Liza Simpson — brand strategy, creative direction, campaign delivery

The short version, in numbers

20×

Monthly online revenue over five years, still growing 40% on average

$12M

Acquisition of a brand whose strategy and commerce platform I built

2×

Black Friday online, this year’s projection against last year

$200k

Product app built and delivered this year

30+

Largest marketing team led, plus global offshore technology teams

5 years

Longest single engagement, as their acting CMO

How I work with founders and their teams

Good marketing starts well before the campaign. I work with founders to get clear on where the business is going, what the numbers are telling us, and what needs to happen next, then make sure the right people are in place to execute it.

01~~Direction~~

Getting clear on what we're actually trying to achieve

Before we talk channels, campaigns or content, I want to understand the commercial goal. Where does the business need to go? What's getting in the way? And where will marketing have the greatest impact? That clarity gives the team something meaningful to build towards.

02~~Commercials~~

Making marketing accountable to the numbers

I look beyond clicks, leads and ROAS to understand what marketing is contributing to the business. Margin, acquisition cost, conversion, retention and profitability all matter. I make the numbers visible, identify what's working and what isn't, and use them to make better decisions about where we invest next.

03~~Execution~~

Turning strategy into work that actually gets done

A strategy is only useful if the team can execute it. I translate the plan into clear priorities, ownership and expectations, then work alongside internal teams, agencies and specialists to keep things moving. Everyone knows what matters, what they own and what success looks like. I have led marketing teams of thirty or more, and global offshore technology teams before that.

04~~Resourcing~~

Building the right team without building unnecessary cost

More people isn't always the answer. I help founders work out what capability they actually need, what should sit in-house, what should be outsourced, and where specialist support makes more sense. The goal is a marketing function that has the capability to grow without carrying unnecessary overhead.

What I own, week to week

Not a strategy deck and a handover. I write the plan, brief the creative, sit in the edit, sign the buy, and check the display at shelf.

01~~Brand~~

Brand advertising and out-of-home

Concept through to rollout and cost control. I brief and manage production partners, negotiate and schedule the buy, then hold the spend against it.

TVC production
Linear TV
Streaming & CTV
Roadside outdoor
YouTube in-feed

02~~Shelf~~

Packaging, print and in-store display

I manage the designers who produce in-store displays and hold the quality line on what gets printed and built. A beautiful campaign dies at a badly made floor bin.

Packaging artwork
Print production
Brochures & catalogues
Display design management
Large format
Distributor review

03~~Creative~~

Creative direction and casting

Finding the right creators, not the available ones, then directing them to work that stops a thumb inside the first second. I've built and kept that roster.

Creator casting
Hook writing
Short-form direction
Always-on content

04~~Numbers~~

Budget and performance reporting

Building the marketing budget with the CEO and CFO, then reporting against it honestly, separating what moved sales from what moved awareness.

Budget ownership
Post-campaign reporting
Brand funnel
Media mix

05~~Launch~~

New category launches

Taking brands known for one product and making them known for a portfolio. Each new category gets its own positioning, premium proposition and go-to-market plan, with product and R&D involved early rather than at launch.

Category positioning
Go-to-market
Range reviews
R&D collaboration

06~~Build~~

Commerce and AI tooling

Headless ecommerce builds, a product app, and a set of AI tools that compress research and analysis which used to take an agency a fortnight.

Headless commerce
Product analyser
Competitor analyser
Shopping assistants

Keter Australia · agency partner and CMO, five years

Twenty times the monthly revenue, and still climbing

Outdoor living and storage. Strong product, thin marketing infrastructure. I built the function, then ran it: brand advertising, retail, marketplace and content, all against one budget. Five years in, it is still compounding.

40%

Average ongoing growth

2×

Black Friday online, projected against last year

5 yrs

Continuous engagement

Monthly online revenue across the engagement, still growing at an average of 40%. Distribution spans Bunnings, major marketplaces and independent retail.

Television and streaming

The commercial, start to finish

Storyboard and production. I managed the storyboarding and the production with the team at Burning House, through to delivery of the broadcast masters.
Six months on the Seven Network. Placed and scheduled with Kenstar Media. A full linear flight, weighted and delivered to budget.
The streaming network. I manage every commercial placement across the streaming and connected-TV platforms.

30-second television commercial: "It's Better Than Good. It's Keter."

30 sec

Broadcast master, plus cutdowns

6 months

Continuous flight, on air

Seven

National network

+ CTV

Streaming network, ongoing

Production: Burning House · Media buying: Kenstar Media · Broadcast: Seven Network, 2025

Print, packaging and in-store display

The last metre is where campaigns get won or wasted

Retailers don't care that the television campaign was good if the pack is confusing and the display looks cheap. I brief and direct the designers, then hold the quality line through artwork, print and build.

Retail packaging

Printed retail panels for the Maze 180 litre geared twin tumbler carton, showing the front panel, feature lists and assembled dimensions

Carton artwork for a 180L compost tumbler: front panel, benefit panels, spec, barcode and warranty marks, laid out to the dieline

Trade and retail brochures

Keter range brochure, outer spread

Keter brochure inner spread laying out the full outdoor living range and every shed model by size

Inner spread, with the full range mapped by category and shed size

Large format and event

The Keter billboard live on a roadside site: a weathered old shed labelled Before beside a new grey shed in a styled backyard labelled After, with the line Better than good. It's Keter.

Frontlit roadside, 18.97m by 4.55m. Two frames, four words, read at speed from a moving car. Bought and managed through Billboard Australia.

