Strategy · Brand · Acquisitions · Capital

Strategies for businesses that have outgrown the whiteboard.

Strategy, brand, M&A and capital for owner-led Australian businesses that have outgrown founder-led planning and marketing.

Forty years of doing the work, not watching it, from turning Australian wool from a 7 dollar commodity into a branded premium fibre to buy-side deals read from the data room up. No success fees, no completion-contingent income, no equity, so the advice holds whatever you decide.

Start with a Commercial Read Call +61 400 112 311 See the work

Robert Langtry, founder of Langtry Advisory

What I do

Clients call with one of three problems.

You need a plan, or the one you have is not moving.

Some leadership teams arrive with no plan at all. Others arrive with fifteen to twenty priorities and leave with three. I build corporate strategies and plans with chief executives and boards, from the first honest diagnosis to an operating plan people can execute, and coach the team to run it themselves. The method is the 5As™, set out in Simplify: Try or Die.

You are spending on a brand that is not paying you back.

I have planned and run marketing in most categories a business can sell in: packaged goods for Nestlé, Unilever and Procter & Gamble, national tourism for Indonesia and Singapore, banking, telecommunications, technology, energy, agriculture, and luxury fashion alongside Zegna, Prada and Loro Piana. At The Woolmark Company my team took a commodity fibre into the luxury and performance markets and tripled what growers earned per kilogram. I bring that to positioning, brand and marketing strategy, and the plan that pays for it.

Someone has put a number in front of you.

Your accountant can value the business. Your lawyer can structure the sale. Your broker can find a buyer. None of them can tell you whether the business is what it appears to be, because none of them has run one. I advise on the commercial side of acquisitions, sales and successions, buy-side or sell-side.

Most engagements touch all three. A buyer needs to know whether the brand is real. A brand plan needs a business that can carry it.

Around this work I advise on stakeholder strategy and government relations, write copy for clients who want the words done properly, and sit on boards where an independent commercial voice is missing.

Why clients call

Why clients call me.

I have done the job, not only advised on it.

Five years as chief executive of Euro RSCG Jakarta, growing it from $5 million to $43 million in revenue with 1,200 staff. A decade as global chief strategy and marketing officer of Australian Wool Innovation and The Woolmark Company, running a $70 million-plus annual budget across ten countries. Most advisers have read about businesses like yours. That is not the same thing.

I learned planning from the people who invented it.

I joined J. Walter Thompson in 1979 and trained under Stephen King, who founded account planning at JWT London in 1968, the same year Stanley Pollitt founded it at BMP. I was one of three people who brought the discipline to Australia. Every brief, brand plan and board paper I write still starts where King started: with what the customer actually thinks.

I have no stake in your answer.

No success fees. No completion-contingent income. No equity. The advice is the same whether the answer is proceed, reposition, renegotiate or walk away. Ask every other adviser in the room whether they can say that.

Analysis has never been cheaper. Being right has never been harder.

In a 2023 field experiment with 758 Boston Consulting Group consultants, Fabrizio Dell'Acqua and colleagues at Harvard Business School found that AI lifted the quality of the work by more than 40 per cent. On a problem outside the tool's competence, the same consultants were 19 percentage points less likely to reach the correct answer. They trusted the machine most where it was weakest. Someone with judgement can tell the difference. That is the job.

The record

The record behind the advice.

$5M to $43MRevenue growth as chief executive of Euro RSCG Jakarta over five years, with more than 1,200 staff across Indonesia and ASEAN.

$7 to $21Australian woolgrower returns per kilogram across a decade as global chief strategy and marketing officer, taking the industry's contribution to $3 billion a year.

80-plusGlobal brand partnerships for the Woolmark, including Ermenegildo Zegna, Prada, Burberry, Louis Vuitton and Loro Piana. Launched the International Woolmark Prize and co-founded the Campaign for Wool, under the patronage of HM King Charles III.

40 yearsMarketing and management from Sydney boardrooms to Jakarta ministerial offices, across Australia, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the United States. Currently on the board of Nusa Oil.

How to work with me

Seven ways in.

Most engagements start small and deliberately so. The first piece of work should tell you whether the rest is worth having.

The Commercial Read

$9,500

Two to three weeks. An independent assessment of one specific question: do we have the right plan, is the brand doing the work the forecast assumes, is this valuation defensible, is the business ready to sell. You get a written read and two hours across the table. Most people start here.

The Working Session

From $12,000 a day

One day with your board or leadership team, built around a decision you actually have to make. Not a workshop. A session that ends with the decision made and recorded.

Retained Advisory

From $5,000 a month (minimum three-month engagement)

Ongoing access for chief executives, marketing leaders and owners who want one independent voice in the room across the year. Limited to three clients at a time, because access is the product.

Corporate Strategy and Planning

Scoped and fixed

For leadership teams with no plan, or one that is not moving. The diagnosis, the strategy and an operating plan, built with your team on the 5As™ method, with coaching while the team puts it to work.

Brand and Marketing Strategy

Scoped and fixed

Positioning, brand strategy, the marketing plan and the creative brief, for leadership teams who want the plan built by someone who has run the budget. Copywriting included where the words carry the weight.

Transaction Mandate

Typically $35,000 to $85,000

Commercial diligence on the side of the deal the accountants and lawyers do not cover. Buy-side or sell-side, integration planning, post-deal relaunch. Scoped and fixed. Never a success fee.

Board and Governance

By arrangement

Non-executive and board adviser roles where an independent commercial voice is missing from the table.

Also available to clients: market access into Asia and the Middle East, stakeholder and government relations, and copywriting. Full detail on the services page.

An accountant, broker or corporate finance adviser with a client at a transition? There is a page for you.

Writing and method

The thinking behind it.

I write weekly on strategy, brand and commercial judgement, and my book Simplify: Try or Die sets out the 5As™ in full, with four detailed case studies.

Two proprietary methods sit behind the advisory work, and they do different jobs.

5As™ is the five-stage method for cutting the complexity that stalls growth: Assess, Assimilate, Architect, Activate, Amplify. It is set out in Simplify: Try or Die, published March 2026, and built on forty years of engagements.

CALIBRA™ Decision Support is a twelve-volume suite for evaluating the things that never appear on a balance sheet. Brand strength, pricing power, channel position, portfolio value, acquisition quality. Every reading gives one clear instruction, states how confident it is. Each carries a twelve-month audit date, and the results are published whatever they show. The first review falls in January 2027.

5As™ tells you what to do. CALIBRA™ tests whether you are right. They run in sequence, not in competition: CALIBRA sits inside Assess, the first A. Neither is a product and neither is for sale. Both are made available to clients where the work calls for it.

Contact

Start a conversation.

If you need a plan, the one you have has stalled, the brand is not paying its way, or a number has landed in front of you, start here. You get a second view from someone with no stake in the answer. Most engagements begin with a Commercial Read.

Every enquiry gets a personal reply, usually within one business day.

Based in Greater Sydney. Regular travel through Jakarta, Singapore and the Gulf.

Phone+61 400 112 311

Emailrob@langtryadvisory.com

LocationGreater Sydney Area, Australia

LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/roblangtry1