Get Stirred Up is a boutique brand strategy and design firm with offerings ranging from positioning and naming to identity development, website design, and production of internal and external communications collateral.
Organizations in the healthcare, financial services, B2B, and retail sectors turn to us when they need to level up their branding at key inflection points. They bank on our 30+ year track record as creative catalysts and serial entrepreneurs, appreciating that we've been in their shoes — running operations, making critical decisions, and looking to create value at every step along the way.
Sometimes we’re called in to create entirely new brand assets. At other times, we’re asked to refine or update them. In all cases, our goal is to make sure every component of our clients’ brand system delivers dramatic results.
Just like “home staging” is a way for realtors to increase transaction value by showcasing a property’s best features, our Brand Staging™ process ensures an organization’s branding will boost revenue, value and impact for all sorts of key business objectives.
Optimizing branding for a potential merger or sale has obvious benefit. A strong brand is one of those intangible assets that can really drive up valuation.
But Brand Staging is equally effective in helping organizations attract talent in a fiercely competitive category, increase asset value when securing capital, or generate immediate credibility with customers in new channels. It’s also a way for an organization to re-establish leadership in a sudden copycat environment or become relevant to an entirely new audience on entirely new platforms.
We’re a Brand Strategy + Design Duo.
David leads strategy with an eye towards design.
Rick leads design with a strategic mindset.
WE are what our clients sign up for — not an agency. They bank on our unique combination of branding chops and founders’ DNA. And they like that we adopt their brands as if they were our own.
Shining a spotlight on blind spots is a hallmark of how David approaches brand strategy and business growth. This has been evident throughout his career—as an advisor to early-stage and mid-cap CEOs, as a “serial” and “cereal” entrepreneur, in his corporate roles in the travel and publishing fields, and during his time spent as a corporate communications consultant.
David’s education is not in business. He completed his graduate studies in human development at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Those studies, along with his innate sensibility, have provided him with a unique framework for investigating and articulating just how a good idea can become a viable business and how that, in turn, can become a recognizable brand. And with the right combination of strategy and design, that brand can evolve into something that is imperative.
The circuitous path that David’s career has taken began with a communications consulting practice in San Francisco, where he worked on M&A matters for Wells Fargo Bank and addressing sensitive issues in the workplace for Bank of America. Following a more personal passion, he moved on from consulting to start the first-ever culinary travel magazine, Palate and Spirit. This experience led to David being offered the role of Associate Publisher of Fodor’s and Mobil Travel Guides at Random House, and consulting opportunities with The New York Times and Time-Life Custom Publishing.
Expanding on his publishing experience, David began helping companies create more experiential ways to better connect with their customers. Eventually, that consulting work became the catalyst for David to conceive of, launch and serve as CEO of the multi-unit retail business, Cereality Cereal Bar & Cafe. David received backing for Cereality from PepsiCo’s Quaker Foods division and subsequent licensing revenues from Mars, Old Navy, Dodge, and others. With seven company-owned stores in operation and 26 franchised units under contract, Cereality was acquired in 2007 by Kahala Corporation, the global franchising company behind Cold Stone Creamery.
After the acquisition of Cereality, David and Rick made it their mission to help others in a broad range of industries “see reality” through the brand staging work they do at Get Stirred Up.
Clients often ask Rick how he comes up with his design solutions. They’re intrigued by his process. That’s because he approaches design from a very strategic, whole-branded-system mindset, as opposed to a purely aesthetic one. What he “comes up with” often isn’t obvious. It often is surprising and uncomplicated, however. But most importantly, it always aims to be distinctive, carefully thought-out and systematically executed.
This approach to design and creative direction comes from Rick’s BFA with classic training in graphic design at York University and his good fortune of landing his first job as Nortel Network’s first in-house designer. Over his six years with Nortel, he became senior designer of a growing art department. It was in that role where Rick designed and produced all sorts of corporate collateral and multi-media presentations for the company’s CEO.
Exiting the fast-paced corporate design department of a very large high-tech company, Rick made a sharp right turn to become the art director for the publications division of the highly acclaimed James Beard Foundation in New York. In his role at JBF, Rick was in charge of designing and art directing all publications and collateral, ranging from a monthly magazine to materials for special events and their annual Awards Gala.
Following his time at JBF, Rick teamed up with David to handle the design needs for his consulting practice. At the same time, working with a New York design firm, he became involved in the entertainment industry, designing various promotional materials, collateral and packaging for such brands as HBO, PBS, BusinessWeek, Nikon and others.
As co-founder and chief creative officer of Cereality, Rick was the brain behind the brand’s distinctive look and feel, designing all elements of the brand experience—including its identity, café design and layout, packaging, and all communications. In 2006, the Foodservice & Packaging Institute, in partnership with QSR Magazine, awarded Rick First-Place in “The WOW Factor!” category for Cereality’s “My Cereal. My Way.” custom-cereal-box. The Cereality Sloop™—the company’s unique spoon-straw utensil designed by Rick—also received an award, in the same category.
Rick’s work has been acknowledged in various publications and is a featured case study in Alina Wheeler’s book, Designing Brand Identity.