Strategic Clarity for Intentional Growth
Brand strategy, narrative development, and fractional marketing leadership for founders and teams who want to move forward with purpose.
Stone Soup Strategy builds customized marketing/communications consultancy and Fractional Marketing Leadership relationships with business owners and management teams, helping them execute right-sized solutions for their particular situations.
​
Stone Soup services include marketing plan development and execution, brand positioning, product architecture, public relations, thought leadership, event marketing, partnership marketing, mediation, team development, internal communications modeling, and more...
​
We work with all stakeholders to build and execute a marketing and communications strategy that will achieve delineated goals maximizing all available resources.
​
The 'Stone Soup'
Philosophy
1. To gain support of your audience, you must win their hearts and minds.
​
​2. The key to winning hearts and minds is to ignite the imagination.​
​
3. The best way to ignite the imagination is to tell an engaging story.
​
​
How We Engage
Foundational Strategy Sprints Establishing Clarity Before Scale
These focused, high-impact engagements are designed to define the strategic foundation required for confident growth.
​​
-
Brand positioning and narrative definition.
-
​Strategic framing for future execution
-
Audience and market clarity
-
Leadership and stakeholder alignment
Visibility and Authority Systems
Once clarity is established, we build repeatable systems that translate into relevance and trust, creating sustained market relevance.
​
-
Narrative-led content systems
-
Consistent, intentional distribution
-
Authority building across priority channels
-
Feedback loops that inform iteration and refinement
Fractional Marketing Leadership
In fractional engagements, Stone Soup operates as an in-sourced marketing leader, focusing on integrated strategy, execution and stewardship.
​
-
Strategic ownership across initiatives
-
Alignment of internal teams and external partners
-
Oversight of systems, execution and prioritization
-
Translating leadership vision into coordinated action
Sample Clients
IT & Cybersecurity Services
Media and Advertising Services
Audience Discovery Platform for the OTT/Streaming Space
Customized Video Advertising Platform
AI-Generated Revenue for Publishers
Indusrty-Tailored Demand-Side Platform
Full-service Digital Advertising Agency
Tech Enabled Digital Media Solutions
Comprehensive People
Operations Services
End-to-End Programmatic Solutions
Video Focused AI/Machine Learning Tech Stack
A Coalition of Digital Media Consultants
My Story
DAVID SHAY
Principal & Lead Consultant
Stone Soup Strategy, LLC
As a 'reformed' attorney turned marketing/communications veteran, I have built a career around digesting complex fact patterns and communicating them inline with the necessities of a particular situation or audience.
Specifically, I spent 10 years building a world class marketing department for a key player in the digital media space, working to define a continually evolving position in a uniquely fluid industry.
Along the way, I have led teams of brand & product marketers, creative designers, public relations specialists, event planners, content managers and social media experts - always defining and achieving cross-divisional sales/revenue targets and brand awareness goals.
​
Stone Soup Strategy is the manifestation of my own drive to help companies hone and tell their stories in resource-efficient ways that truly move the needle and deliver results.
​
The Stone Soup Story
While the classic folk story, Stone Soup, has been told in countless variations and across any number of cultures through the years, the essential elements are always the same:
​
1. A stranger enters a town whose people have become isolated from each other and who are loathe to share their resources with one another, let alone with a passing stranger.
​
2. Without asking for any assistance, the stranger sets up a huge pot in the middle of town, boils water and drops in one stone.
​
3. When asked by a curious (and suspicious) town's person, the stranger explains that he is making a 'stone soup' that will be fit for a king and that, while he needs nothing, the town's person is free to join him -- of course, since he will be sharing the wonderful soup, if he has a carrot or two to add...
​
4. This interaction is repeated many times over, with each new soup eater explaining to yet another potential soup eater the story of the soup fit for a king and how they are free to share in it, if only they add a little something to the pot -- celery, onions, salt, beef, etc...
​
5. Soon enough, all the town's people have opened up their cupboards (and their hearts), and they are all thrilled to be enjoying this royal meal that came from a simple stone.
​
"Imagine that! Soup from a stone!"
​