Commercial success
in times of chaos.
Some see headwinds and want to hide.
We help organizations see a world of opportunity.
Driving Commercial Growth
We help businesses and leaders turn disruption into growth.
Drive Agency Growth
Agencies are facing headwinds from in-housing, technology, margin erosion and outdated business models. And they often lack the growth skills to compete. Sense.Maker Skill Accelerators are quick, practical skill development for modern leaders.
Kickstart your brand
Growth can come from surprising places - if you ask better questions and reframe opportunities. We start with an innovative environmental scan powered by our experienced team coupled with agentic AI tools. The outcome? New life for tired brands.
Optimize Agency Engagement
It may be time to find a new agency partner. But given the cost and time commitment, a Request for Realignment could make more sense than an RFP
Build Human Assets
Turn high-potential talent into high-performance leaders .
Clearly different.
Sense.Maker is a curated team of brand, channel, GTM, consumer insight and leadership experts backed by advanced agentic AI tools. Starting each engagement with an environmental scan and an organizational audit offers clients an objective view of the inhibitors and accelerants of growth.
Uncovering growth opportunities
Sharper, more innovative strategy
More engaged, higher performance leaders
Rapid prototyping solutions
Trusted by Leaders in Growth
Services
Advise
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You just have an uneasy sense that you or your organization are missing out on growth opportunities. But you’re not sure why. Let’s start with a clear definition of the situation. A combination of asking better questions, stakeholder interviews, listening, proprietary and client data review help us bring clarity.
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Sometimes the hurdles are close to home. We offer advisory to senior leaders and teams either 1:1 or through workshops to help change behaviour or process that’s holding you back. A trusted advisor provides both a sounding board and where needed, redirection.
If a more fundamental change is needed, our Sensemakers will develop leadership and team growth plans; process improvement; interpersonal development; communication skill development.
Do
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Strategy is only theory. Until it leads you to something great.
We start with an assessment or creation of a marcom and creative strategy. Unlike consultants, we carry through the action plan to make it happen. Clients engage us to augment existing partner or in-house resources, or plan, create and scale projects from end-to-end.
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If you have all the raw ingredients but just need to tweak the recipe, Sense.Maker will guide your team to unlock their potential.
Lead
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At times, it’s just simpler to bring the resource in-house. Bring us into the organization to improve leadership and set the team up for success on a part-time or interim basis.
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Let us build internal skills in strategy, agency and partner relations, commercial agreements, creative development and business development by stepping into the role on a fractional basis.
Meet Arthur
Arthur Fleischmann is a marketing strategist, commercial advisor and executive coach with more than 30 years of leadership in global advertising and marketing. Co-founder of one of Canada’s most-celebrated agencies, john st., his role expanded to include Group CEO of Ogilvy Advertising and Country President for WPP in Canada.
Having worked with more than 70 client organizations, he brings his strategy, operations, commercial growth and talent-optimization skills to leaders of agencies and businesses in an advisory capacity. As a dual Canadian/US citizen, Arthur takes a North American view of business. He identifies as optimistic, intuitive and a little impatient. The ideal qualities of a sense maker.
Arthur writes and speaks frequently on marketing effectiveness, agency–client relationships, and the future of brand visibility in an AI-driven world, with work published in Inc. Magazine, LinkedIn, and other outlets.
The SenseMakers
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Tom St John is a technologist, growth strategist, and leader who’s spent the last 20 years building and scaling high-performing SaaS, eCommerce, and digital media companies. From founding startups with successful exits (and one spectacular crash) to leading marketing at VC-backed ventures, he brings a rare blend of entrepreneurial grit and enterprise precision.
Tom's perspective is shaped by hands-on leadership across three worlds: agencies, high-growth B2B SaaS, and consumer-focused D2C brands. He’s built national digital agency teams, led enterprise demand gen, and executed full-funnel marketing across paid search, social, email, SEO, TV, and more. This cross-industry fluency allows him to connect brand, product, and performance ensuring strategy doesn’t just sound good, it lands.
