Critical thinking, original thought & commercial experience for New Zealand businesses for over 30 years.
Flying Lizard has run since 1996.
Protect capital by reducing wasted marketing spend. ✔
Make a distinctive position that is difficult to compete with. ✔
Simplify decisions with strategy. ✔
Flying Lizard helps your business refine the parts of your marketing from your customer’s point of view
Critical thinking and original thought to understand what makes a business valuable to its customers.
By making it easier for the right customers to understand what you do, see why it matters to them and choose to do business with you results in a clear set of decisions about the business, its position and the customer messaging it needs to take.
This ensures your marketing plans, logo, website and digital marketing align perfectly with your strategy rather than vice versa.
The experience behind the methodology
One strategy process, adapted to the business.
Daynes work began in commercial design, typography, marketing and creative direction. Over three decades, that work expanded across branding, advertising, digital, communications and business development, working directly with more than 300 businesses and organisations.
That experience gradually changed the question being asked to solve. Rather than simply producing the marketing, Dayne became increasingly focused on understanding what the business needed to stand for, how it should be positioned and why customers should choose it.
That became the basis of Flying Lizard a brand strategy practice. Subsequently Dayne structured the thinking into a five-step methodology and documented it through a series of workbooks.
Meet Dayne and Flying Lizard
The 30+ years of developed commercial strategic thinking on brand & marketing.
As the founder of Flying Lizard, Dayne brings 30+ years of strategic experience of brand development for a business and the marketing required in New Zealand, the UK and Australia.
A career that started in the late 1980s in the print industry. He then moved into creative and senior roles in London throughout the late 1990s with agency experience. He established the Flying Lizard name and returned to New Zealand building a creative practice with a ten-person team.
Today, Flying Lizard focuses on applying the critical thinking of strategy, offering original thought needed that defines brand as an asset for founders, owners and entrepreneurs, then helping put the required changes into practice.
Evidence of that experience:
37 years commercial practice, from traditional print to digital marketing.
20+ years operating Flying Lizard offering Strategy, Brand and Marketing.
International experience, including senior creative roles in London with OgilvyOne, EDS, Cato and Harrods marketing.
Wide range of commercial projects completed across brand, marketing, identity, advertising, publications, websites, digital and customer communications.
Work across multiple sectors, including agriculture, tourism, trades, property, hospitality, professional services, education, healthcare and real estate.
“My skill is the ability to look at a business, understand what is genuinely valuable about it, identify the opportunity, and then build the brand and marketing around that.”Dayne Smith.
The Flying Lizard Approach
Finding the opportunity your business is best placed to own.
You know your business better than anyone. My role is to bring an independent perspective and established brand strategy principles to help identify the opportunity you may not be seeing clearly.
Together, we work through your business, customers and market to establish what makes your business different, who that difference matters to, and where it can create room for growth.
Strategy comes first, then implementation where it is required. Before further investment in marketing, content, advertising or design, we establish what is already in place, what is understood, and what needs to be resolved.
When a practical change is required, Flying Lizard can help put it into practice, either directly or alongside the people and specialists already working with your business.
For consultants and professional service providers:
Need your client‘s Brand Strategy established before you begin your specialist work?
Strategy of a brand defines the position your business is best placed to own in the mind of its customers.
Brand strategy is not a logo, colour palette or visual identity. It establishes what the business stands for, who it is best placed to serve, what makes it different, and how that value should be understood.
It gives the business a strategic foundation for decisions about what needs to change, how it should be communicated, and what needs to be put into practice.
There is a position for your business that can be more effective than the alternatives available to your customers. Strategy is the work to find it.
The thinking behind this approach is explored in greater depth by Marty Neumeier in The Brand Gap.
Are We a Fit?
How we can work together
Flying Lizard is most useful when a business owner starts to see that strategic decisions need to be made about how the business is presented to customers. This can begin with a small piece of marketing that needs fixing, or with a growing need for greater focus.
We are likely to be a fit if:
You are the owner or lead decision-maker.
You see your brand as a business asset, not simply a marketing expense.
You are willing to make decisions that create greater focus.
Flying lizard complimentary starting point.
You might be starting out, under pressure or maybe expanding. A strategic insight can help pinpoint where your attention is needed. This complimentary simple series of yes, no or maybe questions creates a structured report providing insight to begin your thought process.
30 years of commercial practice across brand, positioning and communication.
The best way to understand how Flying Lizard works is to see the thinking applied to real businesses. Explore examples of brand strategy in practice, including the challenges, decisions, implementation and outcomes.
Their thinking provides an important foundation for how we should understand brand, positioning, communication, and commercial value.
We do not apply their ideas as a template. They are used as principles, then interpreted through 30 years of practical experience working with businesses, markets, customers, and commercial decisions.
Evidence of Strategic Focus
Trusted by business owners to develop strategy and turn it into practical business change.
★★★★★
“Daynes‘ origination, ideas, and ability to understand and adapt to our needs during the entire project has been outstanding.”
Robert Clark, Group Manager Economic Development & Property, DCC, Dunedin, NZ.
★★★★★
“Dayne provided creative solutions that addressed our specific design needs. The material he produced helped us win awards and secure new customers.”
Sophie Barker, Marketing Manager at Otago Peninsula Trust, Otago, NZ.
★★★★★
“We enjoyed working with Dayne and his team for the year and we will do even more together“