Keter Resin Sheds retail banner, 700mm by 1700mm, showing the full Stronghold and Newton Plus shed range with sizes and durability features

Retail banner, 700mm × 1700mm. Range, sizes and product claims on one panel, for in-store

Large format show poster for the 6 by 4 Harmony Greenhouse with a show-only price offer

Show poster with a show-only offer, Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show

Compost Made Easy pull-up banner produced for the flower and garden show

Pull-up banner, 150cm × 53cm. Same show, product education rather than offer

Why this work is harder than an ad

A range brochure has to carry every model with correct retailer item numbers, dimensions and pack weights, sell an aspiration on the cover, and finish by walking a customer through the retailer's own ordering process. A shopper standing at the special orders desk with the wrong item number is a lost sale. I have produced these for Bunnings special orders as well as for Keter.

Packaging is the same discipline with less room. The front panel has three seconds to say what the product is, the side panels have to answer every objection a shopper has while holding the box, and all of it has to fit a dieline.

Brand at the front, complete and accurate trade data behind it. That is the job.

Packaging artwork to dieline: front panel, benefit and spec panels, barcodes, compliance and warranty marks.
Print production, end to end. Artwork through to print-ready files, proofing and sign-off across brochures, catalogues, POS and large format.
Display design management. Briefing and directing designers to the highest quality in-store executions, then approving the print and the build.
Retailer-aligned collateral built to the trading calendar and the retailer's own systems, including item numbers, range data and ordering paths.
Event and activation builds such as show posters, pull-up banners and stand graphics, produced to spec and on site when it counts.
Distributor and reseller review so the brand doesn't drift in work produced outside the business.

Campaign creative for Bambody

Bambody · strategy, media and platform

Built the strategy, ran the ads, built the platform, and it sold

Developed the marketing strategy for the brand and ran the advertising against it.
Built a headless ecommerce platform, the commercial infrastructure the brand traded on.
Acquired by a German company for $12 million.

$12M

Acquisition

Headless

Custom commerce platform, built and shipped

Women's

Intimate apparel category

Connetix Tiles · outsourced marketing partner, from 2022

An Australian toy brand, opened across the United States

Managed the advertising budget across the account, reporting performance to the founders.
Built and ran the affiliate program as a growth channel in its own right, not an afterthought.
Ran public relations and secured national broadcast coverage, including a segment on the Channel 9 Morning Show.
Opened hundreds of wholesale accounts across the United States, translating into millions of dollars of trade business.

100s

US wholesale accounts opened

$millions

Trade revenue generated

Nine

National television coverage, unpaid

Connetix 104 piece Bright Creative Pack magnetic tiles retail packaging

Retail packaging, the product as it lands on shelf in the US

Maze Products · campaign lead

Reach bought with education rather than media spend

A female-skewed audience that paid media couldn't reach efficiently. So we went to where she already is: schools, garden shows, and national gardening television.

$200k

App build, delivered

Nine

Full product segment on The Garden Gurus

National

Schools program across Australia

A national schools program across Australia: discounted product paired with informational material, used as a distribution and awareness channel rather than an ad buy.
Secured and produced a segment on The Garden Gurus, Nine's national gardening program. A full product feature won on merit rather than paid for as advertising, with the range placed in the hands of a trusted presenter.
Built and delivered the compost tracking app for the product range, a $200,000 build finished this year that turns a physical product into a connected one with its own data and community.

The compost tracking app

Six screens from the Maze compost tracking app: a home dashboard, a monthly landfill-diverted tracker with statistics, a chat answering a composting question, a Leaders in Composting leaderboard, a knowledge library of how-to videos and articles, and a community feed

A $200,000 build, delivered this year. It logs what a household diverts from landfill, answers composting questions, ranks users on a state leaderboard, and carries a library of how-to content. It turns a plastic tumbler into a reason to open an app every week, giving a hardware brand first-party data and a retention loop it would not otherwise have.

The segment, on Nine

The Garden Gurus, Nine Network. A Maze walk-in greenhouse featured across a full segment. It now sits on the brand's own product pages as a permanent trust asset, which is the part paid media can't buy.

A network of over 100 creators, built and kept

Over 100 creators across female-skewed consumer categories, built up over years and maintained. A campaign starts with a phone call rather than a cold outreach list, at rates set by an existing relationship, and I can brief, cast and be in production inside a week.

100+

Creators on the roster

<1 wk

Brief to in production

3

Categories: outdoor, garden, beauty

Owned

Relationships, not an agency markup

Cast on audience overlap

Not follower count. It is the metric that actually predicts whether the ad returns.

Hooks written first

Written before the brief goes out, so the creator is not guessing what the first second has to do.

One shoot, many cuts

Offers, seasonal refreshes and platform variants from the same day of filming.

Always on

Not launch-only. A standing content calendar running between the big brand bursts.

I build the tools I need rather than waiting for them

Rather than wait for software to catch up, I built my own. Each of these does the research and analysis a campaign needs before it starts: range gaps, competitor activity, what a customer is actually asking on the storefront. That leaves the time for the decisions that need a person to make them.

01~~Product~~

Product analyser

Reads a product range against the market and returns where each item is genuinely differentiated, where it isn't, and what the claim should be. Useful when a heritage brand is deciding which new category to enter first.

02~~Market~~

Competitor and content analyser

Tracks what competitors are actually running: creative, offers, positioning and the content working for them. A plan then gets built against the live market rather than last year's audit.

03~~Storefront~~

Shopping assistants

Conversational assistants that sit on the storefront and do what a good retail assistant does: narrow the range, answer the objection, and get the customer to the right product.

Happy to walk through any of it properly

The media schedules, the budgets and the post-campaign reporting are all available, including the campaigns that underperformed and what I changed because of them.

liza@lizasimpson.com.au 0423 288 330 LinkedIn