What sets Tom apart isn’t just execution—it’s his curiosity and how he applies it. He’s deeply engaged in the evolving world of AI, building practical tools and advising leaders on how to integrate AI into strategy, workflow, and culture. Equal parts builder and translator, Tom makes complex technologies feel accessible and actionable. He’s as comfortable architecting AI-powered systems as he is guiding executives through what it all means. With a calm, collaborative approach and a sharp eye for what matters, Tom helps teams turn emerging tech into real momentum.
Tom’s core values are simple: thoughtful action, purposeful work, and impact without ego. He partners best with leaders who value sustainable growth, teams driven by curiosity, and people who don’t take themselves too seriously (bonus points for well-timed roasting).
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Mat is an award-winning brand strategist and certified qualitative researcher with nearly two decades of experience across network and independent creative agencies in the UK and Canada. He blends data and creative intuition to help brands break through in meaningful ways.
He has collaborated with global and national brands across sectors, including CPG leaders like Coca-Cola, Nestle, and Grupo Bimbo, retail giants such as Signet Jewellers, Sobeys, and Lululemon, financial institutions like RBC, CIBC, Meridian, and Square Payments, and automotive icons such as BMW, Honda, and Nissan.
As a partial-load college professor, Mat also inspires and mentors the next generation of Canadian advertising talent.
Don’t let his pleasant demeanor fool you. Mat asks direct questions, synthesizes information and delivers a clear POV like the true Brit that he is.
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Graham spent 15 years as an Art Director/Creative Director at ad agencies in Toronto, Vancouver and Bermuda. He took that experience, along with a love and knowledge of the production side of the creative process, to his own venture in late 2014 – a creative services company capable of providing videography, photography, motion graphics, editing, and graphic design. A balanced understanding of the business side of advertising as well as what it takes to crack a great creative idea, makes Graham a valuable partner to clients and agencies alike. Calling on a vast, trusted network of fellow production partners, Graham / Tingle Creative can scale up or down to fit any project, keeping overhead costs low and managing budgets of all sizes. Graham helps Sense.Makers do the making. Check out some of his work here: http://www.tinglecreative.com/What good is sense making if you can’t execute simply, beautifully.
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Umar Ghumman and Maxine Abuyuan are CX experts who blend strategy and creativity to drive growth through customer experience (CX).
With three decades of combined experience, they have built websites, apps, loyalty programs, and digital ecosystems for global brands like TD, Microsoft, Mazda, and Coca-Cola. They have worked across categories including, finance, CPG, automotive, retail, hospitality, telco, beauty, and healthcare in Canada and the U.S.
Their brand-rooted CX approach ensures CX and brand work as one to drive business growth, creating experiences that engage, convert, and fuel profitability.
Formerly Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Experience Design Officer at WPP’s VML, they have led CX innovation at the highest levels. Beyond client work, they are board members, award-winning leaders, speakers, mentors, and awards judges shaping the future of CX.
At NewBrains, they help companies make CX a competitive advantage. Max and Umar can be reached here, or at New Brains.
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Fabiana Pereira Hotz is a leadership strategist, executive coach, and transformation advisor with over two decades of experience guiding organizations through complex growth and change. A former Deloitte Partner and Accenture Market Lead, she has delivered large-scale programs across technology, retail, finance, and professional services worldwide.
Having seen hundreds of transformations succeed or fail, Fabiana understands the common denominators of sustained performance. She helps executives and boards perform by aligning intent, behavior, and structure to deliver results.
Her work spans growth through venture creation, adjacent-market expansion, customer monetization, data and martech integration, automation, and service design—translating complex systems into actionable clarity.
As founder of Claristrat Institute, she built a methodology uniting systems thinking, complexity theory, and depth psychology to help leaders cultivate value-driven gravity and make coherent decisions in uncertainty. At Sense.Maker, she applies this lens to convert insight into durable transformation.
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As CEO of Heads Up, Megan and her team bring Sense.Maker clients years of experience in qualitative research, innovation and strategy across a wide array of categories. They will match the right specialist with your project, and offer a single point of contact.Going beyond traditional research providers, Heads Up offers our clients new approaches to consumer research at scale. Their tools include in-depth interviewing, focus groups, ethnography and consumer profiling.
In addition to a fresh approach to uncovering insights, Heads Up provides innovation services, workshop leadership, training, brand planning and customer journey mapping.
You can engage Heads Up through Sense.Maker or by visiting Heads Up