Brand strategist, advisor and company builder.
Clear thinking for consequential decisions.
For more than three decades, I’ve helped founders, leadership teams and agencies understand what makes a brand matter—and turn that understanding into decisions, communications and growth.
Today, I’m Co-Founder and CMO of Simulacra, a Causal AI company changing how organizations use research to make decisions. I also selectively advise companies, founders and agencies facing difficult questions about their brand, audience or direction.
Thirty some odd years in advertising, branding and marketing has taught me that the kernel of truth of a brand is at the heart of its story and development. It is what creates relevancy and lasting profits. It is what makes people love the brands they buy.
And it is this kernel of truth that comes from people: the founders, owners and builders of companies. It's what infuses their products and the brands they create with a uniqueness and purpose.
I love to help you sharpen your focus on brand innovation, integration, development and positioning, so you can provide your own solutions and enable your brands to respond successfully in market.
Gerard Schweitzer
Brand Strategist • Advisor • Co-Founder, Simulacra
Core Beliefs
The Brand is the most important asset of any company.
The deeper the emotional connection to a brand, the greater the results.
Emotional distance is the enemy of brand development and management.
A brand must find its voice to emotionally gain attention and drive sales.
EXPERIENCE
Judgment built over decades.
Advertising, brand strategy, research, company building and AI—all connected by one discipline: understanding people.
Brand & Positioning
Finding the essential truth in a brand, clarifying its position and building a strategy people can understand, believe and act on.
Audience & Research
Bringing qualitative and quantitative research together to reveal the motivations, audiences and opportunities that numbers alone often miss.
Communications & Growth
Turning strategy into identity, voice and communications.
Aligning teams around work that earns attention, trust and growth.
Company Building & AI
Helping leadership teams make difficult choices and organize around what matters.
Using new technology without losing human judgment.
ADVISORY
ADVISORY
Where experienced judgment helps most.
Selective advisory work for founders, leadership teams, agencies and investors.
Advising around Brand, Product, People
Intent & Market Relevance
Rediscovering the original intent and ambition of the brand and its organization so it can be robust once again.
Strategy Audience Positioning
Uncovering insights which are the deeper motivations that drive experiences and fuel stories that resonate with audiences. People need to find products, services and brands they can trust, use and support.
Brand Coaching
Foundation
Development
Brand Immersion Workshops
Identity & Voice
Helping the brand and the company culture extend inward and outward to impact the organization with brand values - keeping everyone on the same page for now and into the future.
Communications
Reigniting passion, re-imagining the future, reorganizing energies, refocusing strategy, re-energizing brands.
Focused thinking, doing
Clarity
My approach is to drive clarity. I pull out insights capable of generating new ideas.
Speed
I do things fast. I uncover. Like a detective, I find the deeper motivations that answer the questions at the heart of the issues.
Leadership
Mentoring
Advising
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Brand Planning
Strategy & Creative Road Map
Communications
Architecture
Problem Solving
We'll work together to get at the things that impede your ambitions. We’ll make obstacles go away.
Organization
We work with employees in order to transform the brand businesses themselves.
Market Research
Brand Proximity
Customer Qual & Quant
Audience profiling
ADVISING
WHO I WORK FOR
Formulate solutions fast. I work as a member of your team; client facing or behind the scenes.
Together we determine the way of working you prefer.
Startups
Often times, startups need the most help. We start the mission and get you to launch. From research and brand strategy to a host of other supportive services, we have the keys to ignition.
Agencies & Their Clients
We work with brand consultancies and mid-tier communications agencies to buttress client projects and sustain tong-term relationships.
Companies
We work directly with companies - sometimes as member of your crew - in the cockpit or down in engineering. Together, we determine the best support for your team.
Capital Investor Groups
As your portfolio companies mature, founder-owners will need assistance in brand and product development, sales, marketing and internal organizational fine-tuning. This is a key to explosive exits.
CLIENTS
Gerry is the real-deal - a full stack marketing and branding executive. I've had the great pleasure of working with Gerry across the entire range of marketing activities, including: developing our brand and visuals for web and product; on content and content strategy including articles, webinars, and podcasts; and on sales presentations and collateral that capture customer interest and engagement. Gerry consistently delivers customer-focused value and strategies that fit timelines, budgets, and company capabilities to drive sales and expansion opportunities with new and existing customers.
Jason Cohen, Founder/Owner, Entrepreneur, Scientist
"Of his many talents, Gerry’s strength of empathy and deep understanding of the human condition rise above the rest. He adeptly uses these unique skills to quickly build the trust of his client partners to arrive at powerful insights and ideas that come organically, passionately, and authentically. Every organization looking to tackle a difficult strategic problem should start by having a conversation with Gerry to open their eyes to all that is possible and real.”
Peter Groome, Agency founder and CEO, client CMO
I have been working with Gerry for almost 5 years. He brings the kind of international experience that is hard to find. He has passion for building brands and for marketing however his real strength is in focusing the company on what's most important - really aiming at the goal and helping us to pivot and navigate extremely challenging circumstances. Our mission is to put Ukraine on the map as the birthplace of vodka. Gerry has supported me and advised me through the most challenging business circumstances that I think any business has ever faced - the full-fledged invasion of a country. He has been there with me every step of the way navigating through serious existential threats to our business. I really appreciate the wise counsel that he brings. I can't imagine what I would do without that.
Katherine Vellinga, Founder & CEO, Zirkova Vodka
“Gerry is one of the brightest minds in the business. He breaks through the clutter and distills complex human behavior into insightful strategic nuggets.”
Steve Luttmann - Founder, Entrepreneur, Author
