Karen Ann Attyah

Company: Boutique Los Angeles-based agency focused on brand strategy, design, and digital experience, with an emerging practice area in employee brand engagement (my current focus).

Responsibilities: As one of the most senior strategists and client leads, responsible for structuring engagements, building external relationships, advising C-suite executives, mentoring junior talent, and extending client partnerships.

Project Examples: Client projects focused on defining corporate brand purpose and values, identifying hurdles to employee or customer engagement, and leveraging brand communications and other change levers to drive engagement. Recent results have included decrease in employee turnover by 30% for large private manufacturing client.

Company: Leading global brand agency focused on brand strategy, customer experience, innovation, campaign activation, and design.

Responsibilities:

• Led 10+ strategists, structured and spearheaded large-scale client relationships across southern Africa.
• As member of the Executive Committee, had oversight on company strategy and investment.
• Developed specific practice areas focused on vision and purpose consulting, customer experience, and sales and marketing integration.

Client Examples:

• For Pernod Ricard's African rum brand, developed brand, portfolio and campaign strategy, increase engagement by 43% and in sell-through rate of 10% compared to the same period a year earlier.
• Developed employee brand strategy for pan-African service provider, increasing employee engagement by 32% over one year.

Company: Landor Associates is one of the world’s leading branding agencies focused on strategy, experience design, engagement, and innovation. I held the license represent and trade as Landor in southern Africa.

Responsibilities: As co-founder of the southern African office, built Landor presence on the ground, drove new business initiatives, represented the company and industry and speaking events, and led strategic brand programs.

Client example: Developed and helped executed turnaround brand strategy for one of Nigeria’s largest traditional banks, resulting in a 52% increase in account openings and a 6% increase in consumer deposits while most banks were seeing a strong decline. Work included insight generation, corporate purpose, values and positioning development testing, brand architecture, and limited campaign activation.

Company: Large Abu Dhabi-based strategic investor and operator with 15 subsidiaries in real estate, utilities, agriculture, infrastructure, transportation, and related ventures.

Responsibilities:

• As company director and member of the executive management team, responsible for implementing shared services operating model across subsidiaries, participating in subsidiary business planning, and executing general subsidiary oversight.
• Led Corporate Marketing and Communications team responsible for all PR, advertising, events, trade shows and sponsorships across the Holding Company and its subsidiaries.
• Held board member seat on hospitality and real-estate holdings.

Key Achievements:.

• PR strategy resulted in a 14% increase in trust in the institution over an eighteen-month period.
• Reduced total communications budget by over 30% over a two-year period.
• Led real estate marketing strategy that enabled the company to consistently exceeded sales reservation targets during my tenure.

Roles & companies: Worked across globally renowned branding agencies to develop leading brand strategies for a range of clients. Specific roles included:

• 2007 - Landor, Dubai (WPP), Senior Consultant
• 2005 - 2006: Arnell Group, New York (Omnicom), SVP of Strategy
• 2000 - 2004: Interbrand, New York (Omnicom), Director of Strategy

Responsibilities:

· Spearheaded insight and strategy development on client projects.

· Grew client relationships/retainers and initiated new business.

· Led strategic teams and collaborated with creative teams to ensure integrated solutions were flawlessly implemented.

· Provided thought leadership and insights into contemporary branding issues.

Client Examples:

· Led branding / positioning and product / portfolio strategies for several CPG companies including launching new health foods into the US market. Responsible for managing consumer insight work to define portfolio, USP, messaging, and preliminary channel strategies.

· Redesigned product/service communication strategies and brand / naming architectures for global software manufacturers. Worked closely with design and marketing communication teams to ensure successful implementation.

· Led re-brand strategies for several of the US’s largest financial services companies. Scope included analysis, idea creation, messaging strategy, brand architecture, internal branding/engagement and launch tactics.

Company: Global management consulting firm specializing in long-term business strategy for Fortune 500 clients across all industries and sectors.

Responsibilities: Designed and executed management consulting projects, managed team schedules, and ensured quality of deliverables.

Skills Developed: Became adept at cost modeling, customer strategy and market entry strategy development based on work for technology and CPG clients.