Strategic Pitch Marketing

11/10/2026

5am to 8pm. 10 locations, 32 degree's, two train crossings, 1 car crash, 1 oversized vehicle (stop traffic), & a really passionate and committed team.

A good shoot ends the weekly content scramble & lets you actually plan. That’s 12 months of real, on-brand imagery locked in for this client.

When’s your next shoot booked? & Do you have the right photographer locked in?
Watch for my next post to explain further.

09/10/2026

Four people you should never lie to. The last one’s me 😂

Jokes aside, PR advice is only as good as the information behind it. If I only get the polished version, I can’t pre-empt what’s coming, plan the response or protect your reputation properly.

It’s why I work with people I genuinely like. The kind of relationship where I can say it how it is, you don’t take offence & we keep talking. Like those quirky, close friendships we all need; complete & utter honesty, both ways.

Tell me everything. Especially the bits you’d rather not.

06/10/2026

Monday done right ☕ (& yes, I remembered the selfie this time).

Coffee at First Light with Amy-Lea Madden (nee Pettigrew), & as always the conversation went everywhere. Baby loss. Business branding. Plenty of detours in between.

It's real, it's easy, & ideas bounce around until something good lands. Those are the conversations that fuel me for the week.

Already counting down to our next catch-up.

30/09/2026

Anyone who knows me knows I am NOT a sporty person.
If it’s not wheelchair rugby, or now one of my kids’ sports, I really couldn’t care less. 😂

Until last Sunday........The Knights made the Grand Final this Sunday & somehow, within a week, I’ve gone from zero interested.

So this Sunday = TV on, Friends coming over, & Seriously caring & hoping for Knights to win. I don;t even really understand the game or its structure or rules.

How am I suddenly invested, well...... There is this excitement, hype, this deep engrained passion in ppl, the camaraderie is bringing out, & of course the FOMO if you don't get on board - cos its everywhere.
Then there is the feeling that you might actually be part of a pretty bloody big moment for Newcastle and its team. I’ve even found myself watching old premiership wins, videos of the Knights coming back into Newcastle, the celebrations of another BIG WIN… all of it. Ahhh User Generated Content, you’ve gotten me again. 😂

There’s something pretty powerful about seeing everyone else care so much that suddenly… you care too. Anyway. Sunday, our TV will be on, & until then, I will be asking, are these Rooster peeps any good? What's the Knights chances?

https://www.nrl.com/news/2026/09/27/sandon-smith-try2/?

Sandon Smith scores a try for the Knights in their Round 30 clash with the Panthers

24/09/2026

Networking without the cliques. It's real, & it happened on Friday.

The WIBAS breakfast was a breath of fresh air: genuine people, no one working the room, & a brilliant talk from Vanessa Panayi on Better Humans, Better Business.

Throw in breakfast served to the table, that ocean view & a smooth vanilla latte from the cafe on the way in (percolated wasn't going to cover it last Friday) & it was a morning well spent.

Lovely to catch up with Louise Rodman & to meet Gemma, a certification specialist new to the Newcastle market.

23/09/2026

Two weeks with barely a voice & almost everything done over email. Tell ya what, so much gets lost in translation.

Email is handy, but imo it strips out the human bits: tone of voice, the pause, the smile, the look that says "hang on, let's unpack that." Without them, people fill in the gaps themselves, & not always kindly.

With clients, here's how I rank it:
🌿Face to face builds trust fastest
🌿A phone call keeps the warmth & saves twenty emails
🌿Email makes it official: it confirms what we've already talked through & puts it in writing
🌿Email as your main way of talking should be the last resort

I've missed the chats so much. I've felt far less connected, & it's reminded me why I do business the way I do. Nearly through the antibiotics & can't wait to be back out there, voice & all.

If it matters, pick up the phone, then send the email.
Call, coffee or inbox: what's your go-to?

16/09/2026

Value education? Yep. I’m a sucker for it.
On the weekend, we did our annual family trip to the The University of Newcastle, Australia Book Fair & came home with around 30 'new' books for $50-odd dollars.

That would normally buy us about two books - so feels like a bargain. Our house LOVES books, so this is one of those things we look forward to every year. It also got me thinking about the value of things that educate, entertain & get reused - rather than constantly buying new.

Which also means it’s probably time for us to go through our own bookshelves & pull out 20-30 books the kids have grown out of, or that we’ve read so many times we could probably recite them, and hand on to others or donate back to the Uni book fair peeps for re-selling in 2027.

They collect book donations all year, lay them out across the Uni's Great Hall & sell for over four days in Sept each year.

This year was 45,000-odd books. Wowzers. What a brilliant concept though. Books get a second (or third, fourth, fifth!) life, people get access to education & entertainment for next to nothing, & the money raised goes back into supporting university students through scholarship(s) funding.

A pretty good reminder that value doesn’t always mean buying something brand new. Sometimes it’s already sitting on someone else’s bookshelf. ❤️

11/09/2026

This is what I mean when I talk about strategic marketing.

Take KitKat. “Have a break. Have a KITKAT.”
They’ve spent decades owning the idea of a break. So when KitKat partners with R U OK? to encourage people to stop, connect & ask someone “Are you OK?”, it doesn’t feel random.
It makes sense. It fits the brand they’ve already built, & that’s the clever bit.

KitKat isn’t suddenly trying to become a mental health organisation. They’ve found a genuine intersection between what they stand for, what they’re famous for & something their audience actually needs.

1. Take a break.
2. Put the phone down.
3. Have a chat.
4. Check in with someone.

Then there’s the retail piece. When that U OK? conversation is happening in the real world, KITKAT is also showing up where people are actually shopping - including , with promotional activity around R U OK? Day/week & Kitkat prices.

That’s not just a social media post. It’s brand + partnership + PR + retail + consumer behaviour + timing working together.

And from a marketing perspective, THAT is what I love.
I bought a couple of these this week, & sent them out to different ppl, or dropped them around to front doors and then messaged a picture & a personnel check in message - leveraging the effort KitKat & R U Ok day, & for that matter, have already gone to.

🍫

07/09/2026

A great Friday spent at the Gen Collective Level Up event last Friday!
Be you authentically, & everything else will follow. It's working for me. :)