SERVICES | 03ADVISORY
WHO WE SERVEWe help brands identify the right path to better strategic outcomes.
Our advisory services build on the diagnostic, exploring both growth opportunities and failure modes to improve decision quality. Advisory mandates are shaped by who is carrying the risk of the decision, whatever the category or company size.
FMCG / CPG Leadership Teams
Commercial and marketing leaders carrying a growth or performance decision they need to get right the first time, with the organisation and their shareholders depending on it.
Private Equity and Sponsors
We work directly with PE-backed portfolios and their sponsors on where value is being created or lost across a holding, from pre-investment through the hold to exit.
Founders
Founder-led businesses at an inflection point, where a qualified outside read on the brand’s next five years is worth more than another internal debate.
THE MANDATEEvery mandate starts with two fundamental questions.
Advisory picks up where the diagnostic ends. Before any plan gets built, we establish what’s holding growth back and where it's genuinely available.
GROWTH OPPORTUNITIESWhere is value available that isn’t yet being pursued?
Adjacent categories, channel shifts, pricing architecture, M&A readiness; the moves that are open but haven't been tested against the constraints.
GROWTH CONSTRAINTSWhat is actually stopping this brand from creating more value?
Capability gaps, category position, channel exposure, portfolio drag; the structural reasons growth isn't happening at the rate the business needs.
THE JUDGMENTThe answer to both resolve into one of five directions.
Growth is real and under-resourced. Commit further.
ACCELERATE
The growth is real; execution is leaving value on the table.
OPTIMISE
A specific constraint is blocking otherwise sound growth.
FIX
The current position won’t get there. A different one will.
REPOSITION
The constraint outweighs the opportunity. Realise value elsewhere.
EXIT
DELIVERY MODESEMBEDDEDDifferent levels of advisory engagement depending on the complexity of the mandate.
The five directions describe the judgment. What follows is how it gets delivered — matched to how much the organisation can carry itself, and how much needs to sit inside it.
AD-HOCDecision Support
Advisory input at the point of a specific decision. Bounded, face to face, no embedded presence — for a team that can execute once the judgment is made.
PROGRAMMECapability Building
The frameworks and judgment transferred into the team directly, so the next decision of this kind doesn’t need an outside call.
SUSTAINEDRetainer / Project-based
Ongoing access across a defined period, for a leadership team facing a sequence of related decisions rather than a single one.
Executive Interim Mandates
Cowan & Associates’ interim executive inside the operating structure, carrying the decision and its execution directly — not advising on it from outside.
A mandate is straightforward to justify when it is set against a leak already exposed in your P&L. Putting a number on that leak is the diagnostic’s job. It happens before you commit to anything.
BRAND CLARITY BRIEFINGSDiscover what determines a brand’s success or failure.
Short, sharp reads on how consumer brands grow, stall, and exit, and what the pattern says about where the value sits.
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