Kazolu (Kah-zOH-Loo) Consulting provides processes to develop effective communication, marketing plans, strategy, brand audits, copywriting, and content. We work to clarify complexity, focusing on your strengths, value and purpose.
Sharing value and inspiring action can be challenging. Your purpose, story, and brand may be difficult to define, and even harder to articulate. We will help you to understand your brand and share that value simply, so your audience may better understand the value you offer.
Before you invest in marketing, you need to understand your brand. Kazolu will help you develop, understand, and communicate the value of your business, your organization, or yourself.
Kazolu (Kah-zOH-Loo) Consulting is based in Guelph, Ontario. We provide brand audits, brand identity development, marketing plans, business plans, copywriting, and content. Kazolu collaborates with our clients to develop coherent brand stories and compelling identities.
Kazolu is managed by Rob McLean, who draws on a team of associates to provide flexibility with tactical implementation and creative styles if required.
Kazolu works regionally and nationally with various businesses, individuals, brands, companies, and organizations to provide strategic brand communications that are consistent and actionable.
Kazolu's roots are in brand consulting, strategic planning, copywriting and content production. Clients receive copy & content, strategic brand plans, marketing counsel, and tactical recommendations. We have previously worked with large corporations, independent entrepreneurs and SMEs, universities and colleges, not-for-profit organizations, individual products, and individuals.
Kazolu will be a part of your team, providing solutions you expect from a member of your organization.
Ideas are delicate and complicated. They are the core of a good conversation and the foundation of a good business. Everyone has good ideas, but ideas must be empowered to make a difference — they must be acted upon to have value. That is when an idea becomes an innovation. Ideas reach their full potential when expressed creatively and convincingly and when they are acted upon with focus and intention. Ideas drive things forward.
Every breakthrough you achieve begins with a good idea. The best ideas can appear sporadically and infrequently, but with time, patience and research, you can set the conditions for successful ideation. The best creative ideas for growth appear when you understand your brand. They'll emerge quickly and effortlessly, and you will be ready to catch them.
People process information by putting ideas into language. Ideas must be shared before they can move into action. Words matter.
Writing is our in-house competency. We have years of experience with technical and business writing, and members of our extended team are published writers of fiction, literary non-fiction, and recorded music. Rob even taught Business Communication at the University of Guelph.
Excellent written content supports internal communications, human resources, sales collateral, customer service, advertising scripts, and investor/stakeholder relations. We write concise, compelling content that is congruent with your brand assets. We help you to ensure authenticity with the messaging you share.
Rob McLean is the founder of Kazolu Consulting. He has been (and sometimes continues to be) a brand development professional, a University professor, a writer, a parent, a teacher, a speaker, a business coach, a content producer, and a retired folk-punk songwriter.
Rob combines business experience and creative intuition to tell better stories for companies, organizations, and individuals. He is one of the few survivors of the 90s independent music scene to earn an MBA, and he survived a decade in the Canadian beer business where he defined unique, authentic brand identities for products that are (let’s face it) fundamentally identical. He balances performance experience and learned business acumen to deliver straightforward, crisp, frank and truthful presentations.
Rob is the author of ‘Understand Your Brand,’ a guide to clear, concise, consistent communications. He has also released seven albums of original music. Speaking gigs are customized for each audience, presenting relevant, workable ideas for corporations, not-for-profit organizations, and personal-brand entrepreneurs. He clarifies how every person, product, or public organization is a collection of assets, attributes and equity that must be understood to be best represented. The ‘Understand Your Brand’ platform provides truth, resonance and authenticity to support marketing and communications efforts. It works equally well for business growth, community-benefit member engagement, and personal development.
Understand Your Brand (Business communications) - Companies can leverage existing assets, people and resources to expand their brand and grow their business. Everything that has contributed to your business adds to your brand. This discussion will reveal how you can positively highlight your company’s best attributes to shape existing and future brand impressions.
Understand Your Identity (Personal Branding) - Personal branding can dramatically and beneficially influence personal and professional growth. Presenting your “best self” is your best competitive advantage, and authenticity is essential if you want to grow and develop your career or business.
Understand Your Mission (Not-for-profit Outreach) - How community-benefit organizations map resources and goals to engage and expand their community, fundraising efforts, and impact.
Understand Your Strategy (Strategic Branding) - Learn how “understanding” builds an effective, efficient marketing strategy. A deep understanding of strengths and weaknesses will guide tactics when entering a business battlefield. Industry and competitive trends - the “terrain” on which you will battle - must be mapped before boots hit the ground. Placing tactics ahead of strategy- actions without plans - is the greatest mistake marketers make, but it’s easy to avoid. Knowledge is power, but only if it is understood. Sun Tzu said, “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be in peril.” That’s the truth.
Kazolu is intentionally based in Guelph, Ontario.