz
  • Revlon
  • Axe
  • JCPenney
  • Pier 1
  • EQ Bank
  • American Express
  • Canon
  • Samsung
  • Dave & Buster's
  • Signet Jewelers
  • Jared
  • Staples
  • Sleep Country
  • Hatley
  • World Vision
  • US Foods
  • Elte
  • Avenue Road
  • Shaw Media
Keefe on LinkedIn

Book a call

Find your greater sum.

Tell us what's going on01Where you're starting and what the business need is. We'll reply to set a time.
A 30-minute call02The problem, what's been tried and what success would look like. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so.
A short proposal03If there's a fit: the focus, the shape of the engagement, who's involved, how we'll measure it and the fee.
Where are you starting?