Marc Lewis
Brand & marketing leadership Raleigh, N.C. Booking Q3
Brand & marketing leadership Raleigh, N.C.

Hey, I'm Marc.

I help small businesses figure out what they're actually selling, then build the brand and the marketing that makes it land. A career across editorial, agencies, and in-house teams. One brain, no account managers.

Marc Lewis
Available · Q3 2026

What I do.

Three ways in
No. 01
Positioning sprints
Two to four weeks to figure out what you sell, who you sell it to, and the one sentence that explains why anyone should care. Ends in a written brief, not a deck.
From $5K · 2–4 wks
No. 02
Brand & site engagements
Naming, identity, voice, and the website that wears it. End to end. Same brain scopes, writes, and ships. Six to twelve weeks depending on scope.
From $10K · 6–12 wks
No. 03
Standing retainer
A few hours a week, on call. Strategy, copy review, the campaign you're stuck on. For founders who don't need a full hire but need a brain that's seen this before.
From $2K / mo

On the practice.

Working principles · no dates
No. 01

A logo is the cheapestpart of a brand.

If you can't say in one sentence who you're for and what you do, no mark in the world will fix it. Naming and positioning come first; the visual is the thing that makes them memorable, not the thing that makes them true.

No. 02

Position against an enemy, not a category.

Every strong brand has something it refuses to be. Find what your customers are quietly tired of in your category, and stand on the other side of it. "We're the X, but for Y" is a starting point, not a finish line.

No. 03

Pricing is a filter, not a number.

Cheap pricing brings you cheap clients. The right number isn't the highest one you can defend — it's the one that filters for the kind of work you want to be doing in five years.

No. 04

Your homepage is not a brochure.

It's an argument. It exists to convince one specific person, in about ten seconds, that you understand the thing they came here trying to do. Most homepages talk about the company. Better ones talk about the customer.

No. 05

If you can't say it in one sentence, you don't have it yet.

This is true for the company, the product, the campaign, and the email. The discipline isn't writing short. It's knowing which sentence is the one that has to land, and being willing to throw out the four that don't.

No. 06

Write the about page last.

You can't write about the company until the company knows what it is. Half the about pages I read are a record of the founder's identity crisis. Get the homepage right first; the about page will write itself.

No. 07

Three numbers, not twenty.

Most small businesses are drowning in dashboards. Pick three numbers that genuinely tell you whether the brand is working — usually some version of who's coming in, who's coming back, and what they're worth — and watch those.

The practice, today.

Where things stand

On the board

No. 01 A regional spirits brand Live · in build
No. 02 An architecture studio · positioning Live · in sprint
No. 03 A family dental practice · audit + copy Filed
No. 04 A small independent shop · retainer Standing
+ Open Booking Q3

Small by design. The same brain scopes, writes, and ships every engagement. No team to scale, no account managers between us. If your email lands in my inbox, it is read by me.

Selected clients

Regional B2B technology 2017–24
Independent weekly 2018
National health publication 2019
Trade press · contributor 2014–17
Design publication 2016
Regional arts institution 2021
Hospitality · multi-location 2020
Conservation nonprofit 2022
Specialty food · D2C 2023
Local studio · maker 2024
A small B-corp · NDA 2025
… and many more 2005–

The ledger.

A vertical record · 2017 — present
2024
No. 47 A regional spirits brand — naming, identity, site Concept · CD · copy
No. 46 An architecture studio — positioning sprint Strategy
No. 45 A local maker — brand & e-commerce CD · build
2023
No. 44 A specialty food brand — packaging refresh CD · copy
No. 43 A conservation nonprofit — donor campaign Concept · copy
No. 42 A family dental practice — site & voice CD · copy · build
2022
No. 41 A regional arts institution — exhibition campaign Concept · CD
No. 40 A multi-location hospitality brand — positioning & brand Strategy · CD
No. 39 A small B-corp — naming, identity, site Full engagement
2017–21
No. 38 A B2B technology company — multi-year campaign CD (in-house)
No. 37 A national health publication — masthead refresh Editorial
No. 36 An independent weekly — relaunch CD · build
No. 35 Trade press — ongoing column Contributor
No. 01–34 Earlier work — editorial, agencies, in-house Various

A bit about me.

I'm a creative director and marketing leader. A career across editorial, agencies, and in-house teams.

I run a small advisory practice from Raleigh, North Carolina. Small by design.

Standing offer Free Twenty-four hour reply

Send a URL. I read it Friday.

Plain-English PDF Three moves, not twenty No sales call