Allison Marchesani Ackerman Making High Quality Marketing Support Accessible To The Next Generation Of Mission-driven Challenger Brands

At Cortland Consulting, we believe in making high quality marketing support accessible to the next generation of mission-driven challenger brands. We start with why, build from emotion, ground our work in consumer insights, to build brands consumers can’t help but fall in love with. We roll up our sleeves and grow our clients’ businesses side by side.

What motivated you to become an entrepreneur? Is having your own business something you always wanted?

I started Cortland after I left the first job I ever loved. I had joined the Sir Kensington's team fresh off a two-year commitment with Teach for America when the brand was just an ankle biter for Heinz / Hellmann’s. I got my first taste of entrepreneurship as part of the young team wearing many hats, making hard decisions, taking calculated risks. I spent my time there working my way through marketing functions, helping to grow the company from challenger brand through Unilever acquisition, and learning a lot along the way. 

After we were an acquired brand, my day-to-day evolved and the role was no longer the job I fell in love with. I made the difficult choice to leave Sir Kensington's to find the joy of building again. I founded Cortland Consulting to work with emerging food brands, helping our clients identify their core consumer, communications strategy, and impactful tactics that growing budgets can actually afford. 

What advice would you give to someone starting out or pivoting their business or their career?

Depending on your industry, consider launching with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) so you can test and learn without investing too much, too early. The first year or so of my business was conducted from my gmail account without the name Cortland Consulting - and no one batted an eye.

I have networked with so many aspiring consultants over the years hung up on the perfect company name, website, logo etc. when the thing that really matters is what you know how to do and how you execute. Awesome branding and a buttoned up website may be a confidence boost and fun for you as a marketer to do, but it’s not going to help you figure out where your prospective customers are and what exactly they need from you!

How do you succeed in business without really trying? Aka: What are some of your best hacks and things you automate in your business?

I am a pretty diligent note taker, and our team has aligned on a way of organizing our notes using OneNote. It has a cloud feature that means my team can all sync and add to the relevant notes and stay up to speed.

I think perhaps even more important than note taking though, is building in time for yourself to process notes. Our standard meeting length is 45 minutes so we can have some of that time built in to send recaps with actions needed and input actions into our project manager of choice. We swear by Asana on our team, but there are a lot of options out there! During my work blocks or even a few free minutes, it is easy to scan Asana and accomplish a few things.

My other favorite automation tool is Calendly - gone are the days of emailing back and forth sharing availability for an upcoming meeting. I have a few different meeting types of varying lengths and with a quick share of the appropriate link, scheduling is so much easier!

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