FAQs

The Craft is a business & marketing consultancy. As a business consultancy we answer strategic questions arising from business change. For example, where a business is finding it hard to decide and explain its market position and what it does, so it needs to evolve its positioning and value proposition. But we don't leave it there. We're a strategic marketing consultancy putting the tools and assets in our clients' hands so they can execute the strategy and turn it into progress.

On average, from kick off to solution and assets in hand it can take between 8 to 12 weeks depending on the complexity of the business and solution.

It very much depends on the project scope which we define and detail with you. Purely as a guide, a strategic engagement budget will range between £20,000 up to £50,000 and the enablement workstream will range between £30,000 to £50,000.

There are 3 core component stages or sprints within typical projects. Sprint 1 is Research & Analysis which is where we carry out an in depth review of a business, its market, its capabilities, its competition based on where it is currently and where it's evolving to. Sprint 2 involves structuring the facts and different hypotheses together with the client to define the market positioning of the business. Sprint 3 is focused on detailing the value proposition and enabling the business to execute on it.

You will have a Project Lead responsible for keeping everything on track and looking ahead to ensure everything is well thought through and we're being proactive and responsive. Most importantly you'll have a 'Strategy Lead' who sees things differently, objectively, they will guide and lead you through the process. Behind this team are writers and designers. The key thing is you get a senior team which doesn't chop and change and isn't afraid of getting their hands dirty.

We're here to do the heavy lifting but this has to be right for you and your business so time does vary. On average for internal stakeholders we estimate it can be between 2-3hrs up to 2 days over the period of a project. And for primary stakeholders and points of contact, between 2 days and 4 days over the whole project time frame is usual.

It's our responsibility to thoroughly check we're a fit for you and vice versa. Following a set of initial calls to help you check us out and for us to determine a scope, we'll provide a thorough Statement of Work. This includes outcomes, outputs, timescale and budget. We'd like to share detailed examples of our work so you can be sure of the depth we work at, and for you to speak to a reference. Once you're happy and commercials are agreed, we'll provide everything you need to introduce the upcoming project to your team. We'll also run a call so they can get to know us and know what to expect. And then we're ready to go.

We very rarely work where there aren't already, or haven't recently been, existing programmes of work in place. They're simply not able to crack what we do, though. We leverage what you already have in place, we complement it, and we strengthen and build a solution you wouldn't have otherwise reached.

We're specialists in market positioning and value proposition development, unlike 99% of the market which is made up of marketing and PR agencies and generalist business consultants. We see this as useful for a number of reasons. First off, we're not trying to sell you a website or an event because that's how we need to make money. We're actually focused on your strategy problem and solving it. Secondly, when you engage most agencies they do strategy but not how we do it. They focus on campaign level marketing messaging and content as the outcome. Whereas we focus on technical depth, business strategy and robust sales level detail which is necessarily deeper, more robust and reflective of your business. It also resonates better and deeper with the range of stakeholders you need to communicate to. Thirdly, we're not consultants that provide a strategic answer, everything we do is about activation from day one, changing behaviour through bringing your own people into the journey so you own the outcome.

We're often brought in after using a brand consultant hasn't delivered the outcome you need. Brand consultants are excellent at what they do, but from our view they focus on what things look like, brand values and structure; they're not interested in the commercial, sales and technical depth below this. We are, as these are the areas where businesses really evolve. They hold the rich detail to evolve its right to play in a market space, and they are the key to how it can differentiate its value proposition from others in the market. Once we've cracked that, then it's time to look at how the work is creatively expressed. The important thing is that the ingredients have to be right, and rich with detail. Otherwise, the outcome is window dressing that at best is only relevant in the short term.

The Craft is a best fit when a business needs to understand and make decisions about its market position; what it is, what sectors it operates in, what its capabilities and expertise are to enable the business to operate in a different space and secure higher value. When a business needs a clear value proposition to better enable its leaders to explain what the business is becoming, what it is, what it does and what it enables and why it is differentiated. When key stakeholders across a business need to buy into, align around, and actively use the market position and value proposition to strengthen go-to-market activity.

The Craft is not the right fit if: the business is a consumer brand; if the business isn't experiencing challenges and complexity; if a client only wants a surface level answer like campaign headlines and content for marketing alone versus supporting it with depth and detail that the business, sales and marketing can utilise over 3-5 years in a consistent and highly flexible way; or if a business doesn't need to evolve beyond what it does today.

We're based in the South West, close to both Government and technology communities, and we feel lucky as we've delivered projects remote and in person throughout the UK, Europe, APAC and US.

We always work under NDA from initial contact forward. Confidence and trust has to be earned, and we treat all information in a client relationship as sensitive from day one due to the depth at which we work. All information is stored securely and only used by the core team as you would expect. The Project Lead is responsible for managing information but we apply common sense, we don't work on trains or planes, and we don't discuss client work publicly. The work we do with clients helps them get ahead of competitors and we treat that as completely confidential all the time.

We believe AI isn't yet capable of doing precisely what we do. AI answers might be quick but they can't yet be fully trusted; our clients value greater certainty, a clear trail of logic and evidence. In equal measure, we're often unearthing things that are new, whereas AI is re-structuring and organising what is already known. Our work is human centric, we carry out in depth research, hypothesis development, facilitation and construction of the answer. We do use our business level AI subscriptions to test hypotheses and (with the right raw ingredients and clear signposting) asset variants may be developed. AI is solely an assistive tool in these instances, we retain complete creative control.

The Craft Consulting Limited operated from 2015 to 2020 and was established by Mark Wiseman-Smith and Nat Sones as a specialist positioning consultancy in B2B Tech. In 2020 the business was acquired by Agent3 [now known as Pretzel], part of Next15 Group, following two joint clients recommending there was common ground to work together. The Craft Consulting grew over this period from a specialist with 10 people and an annual turnover of £1.3million to an Account Based Marketing division with offices in UK, US and APAC with 90+ staff and a turnover in excess of £9.5million. In 2025, after a highly successful mutual relationship, Next15 very kindly agreed Mark Wiseman-Smith could take back 'The Craft' brand as a specialist consultancy business and operate as he wished with their support and blessing. Mark set up The Craft Strategic Marketing Services Ltd. Welcome to The Craft.