Fractional marketing lead. Or product lead. Depending on which chair is empty.
Twenty years across performance, lifestyle, licensed, and wellness — so the category doesn't need explaining, and there's no ramp-up quarter. Whichever seat I'm in, I'm credible in the other: in the marketing chair I can hold my own in a range meeting, and in the product chair I write the launch plan myself. Two to three days a week, for a season or a year. Or a single project, run end to end.
Direct: hello@brookvaleworks.com
Nearly twenty years inside the brands, agency side for some of the world's most recognised names, and freelance since. Mature categories grown, broken ones fixed, and most problems along the way.
Who this is for
Two situations, mostlyYou've got the seat and not the person
A marketing or product lead down a senior head, mid-season, with a launch already in the calendar. Or a matrix where the range plan, the campaign, and the channel teams each report somewhere different and nobody owns the join. I've worked inside that structure for most of my career. I don't need it mapped for me, I don't need managing, and I won't spend your first month building a relationship with the org chart.
You are the department
A smaller business where the founder or GM is doing marketing on top of the day job, and the product decisions are getting made by whoever is in the room. Here the job is different: hold the whole function, make the calls, and build something the next hire can run. Hands on the work, not a deck about the work.
The seat
What I actually do in itSame person either way. What changes is which side leads.
In the marketing seat
Own the plan and the calendar. Positioning, campaign direction, launch sequencing across wholesale, retail, and DTC, agency and partner management, and the seasonal framework that holds it together. The difference is I can sit in the line review and argue about margin and price architecture without needing a translator, so the campaign gets built off the range that's actually shipping rather than the one in the deck.
In the product seat
Own the range. Line planning, seasonal direction, margin and price architecture, and the calls about what gets cut. Multi-category portfolios where every SKU justified its place on sell-through. And the launch plan comes with it — the range doesn't get handed over the wall with a spreadsheet and a hope.
Either way
Happy to be in the doing, not just the deciding. Range brief, campaign framework, launch plan, the awkward email to the distributor — I'll pick up whatever the team hasn't got the hours for, and I'm not precious about which end of it I'm at.
How it works
Three ways inFractional lead
Two to three days a week, minimum a season, usually longer. Your meetings, your calendar, your P&L. I take a seat and hold it, including the parts nobody enjoys.
Project
One defined thing, run end to end. A range rebuild, a launch, a repositioning, a market entry. Scoped up front with a date on it.
Audit
Two to three weeks. Range structure, margin, channel mix, and brand position, read against the market you're in rather than the one the last deck described. You get the honest version, including the parts nobody wants to say out loud. Some people stop here. Most don't.
Working with me
What the first month looks likeI'll want the sell-through, the margin file, and half an hour with whoever runs sales, in the first week. I'll disagree with you in the room and back the decision outside it. If something turns up that nobody wants to hear, you'll hear it early rather than in a final presentation.
I write for the people who have to build from it, so the plan survives a handover and a change of staff. And I'd rather leave you with something your team can run than something that needs me in it.
Twenty years between the range plan and the campaign. The problem is almost never a sport problem.
Background
Where the judgement comes fromProduct and category
Six years at ASICS across performance apparel, licensed, and Sportstyle. Multi-category portfolio, full performance-to-lifestyle spectrum. Read the lifestyle-crossover shift while it was still only visible in the sell-through and built the range for it. Rebuilt a licensed range by cutting it back rather than extending it, which is almost always the harder argument to win internally.
Marketing leadership
Regional and global across ANZ, EMEA, and North America. Brand strategy, creative direction, integrated campaigns, physical activation. Repeated reset work: define the consumer, rebuild assortment and price architecture around that answer, handle the move from performance into activewear without losing the heritage that made the brand worth buying. Revitalised the Wallabies and Cricket Australia at ASICS.
Innovation and go-to-market
Dunlop Slazenger to Beijing 2008, then Speedo through the London 2012 and Rio 2016 cycles — the work that happens in the years before the Games, not during them.
Agency side
Senior account management on above-the-line and acquisition campaigns for financial services, working to named tracking metrics. Useful mainly because it's where I learnt that the split between product and marketing isn't a sport problem — it shows up the same way in a building society.
What one calendar looks like
The version I'm trying to get toSix years at Speedo, across two Olympic cycles, product and brand ran on one calendar. Dull to describe, rare to sit inside.
Range brief and campaign brief written in the same fortnight, off the same read. Sales know the story before the samples land. Retail gets the idea the film got, in the same language. A line moves in the range and marketing hears that week, not at sell-in.
That's the version of the job I'm trying to get to in every engagement, at whatever scale the business can carry.
Field Notes
On product, brand & rangeWhere the point of view earns its keep. Longer arguments on the things above, written to be read by people with the same problem.
Jul 2026 N-003Why most range plans are too big, and what it costs
→Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Jun 2026 N-002The lifestyle trap in performance brands
→Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem.
May 2026 N-001One calendar: fixing product and marketing misalignment
→Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt.
Start a Conversation
Direct, no forms committeeYou don't need to have diagnosed it first. "We're down a head of marketing and there's a launch in March." "Forty lines added in three years and nobody can say which ones work." "Sales are fine and margin isn't." That's enough. Tell me which seat is empty, or which problem is in front of you, and I'll tell you what I think it is and whether I'm the right person for it.
Direct: hello@brookvaleworks.com · LinkedIn