Understand the business model first.
How does the organization make money? What drives margin? What would have to be true for the strategy to work, and does the business model support it?
The Hayloft System
Most strategies fail because they are solving the wrong problem.
Before we recommend anything, we study the literature, the past, the industry, the competitive environment, internal dynamics and cross-pressures, audiences, information and media environments, and the actual mechanisms driving the outcome you need to change.
Impact
Measured in billions of dollars and millions of lives.
The cost of executing a polished strategy aimed at the wrong problem is not cosmetic. We have worked at both ends of that scale.
How we start
We do not begin with communications. We begin with the system.
Find the actual lever.
We go to research, behavioral science, market signals, and financial disclosures to find the mechanism that truly drives the outcome instead of the variable the brief assumed.
Build around what works, not what is comfortable.
When the diagnostic is right, message, audience, channel, and sequencing become clear. Strategy follows the finding, not the other way around.
What we do
High-stakes strategy, diagnostic lenses, organizational design, and message architecture.
- Diagnose the real variable shaping the outcome
- Reframe audience, message, and channel strategy around evidence
- Support organizational transitions where leadership signaling matters
- Design behavior-change and trust-repair communications that move action
Selected experience
Representative work across government, brands, measurement, and behavior change.
Global repatriation campaign
Designed and ran the digital communications operation that guided tens of thousands of stranded Americans home during the COVID travel shutdown.
Federal bureau consolidation
Led change management and internal communications for a four-bureau merger affecting 500+ employees without headline fallout.
Consumer trust crisis
Helped a national restaurant chain rebuild confidence by shifting the trust signal from corporate messaging to peer-to-peer proof.
Material innovation launch
Turned a high-risk vehicle relaunch into a sell-out product moment.
Behavior change at scale
Changed the audience and message framework for tobacco cessation in pregnant women after identifying the actual barrier.
Migration dissuasion
Designed and tested empathetic messaging that measurably changed intent among migration-intending populations.
Media measurement
Piloted a methodology to measure the relationship between paid media, earned media, and retail sales for a Fortune 50 company.
Agricultural products repositioning
Reintroduced a heritage range of refined agricultural products to contemporary consumers without losing the authenticity that made them worth saving.
Behind the system
Senior judgment, intentionally small.
Hayloft Advisors is led by Luke Peterson. He has built and run technology, research, analytics, and creative teams at top agencies including Burson and Golin, and inside the U.S. government. At the State Department, he worked on public affairs and public diplomacy strategy, international information programs, counter-disinformation, and organizational design, including the redesign of the Global Public Affairs function and bureau.
The firm is intentionally small. Every engagement is led by senior judgment. There are no junior teams executing templates.
Thinking
Read the latest writing
Ideas, diagnostics, and field notes that sharpen the way leaders read what is really happening.
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