We started JAM to fill a gap we saw over and over again: strategy firms that don’t or can’t execute, design shops that don’t ask the hard questions, and agencies that confuse output with outcomes.
Who We Work With
We work directly with:
Leadership teams navigating ownership transitions
PE-backed operators seeking brand clarity post-acquisition
CMOs repositioning legacy or underleveraged brands
Companies managing brand complexity resulting from stalled or rapid growth
Facing challenges like:
Activating a new business strategy across their brand(s)
Scaling from niche to national (or retooling after rapid growth)
Preparing for investment, acquisition, merger, or major launch
Reassessing their brand’s role in a changing market
Brands We’ve Helped Through Change
-
ABInBev
-
Amazon
-
AT&T
-
Axos Bank
-
Blue Point Capital Partners
-
BMW Group
-
Boeing
-
Coca-Cola
-
CVS
-
Diageo
-
EJ Gallo Winery
-
Essity
-
Fidelity
-
GEICO
-
HP
-
Huntington Bank
-
Hyatt
-
Hyundai
-
Ingredion
-
Intel
-
iShares
-
Jack Daniel's
-
Kellogg's
-
LinkedIn
-
Lyft
-
Meta
-
NetScout
-
New Balance
-
Next Level Apparel
-
Ocean Spray
-
Pfizer
-
Progressive
-
Revo
-
Santander
-
Wells Fargo
What We Do
We work where brand meets business strategy—and where things tend to get messy.
Our approach blends business acumen, research rigor, and design thinking. We start by listening, jointly envisioning and defining clear business outcomes, and then working backwards to develop what’s needed to move things forward—with clarity, alignment, and momentum.
We focus on four core phases of brand-building. Each is designed to address the real-world inflection points our clients face—like stalled growth, shifting leadership, portfolio complexity, or high-stakes decisions and investments.
Research
When you need to understand where the brand stands or why it’s stuck.
Key outputs:
Quantitative & qualitative customer research
Brand tracking & measurement
BITE—JAM’s proprietary Brand Investment Target Evaluation
Strategy
When you need to realign brand with business and make smart decisions stick.
Key outputs:
Mission/vision/values
Positioning
Brand narrative
Brand architecture
Expression
When you need a brand identity system that’s differentiated, durable, and usable.
Key outputs:
Logo design
Naming
Messaging
Brand identity
Brand guidelines
Activation
When you need to bring the brand to life—inside and out.
Key outputs:
Launch communications
Creative collateral
Website
Packaging
Leadership
JAM’s principals bring deep agency as well as client-side experience to their respective point-of-views. This gives them an innate understanding of the challenges facing the modern-day in-house marketing team along with an ability to communicate, support, and deliver measurable outcomes in a way that is simply absent at most other agencies.
John McHugh
Chief Creative Officer,
Founding Partner
John’s two decades in design have spanned both agency and client-side roles leading brand initiatives in just about every industry and business category imaginable. Along the way, he’s racked up a slew of awards, speaking engagements, and industry recognition. John met Matt while serving as the Global Creative Director of Brand Design at Amazon. Before co-founding JAM, John was Associate Vice President of Brand Design at AT&T.
Matt Herrmann
Chief Strategy Officer,
Founding Partner
Most recently the Global Head of Brand Strategy for Amazon, Matt has built a reputation over his 20+ year career as an advocate for consumers and an ambassador for brands in the sometimes complicated relationship between the two. Along the way he’s won 8 Effies and 3 Cannes Lions for advertising effectiveness, taught at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, and helped build the world’s largest paper airplane.
Why Work with JAM?
-
Combining strategy and design provides a more efficient and effective process for our clients and—by leveraging the continuity in vision from strategy through expression and activation—delivers a stronger, sharper brand presence.
Added bonus: less headache on the procurement side by only having to deal with a single partner.
-
Because of our years spent leading marketing initiatives in some of the most demanding and data-led business cultures, we needed to develop proprietary methodologies to prove impact. We offer our clients a level of rigor and analysis typically only available to highly resourced marketing teams. With our data, tools, and insights you’ll always know what’s working—and what’s not.
-
Both of JAM’s principals have been repeatedly recognized by their peers, clients, and industries as leaders in their respective disciplines and have an extensive track record of successful outcomes across a wide variety of brand-related business challenges.
As all JAM engagements are led by the principals, rest assured you will have unprecedented access to two true brand subject-matter-experts.
-
We know what it’s like to be in the trenches, spearheading major change initiatives, and all the corresponding internal accountability hurdles that come with those challenges. We’re able to advise and support you throughout the entire process.
Our clients typically select to work with JAM because we offer the following benefits over the traditional agency-model approach:
From Our Partners