Allow me to introduce you to the founder and CEO of Christie & Co, Gillian Christie! Ethics and important causes have been at the heart of her work for three decades. The marketing and public relations company works with leaders, companies, communities, and innovators to maximize successful ethical entrepreneurship. Let’s talk about why Gillian began the forward-thinking agency, taking on ethically-minded clients, and much more!
Disclosure: This sponsored interview features a woman whose forward-thinking approach to marketing, research, branding, and public relations is helping make the world a better place through Christie & Co’s commitment to ethical actions and worthy causes.
Interview with Gillian Christie
I love how Gillian approaches marketing and branding in a way that can bring about meaningful change. I begin the interview by asking her about founding the agency.
Why did you start Christie & Co?
I founded Christie & Co because I have known since I was young that communications was the universal solvent whether though being an on-air radio personality to helping building ethical brands through effective branding, marketing, advertising, and PR. Marketing is the application of philosophy today, providing new insights and solutions, educating new options and helping people change their minds, hopefully toward a life enhancing choice.
My family heritage with my father, Peter Christie, a noted Bauhaus architect who designed sustainable and innovative buildings, taught me that one can make a difference by setting sky high goals that integrate one’s values and through expertise and persistence, build a better future. I knew that by supporting the growth of ethical brands and giving leaders the platform of success from which they can share their insights, we could build a society that reflected hard work, persistence and meritocracy and inspire others to do the same.
So inspiring! What are some of the most rewarding projects Christie & Co has undertaken so far?
With our focus on helping ethical companies, entrepreneurs, and forward thinkers accomplish their goals, knowing their success will better the sector in which they operate, each has been deeply rewarding in their own way.
From working with the Tibetan doctors through PADMA, a Swiss pharmaceutical company, that provided herbal solutions that could reduce the impact of critical immune issues and their press conference in NYC, to introducing a small plant from Paraguay through the American company, Wisdom Herbs, we helped to introduce the sweet leaf plant, now known as Stevia, to the market and helped to take it from an unknown to $1B business providing those looking for a sweet experience without calories and chemicals, to a natural solution that provided sweet as well as dental benefits, to introducing BIO SI’s soil microbials that enhanced the soil as well as naturally remove toxins, include oil spills, the list is endless. Of course, our next project is always the most impactful.
In addition, the Karma Project in Nepal and the KIWA Investment Summit in Latin America are important initiatives. Can you tell us more about these projects?
These projects were by Alissa Sears, our VP of Growth & Development, developed to align to our mantra and core purpose to Make Peace Profitable by supporting the growth of impact-oriented companies, brands, and initiatives whose success will improve conditions in their sector and lead to an evolved culture, globally. The KIWA project evolved into the AdVenturesAcademy and is still ongoing, to provide growth guidance and support for those pioneering better futures.
Your company emphasizes the power of ethical entrepreneurship. How do you identify and encourage these entrepreneurs?
Ethical and ethics are always a personal value and can be identified through numerous optics: Is the product or idea truly needed, as opposed to a ‘me-too’ concept; Is the supply chain equitable to all involved; Is the base concept innovated, tested, and workable; Will the founder(s) be willing to lead their sectors based on the success we help build; Is there an element in the company’s growth plan to play forward their success; Is their team motivated and joyful to participate in the growth of the company; Do they understand the challenges they will encounter as they grow and have the wisdom and persistence to push through; Who have they chosen as advisors; Do they care about their consumers and those consumers experience with their company; Can they see their venture as an adventure?
Helping entrepreneurs as well as well-established business leaders with whom we work requires a lot of questions and listening to truly understand where they are in their growth program, both business and well as personal, identifying goals and placing them in a timeline, and helping set targets and programs to accomplish these, while net getting overwhelmed by the potential magnitude and challenges. It is caring enough to see that each entrepreneur who bravely steps forward to bring their ideas to fruition can win.
Those are such thoughtful questions to ask. Let’s talk next about Christie & Co’s Brand Architecture division. What is that, exactly?
Our Brand Architecture is developed after we have completed our proprietary Conversion Market Research, which is a true elevation of market research. The elusive conversion barrier has been cracked by our Christie Conversion Market Research methodology. Our proprietary qualitative research conducted one-on-one in private and personal interviews to delve deeply into uncovering specific target audiences’ exact buying motivators and the key Conversion Factor™ that will convert them from what they are buying now to what you are offering, stepping beyond the veneer of assumptions to understand and acknowledge existing behavior, true life patterns and decision motivators.
Our Brand Architecture was developed in respect to my heritage with my father, Peter Christie, being a noted Bauhaus architect in Baltimore. His award-winning designs mixed with our Scottish heritage, and engineering and design showed the benefits of doing research on all aspects of a future structure, or brand building campaign, that fulfills the stated needs, using the least amount of resources.
Our Brand Architecture, after the integration of the research results and Mental Matrix, is our process that includes goal definition and timeline, reviewing existing positioning and developing an enhanced brand framework for a company’s messaging and story that differentiates and elevates the company and makes the brand, the founder’s passion easily understood and desired by target audiences. We review and analyze your brand overview and develop the Brand Architecture through a thorough analysis of additional relevant market trends and opportunities. We will also integrate 3 competitors that have been analyzed in great details to identify assets and liabilities, we define the target audiences and their priorities and after much. We then develop the brand framework & messaging, tagline and channel definition that connects, moves, and inspires increased long-term purchase and loyalty.
This differentiates us from other agencies as we develop the brand strategy based on extensive research and support the implementation with a full team of industry experts from brand design to all levels of communications as well as a team of growth experts and investors as need. Like an architect, we want our brands to stand for a long time and represent the goal fulfillment of the founders.
That definitely sets your approach apart from other marketing and PR agencies. You’re definitely making an impact as a woman-owned business for the last three decades!
For us, it has been vital to focus on ensuring that the goals of our clients have been fulfilled and continue to demonstrate our strength as a woman-owned business as a benefit, not an anomaly. The benefits could be in working with other woman-owned business and having empathy for potential challenges they may be having, or understanding a woman-focused brand better.
Your mission to ‘Make Peace Profitable’ is intriguing. Can you discuss this philosophy and how it influences those who you work with?
The core pillar of our company is Making Peace Profitable, leveraging the power of the economy to increase the demand for products and services that build a better world and upwardly shift the economy as well as the employment opportunities and much more. In the last 30 years, as an example, one can note the growth of the natural industry, once a fledging industry for the hippies and now a multi-billion category that has influenced through agriculture, packaging, distribution, to homecare, healthcare and transportation and more.
With global discussion first heard in President Eisenhower’s final speech in reference to the military industrial complex, that has now expanded to a medical industrial complex, our postulate is that there can be a Peace-Forward™ complex and move beyond the destroy-rebuild paradigm to one where people are healthy, secure, and expanding in their lives, in their communities and in their hopes and dreams.
Thank you for being here, Gillian!
If one was looking for a career to make positive impact, study philosophy and communications, and know that communication about ethical solutions can change the world.
— Gillian Christie
How important is it to you that the companies you support align with ethical values? What challenges do you think women-owned businesses face today, and how can we better support their growth and success? Let me know what you take away from this interview!