BrandMEE is now Avad Shamar Creative: same founder, same standard, a deeper build. Read the story

Strategy before anything gets built.

Avad Shamar Creative offers strategic direction for founders and leaders at a decision point. The Strategic Intensive is a two-week engagement: pre-work, a focused working session, and a written readout covering positioning, priorities, and what to build first. You own the document, with or without us afterward.

Book a Strategic Intensive See what's included

Ambition without a settled direction.

You are not short on ideas, energy, or opportunity. You're short on a decision, and the cost of not making it compounds quietly:

Every option still looks viable.

Three directions, all defensible, none chosen. The deliberation feels like diligence, but the calendar keeps moving and nothing gets built.

You can't say it in one sentence.

You know what you do. Explaining it takes four minutes and a story: which means your team, your site, and your referrals are each explaining it differently.

You're being sold the deliverable, not the answer.

Every quote you've gotten assumes the strategy is settled. Nobody has offered to help you settle it, because that part doesn't scale for them.

Spending has started anyway.

Design, ads, or a build already in motion against a direction nobody has written down. Work done on an unsettled strategy gets redone.

A brand, a website, or a campaign can only express a decision that's already been made. When the decision hasn't been made, execution becomes an expensive way to keep thinking. The Strategic Intensive exists to make the decision first: on paper, in two weeks, for a published price.

Two weeks to a direction you own.

One engagement, four parts, a fixed end date. Nothing here is a discovery call in disguise: the Intensive is the work, and the readout is yours whatever you decide next.

  1. Pre-work questionnaire

    A structured set of questions before we meet, so the session starts at depth instead of spending its first hour on background. You'll find the questions themselves clarifying.

  2. The working session

    A focused session with the decision-makers, not a presentation. We interrogate the vision, the audience, the offer, and the constraints until the real question surfaces, which is often not the one you arrived with.

  3. The written readout

    The deliverable: a positioning read, a priority roadmap in sequence, and a build recommendation naming what to do first, what to defer, and what to stop. Written to be handed to a board, a team, or another firm.

  4. The recommendation call

    We walk through the readout together, defend the reasoning, and answer the hard questions. You leave able to act on it, or to brief someone else to.

The honest answer is the deliverable.

Sometimes the readout recommends a smaller engagement than you expected, a different kind of partner, or waiting six months. We write it anyway. A strategy practice that only ever recommends its own services isn't a strategy practice.

Published, so you can decide without a call.

Most firms make you book a call to learn what things cost. We publish the Intensive's starting price because you should be able to rule us in or out on your own time.

The Strategic Intensive

Starting at $1,550

Two weeks end to end · pre-work, working session, written readout, recommendation call

  • Final price depends on how many stakeholders join the session and how much existing material we review. Confirmed before you book.
  • Credited forward: when an Intensive leads to a core engagement signed within 90 days, the fee is applied to it.
Book a Strategic Intensive

Not sure the Intensive is the right first step? Ask us, we'll tell you honestly.

For leaders who want the strategist in the room.

Some decisions don't arrive in project-sized batches. An advisory partnership keeps a strategist who already knows your context available on a standing cadence: brand governance, campaign direction, fractional creative and marketing leadership, and review of the work in flight.

  • A standing cadence. Regular strategic conversation on a schedule, so decisions get made when they arise instead of accumulating.
  • Quarterly priorities. What matters this quarter, in sequence, revisited at the end of it: the discipline most teams intend and few sustain.
  • Review of work in flight. A second read on campaigns, messaging, and creative before they ship, from someone with the full context.
  • Workshops and team training. Capability built inside your team where that's the better answer than doing it for you.

Quarterly commitment, renewing. Starting price on request. Advisory is where most engagements point once the build is done: the Steward stage of the method, made ongoing.

Start an advisory conversation

Advisory usually follows a core engagement: brand strategy and identity, a website build, or marketing and communications, but it can stand alone for leaders who already have execution covered and need the thinking partner.

The Stewardship Method

Where strategy sits in the work.

  1. Discern

    This page, essentially. The vision, audience, and constraints interrogated until the real question is named and the direction is on paper.

  2. Design

    The direction becomes a plan: sequence, scope, and what gets built first. Advisory clients revisit this quarterly rather than once.

  3. Build

    Execution against a settled strategy, by us or by someone you brief with the readout. Both are legitimate outcomes of an Intensive.

  4. Steward

    Decisions keep coming after launch. Advisory is this stage held open: the strategist stays in the room while the work compounds.

The Intensive runs two weeks end to end. Advisory partnerships run on a quarterly commitment. Both are scoped and confirmed before anything is booked.

Book a Strategic Intensive

Strategy work is hard to show: the deliverable is a document and the outcome is a decision. So here is one of each: an Intensive outcome, and an artifact from the working process.

Brand Strategy & Identity · Business

Repositioning a coaching and consulting practice for the marketplace.

Problem
A respected leader's practice had the credibility but not the system: no settled positioning, no identity that traveled beyond the room, and no front door for four very different audiences.
Move
Positioned the practice around one promise (vision into structure, structure into measurable progress), built the identity and its print and digital collateral, and wrote the website strategy blueprint: four front doors, one diagnostic on-ramp.
Outcome
A brand system in daily use across cards, letterhead, email, and the Marketplace Masterclass campaign, with the site architecture decided before a single page was designed.

Work completed under BrandMEE, now Avad Shamar Creative.

Read the case study

From the practice

A website strategy blueprint, written before a page was designed.

The Ellis Group readout settled four audiences, four front doors, and one diagnostic on-ramp, then a twenty-program catalog under four pillars. Not a slide deck of options: a written argument with the reasoning shown, so the client could decide, and the build could follow it.

Think it through before you book.

Hand-picked from Insights: how to tell whether your problem is a strategy problem, and what to do about it.

Questions we hear before an Intensive.

What is a Strategic Intensive?

A Strategic Intensive is a paid, two-week engagement that settles direction before anything gets built. It runs in four parts: a pre-work questionnaire, a focused working session, a written readout covering positioning, priority roadmap, and build recommendation, and a call to walk through it. You leave owning the document, whether or not you work with us afterward.

How much does a Strategic Intensive cost?

The Strategic Intensive starts at $1,550, a published price, which is unusual for this kind of work and deliberate on our part: a published number lets you decide without a discovery call to find out. The full price depends on how many stakeholders and how much existing material the session has to account for, and we confirm it before you book anything.

What happens if the Intensive says we shouldn't work together?

Then that is the readout, and it is still the deliverable you paid for. Some of the most valuable recommendations we've written have been "not yet," "not this," or "you need a different kind of partner for this part." The Intensive is not a sales pitch with a document attached: the honest answer is the product.

Can the Intensive fee be applied to a larger engagement?

Yes. When an Intensive leads into a core engagement signed within 90 days, the fee is credited toward it. That way the strategy step never costs you twice, and you're never choosing between getting clarity and getting started.

How is an advisory partnership different from a project?

A project has a defined scope and an end. An advisory partnership is a standing quarterly commitment: a regular cadence of strategic conversation, review of work in flight, quarterly priorities, and workshops or team training as needed. Leaders choose it when the decisions keep coming and they want the same strategist who already knows the context in the room for them.

Settle the direction first.

Bring the decision you've been circling. We'll respond within two business days with an honest read on whether an Intensive is the right first step, or whether you're further along than you think.

Book a Strategic Intensive

For leaders who need clarity before committing to a build.

Start Your Project

For leaders ready to scope an engagement.

No obligation, no pressure sequence. A real conversation about the work.