Built on a belief that clear direction builds stronger brands.
Creating brands people care about has always been the ambition behind This North Star. But the strongest brands don’t begin with what to say. They begin with knowing where to go. This North Star helps ambitious businesses find that direction — bringing together commercial thinking, customer understanding, brand and marketing to turn complexity into clarity, and clarity into action.
Find the right direction. Put it to work.
Why This North Star exists
The problem is rarely a shortage of ideas. It’s knowing which direction to take.
After more than 20 years leading brands and marketing across different businesses, markets and stages of growth, I kept seeing the same challenge.
Businesses are rarely short of ambition, ideas or activity. But when the strategic direction isn’t clear, priorities compete, marketing fragments and brands struggle to work as hard as they should.
Too often, the response is to move straight into execution, a new proposition, campaign, identity, website or marketing plan, before being clear about the choices those things need to support.
I created This North Star to work further upstream.
To help businesses step back, understand what’s really happening, identify where the opportunity lies and make the strategic choices that give everything else direction. Then put those choices to work.
Meet Kim
Kim Stoute-Purvis: Founder & Fractional CMO
Building brands, unlocking growth and turning marketing into commercial value.
I’m Kim Stoute-Purvis, founder of This North Star and a senior brand and marketing leader with more than 20 years’ international experience. My career has taken me from global organisations to high-growth businesses, across B2B and B2C and sectors including technology, telecoms, financial services, industrial, energy and consumer markets.
I’ve built and repositioned brands, led marketing functions, developed propositions, entered new markets, transformed teams and connected brand and marketing strategy to commercial growth.
Today, I work directly with founders, boards and leadership teams at moments when the answer isn’t immediately obvious — growth, change, transformation, new opportunities or simply the need for a clearer direction.
And because I believe strategy gets better when the people shaping it understand what it takes to deliver it, I stay close to the work from strategic direction through to activation.
20+ years. Commercial impact. Senior leadership.
Experience across global organisations, established businesses and ambitious scale-ups.
2X
Net New Revenue
4X
Upsell & Retention
30%
Revenue Growth
19%
Product Demand
The thinking behind the work
20+ years of experience. Codified into one strategic blueprint.
Over time, the way I approached complex brand and marketing challenges became increasingly consistent.
Start with the business. Understand the customer. Read the market. Know the competition. Establish where you can win. Then decide what the brand and marketing need to do about it.
That thinking became North6™, the proprietary strategic blueprint behind This North Star.
It provides a disciplined way to move from complexity to direction, and from direction to commercial action.
FIND NORTH
From complexity to direction.
Establish the strategic choices that should guide what comes next.
FOLLOW NORTH
From direction to impact.
Turn that direction into something the business, brand and marketing can put to work.
Six chapters. One clear direction.
What we believe
Good strategy should make what happens next clearer.
Brand and business belong together.
Brand shouldn’t sit at the edge of commercial strategy. The strongest brands connect what the business can credibly deliver with what customers value and where the market opportunity lies.
Clarity before activity.
Doing more isn’t the same as making progress. Get clear on the challenge, the opportunity and the direction before deciding what to do.
Marketing creates commercial value.
Marketing has a job to do: build relevance, create demand, strengthen customer relationships and contribute to growth.
Strategy only matters if it can be used.
A recommendation isn’t the end point. Strategy needs to be understood, adopted and translated into decisions and action across the business.
Senior thinking. Close to the work.
How we work
This North Star is deliberately different from a traditional agency or consultancy model.
You work directly with senior leadership throughout — bringing experience, challenge and an independent perspective to the table without layers of account management or unnecessary complexity.
We can solve a defined strategic challenge, lead a significant brand or marketing programme, or work alongside your leadership team as a Fractional CMO.
The model flexes. The standard of thinking doesn’t.
Know where you’re going before deciding what to do next.
Whether you’re building something new, navigating your next stage of growth or tackling complexity inside an established organisation, bring us the challenge.
We’ll help you find the right direction — and put it to work.