Meet a Creative: Phyllis Grove

The go-to-market strategist Phyllis Grove cut her teeth as a marketer with big multi-nationals in the general interest space like Procter & Gamble. But it was through a series of serendipitous opportunities in the outdoor industry that she found her calling. 

Phyllis kept finding herself brought into companies at inflection points in their histories—new management, a shift in brand positioning, a product launch, an adaptation to a changing market. It helped that she could speak fluently across sales, product, and brand positioning because she had managed all those categories as she advanced in her career. Phyllis is the rare marketer who builds campaigns based off of a strong working knowledge of Profit & Loss reports and what a business needs to succeed. 

“When you have that larger understanding of how a company operates,” says Phyllis, “you can see how product and brand marketing can work together. You start by building brand awareness or adjusting positioning. Then you grow demand.”

That’s the approach Phyllis took with companies like Mountain Hardwear, KEEN, and Hydro Flask. In each case, she came on when the company was in transition. They needed a win. Phyllis can’t share the specific numbers, but over her career she routinely delivered growth, including a doubling of brand awareness and increased revenue by 5X or more.

Phyllis doesn’t suffer from tunnel vision. She has a knack for spotting large demographic trends and understanding how to react to them. For that reason and more, she’s been on the advisory board with the Outdoor Industry Association for going on seven years. 

An example helps: “We’ve been tracking an increase in outdoor participation since Covid, driven by an increase in casual users. Casual in this case means participating less frequently and often in more accessible activities like hiking, running, camping and bicycling,” says Phyllis. “People are buying running shoes for walking, hiking, and running. When you see trends like that, you can predict the success of companies like Vuori, Cotopaxi and Brooks that are making the outdoors more casual and approachable. Throughout my career I’ve been guided by that type of research and analysis.”

Phyllis—a Hence Expert—is now bringing her knowledge to advisory boards tied to companies facing those inflection points in their history. “My specialty is scaling go-to-market strategies and taking the brand vision and making it actionable so it can propel a company forward,” says Phyllis. “Connecting product and distribution to brand is part of that. We call that building cross functional go-to-market capabilities. It involves putting organizational processes in place. But you also need to quickly identify the relevant patterns, issues, and opportunities to advance a business. Those are the projects I take on.”