About us
We specialize in elevating brands to the next level
Pluperfect brings a unique ability to uncover the emotional heart of a brand and develop creative ways to connect with audiences.
We work exclusively with senior executive teams on long-term brand-building, bringing decades of expertise to help brands achieve lasting distinction and preference in the market.
What we do
Six strategic brand offerings
Pluperfect offers a consciously focused suite of services designed to support an organization’s most critical strategic brand objectives.
Successful brand building requires a skill set and orientation that is quite distinctive from traditional marketing - one more focused on consistency, reinforcement, and clarity of intent, and on creating a long-term strategic platform to guide ongoing execution over time. We then collaborate with internal teams and external partners to ensure the brand translates seamlessly across marketing, advertising, PR, and digital platforms.
Brand (Re)positioning and Storytelling
Distilling the brand’s core essence and character, building a strategic platform to stand out and egage audiences, and identifying key messages.
New Brand Creation
Creating new brands - including insights, positioning, naming, logo and visual application design - often driven by M&A, and guiding launch success.
Brand Portfolio & Architecture
Defining hierarchy and brand relationships, decision tools, endorsements, and visual and verbal solutions to align with strategy.
Visual Identity Design and Evolution
Designing logo and visual systems to align with the brand’s positioning and to deliver on opportunities to enhance strategic perceptions.
Brand-led Experience Design
Developing branded journey blueprints, translating positioning into brand-aligned experience, and designing signature touchpoints.
Strategic Brand Communication
Assisting with initial socialization and illustration around the intended brand thinking, including creation of comms playbooks, training, and initial assets.
Industries we partner with
Building powerful, standout brands
Our team has shaped leading brands across industries and geographies - from Fortune 100 companies to private equity-backed growth firms and mission-driven organizations.
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Large scale
Pluperfect advises many of the world’s most iconic brands, expertly navigating complex strategic challenges, guiding big-bet branding decisions, and aligning stakeholders at all levels - from employees to board members.
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High-growth
Pluperfect partners with high-growth, often PE-backed, brands to sharpen their market positioning and leverage brand as a driver of growth.
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Not-for-profit & cultural
Pluperfect dedicates a portion of our capacity to not-for-profits, cultural institutions, and creative organizations - helping them refine their brand, deliver on their mission, and amplify their impact.
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How we work
High impact partnership
Our model is carefully designed to work as high-impact partners with our clients, combining the world-class experience of a big agency with the nimbleness and senior-level attentiveness only a boutique can provide.
Proven Success
We understand the criticality of close senior engagement and pride ourselves on our ability to skillfully navigate leadership teams and Boards through what can be a subjective and emotional territory, driving alignment and excitement around clear and compelling solutions that deliver results in the marketplace.
Senior advisor model
Our work is led exclusively by senior experts. We don’t believe a traditional account management model is effective for strategic branding, and instead dedicate direct engagement with senior experts at every step.
Unparalleled talent
Our team includes some of the highest caliber individuals in the industry, with a model that attracts and inspires a dynamic, world-class, international group able to blend the rational with the emotional, and link business thinking to creative expression.
Thoughtful efficiency
We appreciate the importance of flexibility and focus, allowing us to deliver outstanding impact alongside greater efficiencies, better leverage, and faster timelines.
Strategically focused
We take a highly strategic, smart, and insight-driven approach to brand building; very effectively channeling the audiences’ perspectives and needs.
The Results
Driving financial and organizational outcomes
Our clients achieve significant strategic and financial impact—ranging from increased market clarity to stronger internal alignment and renewed organizational energy.
Increased demand
Improving awareness, preference, engagement and loyalty across audiences through clarity, resonance, and alignment.
Expanded reach
Increasing openness and easing ability to expand into new product and service offerings, through improved affinity and understanding.
Strengthened appeal
Creating added enthusiasm, excitement, and sense of purpose for both current and prospective talent, resulting in higher acceptance, retention, and satisfaction.
Enhanced efficiency
Lowering operational costs through greater sales, marketing, and customer service efficiency.
Who we are
A passion for branding
Leading each of our teams, founding partners Sarah and Dave have worked together for more than 25 years, and started Pluperfect together in 2013 in pursuit of a passion.
Our broader team is composed of experts and highly experienced leaders in their field, with backgrounds in senior roles at many of the leading firms in the branding industry. We view brand as a strategic asset that can elevate an organization, catalyzing and accelerating growth; but we also approach branding from a larger social, purpose-driven context. Our goal is to challenge ourselves and our team, do work we’re exceptionally proud of, and have a lot of fun doing it together.
Prior to Pluperfect, Sarah was a partner at Prophet in New York, leading the creative concepting and verbal identity group.
She spent a decade at Lippincott in New York and was a senior partner in the strategy group, leading large-scale re-branding and positioning engagements, managing the firm’s not-for-profit client relationships, and heading the naming group.
After beginning her career in business strategy consulting at Oliver Wyman in London, focused on new product strategy and customer segmentation, she has also worked in the film industry and with non-profit groups in the arts.
She holds a B.A. and M.A. in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford, and an M.A. in Culture, Communication and Film Studies from New York University. Sarah considers herself a world citizen of no fixed abode, though remains in the midst of a long-term love affair with New York City.
She finds her calm in Modernism, is never happier than when on or looking at water, and still wants to be James Bond when she grows up. Sarah and her two children live in Chelsea NYC and Cape Cod.
Prior to Pluperfect, Dave was a senior partner at Lippincott in New York where he co-led the firm’s experience innovation offering and served as the relationship and brand strategy lead for a number of Lippincott’s marquee clients.
Previously, he was a partner at Oliver Wyman, where he helped clients navigate strategic reinvention, customer alignment and positioning, and earlier was an associate at Stone Point Capital, a $3 billion private equity fund where he invested in venture stage companies in the media and technology sectors. He holds a B.S.E. with honors in finance and operations management from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
His curiosity for design thinking and user experience lured him to additional studies in Urban Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Product Design at NYU. Dave relishes contrast and composition. His twin children provide constant delight and keep him on his toes. He equally savors the energy of New York City and the solitude of an empty ski bowl.
He embraces the thrill of travel, seeing the world through a camera lens and testing his limits through triathlons and adventure races.
plu·per·fect
plo͞oˈpərfək(t)
noun, adjective
A narrative verb tense that places an action relative to something that happened before it, alluding to our role as brand storytellers.
Literally means “more than perfect”, a playful notion given the inherent impossibility of being so, but one that aligns nicely with our philosophy of always striving to make brands better. Pluperfect speaks to the complexity of building powerful brand experiences over time, and to the rewards found in savoring the journey.
Our visual identity in turn is inspired by elevation, perspective, and bold optimism about the future.