❋ strategy. brand. operations.
Hello. I’m Lauren Clarke, a brand strategist turned operator, I build better brands, which make better businesses.
Have a look at my portfolio.
Brand strategist turned operator. Fifteen years across creative agencies in the UK and Canada. I step into companies that have lost focus and rebuild the systems that connect brand, product, customer experience, and execution.
My expertise
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Finding those penny dropping truths that lead to a new way of looking at a problem.
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Ability to define the core idea behind a brand and connect it directly to the product, market positioning, and customer moment. -
Building scalable brand systems, guidelines, and templates that allow design to work consistently across product, marketing, and corporate surfaces.
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Working closely with product, research, engineering, and marketing to ensure brand thinking is embedded in product decisions rather than applied after the fact.
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Managing and developing teams, raising the quality bar of the work, and building a strong culture of accountability, craft, and continuous improvement.
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Ensuring brand is expressed inside the product experience, not just marketing materials.
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Building clear processes and operating rhythms that enable teams to deliver consistently high-quality work.
My professional Experience
Rebel.com | Ottawa, CA
January 2025 – January 2026
As Managing Director I took on leadership of a $10M+ revenue registrar and hosting business and spent the first year stabilizing and right-sizing the company, identifying cost leaks, simplifying operations, rebuilding the brand, and refocusing the strategy to create a more sustainable foundation.
I also led the reinvention of the brand, repositioning it around the core moment of creating a domain and building a modern system that could scale across the product and customer experience.
Alphabet Creative | Ottawa, CA
October 2023 – June 2024
Anyday | Toronto, CA
April 2021 – September 2023
As Strategy Director, I lead our agency’s overall approach to creative strategy and planning. Providing business-relevant perspectives and strategic consulting on brand and communication challenges at a C-Suite level. Strong grasp of the market, cultural trends and deep consumer understanding that feed into strategic insights. Focused on creating clear, pithy positioning and focused messaging and brand identities for clients needing to dig deeper into who they are and how they want to be presented to the world. Accountable for planning, executing and optimizing marketing strategies encompassing various channels to maximize brand visibility.
Purple | London, UK
August 2021 – August 2022
CORE | Toronto, CA
Nov 2020 - March 2022
As Senior Strategy Consultant my role was to understand the business issues and specific targets of clients in order to generate creative communication plans that are differentiated, relevant and impactful. Providing strategic insight and messaging recommendations, articulate powerful brand positioning, brand narratives, analysis of brand DNA and cultural values. Establishing KPIs upfront and track performance for continued learnings and optimization.
As Digital Strategy Director at CORE I was responsible for building data-driven, technology enabled, brand experiences. Leading the creation of digital brand roadmaps, ecosystem architectures, strategic brand frameworks, campaign strategies and content. Managed, lead, recruited, and mentored colleagues and independent consultants.
Radley Yeldar | London, UK
Sep 2016 - March 2020
As Director of Strategy and Client Services I focused on collaborating with internal teams and clients to craft concepts that challenge tradition and drive creative excellence. Leading a team of six, I demonstrated ability to show strong leadership and mentorship skills, always possessing the ability to influence and inspire internal and external stakeholders. Fostering a culture of innovation and experimentation; encouraging bold ideas and keeping abreast of talent in local and international markets.
As Senior Strategist at Radley Yeldar, a top agency in London, UK, I spent four years diving into brand and campaign strategy in the corporate and sustainability communications space. I was the lead strategist on £3 million account (GlaxoSmithKline). Excelled in extensive presentation and workshopping; qualitative and quantitative research, recommendations and program plans. Collaborated with cross functional project teams. formally developed strategy practice tools and thought leadership. Strong focus on evaluation and measurement; ensuring performance is linked to business strategy & objectives.
Brand is not decoration. It is direction. Clarity beats cleverness. If people cannot understand what you do, the strategy has failed. You cannot brand what the business is not willing to become. Most performance problems are not marketing problems. They are product, positioning, or operating problems. Consistency builds trust. Trust compounds into growth. Good work requires constraints. Strategy is deciding what not to do. Customers experience the whole company, not just the marketing. Leadership means removing confusion. The job is to create clarity, not control.