Simon Pearce
Managing Partner

Simon has over 20 years of experience in bringing world-class brands to life, across industries and around the world. In addition to leading Emotif, Simon currently holds two board positions, as a non-executive director of The Wills Group and as the Chairman of Red Robin’s Innovation Council.

As a leader, Simon’s philosophy and approach reflects a synthesis of insights gleaned over many years from the diverse worlds of communications, product design, graphic design, architecture, retail operations, manufacturing and innovation.

The result is an approach that balances right brain and left brain impulses and a method that facilitates cross-disciplinary excellence in pursuit of a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts.

Clients served across consumer, corporate, and emerging brands, specifically in hospitality, retail, technology, media, consumer packaged goods, and education.

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Journal

Life Beyond the Pandemic: What Brands Can Do Now

🔦 The world that Brands operate in has changed in the blink of an eye. In order to thrive, Brands need an accurate map of the new territory that they're operating in. Our Action Checklist provides 8 things to do now, to build that map so you can adapt quickly and effectively to a new reality.

7 Certainties for Uncertain Times

🌎 We are all dealing with a lot of uncertainty at the moment. Given how bizarre and unpredictable COVID-19 has been as a disease, trying to plan a business based on what the virus may, or may not, do, could well be an exercise in futility. Read on to learn key principles for business and brand management during these unprecedented times.

Your brand is not a story: here's what it really is

🗣A lot of companies treat their brands as "stories to be told". In this post we explain how this framing makes brands overly reliant on third parties, typically media companies, to keep them in the public eye. We also show why this approach is so damaging to long-term brand health, and propose a different way of understanding your brand that can lead to long-term growth and success.

"Simon is a tremendous asset for Red Robin. My team thoroughly enjoys working with him. We leave every meeting challenged and energized as he moves seamlessly through our internal and external partner structure.I highly recommend Simon for smarts, s… — "Simon is a tremendous asset for Red Robin. My team thoroughly enjoys working with him. We leave every meeting challenged and energized as he moves seamlessly through our internal and external partner structure.
I highly recommend Simon for smarts, skills, savvy and style."
**Denny Post,** *CEO*, Red Robin Gourmet Burgers

"Simon provided both creativity and insight when we worked together on the strategy refresh for the 3M brand. He was instrumental in the strategy development as well as in finding the right words and images to bring the strategy alive."
Anne Greer, Global Chief Brand Officer, 3M

Reinventing Jobs: A 4-Step Approach for Applying Automation to Work by Ravin Jesuthasan — **Reinventing Jobs: A 4-Step Approach for Applying Automation to Work** by Ravin Jesuthasan

How to do things you thought were impossible by Tim O’Reilly
Tim O'Reilly shares years of experience and industry expertise to help entrepreneurs evolve their businesses. Understanding how all the parts of your business work together is the key to innovation, because it lets you take advantage of the capabilities provided by new technology without getting sucked into the vortex of me-too thinking that never quite seems to work out the way it does for the startups who first show its power.

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries — **The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses** by Eric Ries

Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice by Clayton M. Christensen — **Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice** by Clayton M. Christensen

"Simon was a great pleasure to work with: whip-smart, extremely strategic, creative, and a great communicator. It can be a challenge sometimes for specialists that have agency/creative background to think big-picture, systematically and strategicall… — "Simon was a great pleasure to work with: whip-smart, extremely strategic, creative, and a great communicator. It can be a challenge sometimes for specialists that have agency/creative background to think big-picture, systematically and strategically. Simon actually excels in these areas. He also listens well and is able to translate what the company/client says and needs into actionable solutions. He delivered fresh perspective when we needed them most and he's great at seeing the larger story amidst fragmented data, complex business models and varying points of view. His insights helped us to evolve and transform our brand strategy, setting the stage for breakthrough creative and brand ID systems. I look forward to working with Simon again."
**Alexis Cardona,** *Global CMO,* Transitions Optical

How Too Many Rules at Work Keep You From Getting Things Done
by Yves Morieux
Modern work - from waiting tables to crunching numbers to dreaming up new products - is about solving brand-new problems every day, flexibly, in brand-new ways. But as Yves Morieux shows in this insightful talk, too often, an overload of processes and sign-offs and internal metrics keeps us from doing our best.