We are a highly experienced, multi-disciplinary team with decades of experience helping businesses uncover hidden value, strengthen marketing capability, and accelerate commercial growth.
Together, we combine expertise in customer insight, strategic marketing, sales and marketing alignment, and commercial communications — bringing strategic clarity, objective challenge, and practical direction to every engagement.
Founder & Lead Consultant
Strategic marketing expert and trusted board-level advisor, known for uncovering customer insight that reduces strategic risk and helps businesses make clearer growth decisions.
Julie is the founder of Distinction Consulting, with more than 25 years of experience advising business leaders across multiple countries, cultures, and B2B sectors. She is recognised for her ability to ask the right questions, uncover blind spots, and reveal the evidence needed to shape strategic marketing direction, strengthen marketing capability, develop differentiated value propositions, prioritise growth opportunities, and support high-stakes commercial and investment decisions.
Combining empathy with rigour, Julie leads deep, independent customer and stakeholder conversations with sensitivity and absolute objectivity. Trusted by leadership teams to engage directly with their customers, she is known for uncovering “gold dust” — perspectives and opportunities that help established SMEs, family-owned businesses, and corporate divisions uncover hidden value, reduce uncertainty, and achieve sustainable, differentiated growth.
Julie holds a Master’s degree in Marketing Management (Distinction) from Lancaster University and is a Chartered Marketer.
Beyond Her Work
Outside of consulting, Julie is an experienced ultra-endurance athlete, having completed more than 100 marathons and ultra-marathons, including two Legendary Marathon des Sables races — widely regarded as among the toughest endurance events in the world. Her most recent completion was the 40th anniversary edition: 270km self-supported across the Sahara Desert — the longest distance in the race’s history.
Training for and completing these events demands discipline, preparation, resilience, and the ability to make sound decisions under sustained pressure and uncertainty.
Alongside the physical challenge, Julie has raised thousands of pounds for charity through endurance running, most recently supporting mental health charity Mind Over Mountains.
This mindset strongly shapes how she works with clients: going deep before acting, adapting intelligently when conditions change, and staying grounded in evidence rather than assumption. It’s the same philosophy she brings to strategy — clear thinking, sound judgement, and decisions built to stand up over the long term.
Marketing Strategy & Capability Consultant
Known for helping businesses transform marketing from a reactive support function into a commercially aligned driver of growth.
Francesca works with leadership teams to bring greater clarity, structure, and effectiveness to marketing and sales operations. Her focus is on improving visibility, introducing fit-for-purpose systems and automation, and creating the processes needed to support sustainable growth and stronger commercial performance.
Working from an evidence-led foundation, Francesca helps organisations streamline activity, improve the buyer journey, and introduce meaningful measurement — enabling teams to generate higher-quality opportunities, improve efficiency, and better understand marketing return on investment.
The result is a more focused, commercially aligned marketing function that supports sales, strengthens capability, and delivers measurable impact.
Francesca is known for translating strategic direction into practical action, ensuring capability is embedded without over-reliance on external agencies.
Francesca holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Fine Art, bringing a combination of analytical thinking and creative perspective to her work.
Beyond Her Work
Alongside her consultancy work, Francesca maintains an active fine art practice. Her studio work is rooted in disciplined refinement — observing what is working, stripping back what is not, and strengthening underlying structure through continuous iteration.
This process strongly influences how she works with organisations. It reinforces the value of clarity over complexity, progress over perfection, and building systems that evolve through evidence, learning, and feedback rather than assumption.
The same principles underpin her approach to marketing capability: thoughtful diagnosis, practical action, and continuous improvement that builds momentum over time.
Customer Insight & Research Associate
Known for building trust quickly and uncovering insight others struggle to reach.
Hayley supports Distinction’s customer insight, research, and business development activity through in-depth conversations, project preparation, and relationship-focused communication that strengthens the quality and depth of insight delivered to clients.
With a background in marketing across multiple sectors and formal training in psychology and communication, Hayley is particularly skilled at identifying underlying needs, perceptions, and patterns that can otherwise remain hidden. Alongside her insight work, she supports the wider team with research and data quality, ensuring conversations are well-informed, purposeful, and handled with sensitivity and professionalism.
Hayley’s people-centred approach is shaped by a deep curiosity about human behaviour and connection. Outside of work, she is a passionate Ceroc dancer — an interest that reflects the emotional awareness, intuition, and sensitivity she brings to her client and insight work.
International Customer Insight Associate — (Spanish Speaking)
Known for enabling culturally nuanced customer and stakeholder insight in Spanish-speaking markets.
Kiki supports Distinction’s international customer insight work, helping clients engage more effectively with Spanish-speaking customers, agents, distributors, and stakeholders. As a native Spanish speaker fluent in English, she enables conversations to take place in the customer’s own language — strengthening trust, clarity, and the depth of understanding achieved.
With a background spanning law, customer service, and international investment promotion, Kiki brings professionalism, structure, and warmth to every engagement. She is confident engaging senior stakeholders and conducting purposeful conversations that uncover needs, perceptions, opportunities, and cultural context that may otherwise be missed.
Her international perspective supports clients with relationships across Latin America and other Spanish-speaking regions, as well as UK-based businesses working with overseas offices, partners, or distributors.
Born in Panama, Kiki brings curiosity, creativity, and cultural sensitivity to her work. Her interest in people, language, culture, and place helps her connect naturally with others and uncover perspectives that deepen understanding and inform better decisions.
