Ashley Daisley

When people give different answers to the same question, customers may struggle to understand or relate to the brand.

• Echo Check is a simple diagnostic: ask people across the organization the same question, then compare their answers.
• It is CAMPFIRE’s final module because earlier choices can drift without a shared vision.

At Amazon Fresh, Daisley heard three answers to what the business was building: a frictionless grocer of the future, the best discount grocer, or an extension of Amazon heritage and workplace warmth.

• They describe pushing a smart cart in a Fresh store and not being able to tell what kind of grocery store it was.
• The post notes that Amazon eventually closed its Fresh and Go brick-and-mortar stores.

The CAMPFIRE posts span P&G examples from 2015 and 2018 and a later Amazon Fresh reflection. The shared-vision argument stays consistent, with Echo Check as the closing module.

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A decision can be mathematically sound and still miss local context. Facilitation should do more than collect opinions after the analysis; it should let a specialist’s knowledge change the framing before teams decide.

In a 2015 P&G Professional workshop for Salvo dish detergent in Latin America, teams used a Discrete Choice Model simulation of the Mexican market.

• Every team chose green for lemon scent after Arturo Pimentel, a Venezuelan R&D manager, flagged that a yellow lemon dish liquid would look wrong in Latin America.
• Daisley credits sales leader Heather Jarrett with creating a room where Pimentel could add manufacturing cost to correct a product decision and be taken seriously.

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The goal is not to copy other brands, but to understand what a direct relationship with customers feels like and translate that feeling into a problem the team can act on.

In 2018, Daisley led a P&G retail safari for 35 brand leaders in San Francisco.

• Teams visited Allbirds, Everlane, and Away to answer one question: what does it feel like to be in a relationship with a brand when no retailer is in the middle?
• At Allbirds, raw merino wool, origin tags, and the finished shoe were in the same room.
• During the debrief, the question shifted from what DTC was doing that P&G was not to how Tide One Wash Miracle could become a friend to a soccer dad dealing with stubborn odor, or Dreft to a new mom.
• Daisley says the safari shaped how the team thought about Tide One Wash Miracle and credits Tasha Randle, then Design Brand Manager for Tide, with helping shape where they took OWM.

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CAMPFIRE names eight decisions—Consumer Need, Adoption Curve, Market Fit, Positioning, Flame Test, Inner Flame, Reality Check, and Echo Check—and the posts show exercises and stories that make the next move visible to everyone in the room. The framework is a sequence; later alignment work matters because earlier choices can drift without it.

Across the posts, the modules take the form of specific activities: a choice-model workshop, a retail safari, and a sensing round. In the Amazon Fresh post, Daisley writes that Echo Check comes last for a reason: a team can work through every other module and still drift if no shared vision echoes across the room.

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Daisley describes leading insights on a 2015 P&G Professional launch for Salvo dish detergent in Latin America.

• The workshop used a Discrete Choice Model simulation of the Mexican market, with cross-functional teams making independent choices about size, price, claim, scent, and color.
• Every team chose green for lemon scent.
• Before the workshop, Arturo Pimentel, a Venezuelan R&D manager, flagged that in Latin America a yellow lemon dish liquid would look like the color was wrong.
• The post says the sales leader, Heather Jarrett, helped build a room where that market knowledge could add manufacturing cost and still be taken seriously.
• The lesson is specific: teams can reach a better answer when the room makes space for knowledge outside the model.

For brands planning a campaign

For a brand-alignment workshop, this shows Daisley designing exercises where cross-functional participants make decisions themselves and local or frontline knowledge can override a default. A consultancy hiring a facilitator can ask for this kind of structured decision exercise rather than a presentation-led session.

Daisley recalls pushing a smart cart through an Amazon Fresh store and not being able to tell what kind of grocery store it was.

• Four years earlier, while on the Amazon Fresh Shopper Insights team, they visited Fresh stores, Amazon Go stores, and a fulfillment center, and kept hearing different answers to the question “What are we building?”
• One answer framed Fresh as the grocer of the future with frictionless checkout.
• Another framed it as the best discount grocer, the Aldi of the digital age.
• A third framed it through Amazon heritage and free fruit at HQ.
• Daisley calls this Echo Check: ask ten people inside the organization what they are building and see whether the answers echo.
• The post says Echo Check is the last module in the CAMPFIRE framework, and that a sensing round starts team engagements because without a shared vision an organization forgets how to tell its story.

For brands planning a campaign

A workshop brief about shared brand vision can use this as a diagnostic step: ask a facilitator to run a sensing round before positioning work, surfacing misalignment before the campaign angle is built on assumed consensus.

In 2018, Daisley took 35 P&G brand leaders shopping in San Francisco.

• About 10 came back with Allbirds.
• As Design Insights Lead for Tide, they built a retail safari guidebook that sent brand teams through DTC stores including Allbirds, Everlane, and Away, with one question: what does it feel like to be in a relationship with a brand when there is no retailer in the middle?
• At Allbirds, the group saw clear boxes holding raw merino wool, tags explaining where the fiber came from and how the sheep were raised, and the finished shoe in the same room.
• In the debrief, the question shifted from what DTC was doing that P&G was not to how Tide One Wash Miracle could become a friend to a soccer dad dealing with stubborn odor, or how Dreft could become a friend to a new mom bringing a baby home.
• Daisley says the safari directly shaped how the team thought about Tide One Wash Miracle, a product P&G launched direct to consumer.

For brands planning a campaign

For a brand-alignment or innovation workshop, this shows a facilitator using immersion and guided observation to reset the problem before teams build positioning. It’s a useful model when a brief calls for teams to move from internal debate to a consumer-facing story they can act on.

In a Salvo Professional launch workshop, cross-functional teams made product choices using a simulation of the Mexican market.

• A local R&D manager’s knowledge—that lemon dish liquid should be green in Latin America—shaped the workshop, and every team independently chose green.
• The example shows how facilitation can bring local expertise into a decision, rather than simply collect opinions afterward.
• Read the Salvo workshop story.

The post describes a full-day workshop in which teams made independent decisions, informed by a choice-model simulation and a specialist’s market knowledge.

For brands planning a campaign

Relevant to regional launches or product decisions where teams need to test assumptions about colour, claims, scent or format against local knowledge.

Examples: Source 1

For a P&G retail safari, brand teams visited Allbirds, Everlane and Away with a focused question: what does a brand relationship feel like when no retailer sits between the brand and customer?

• At Allbirds, the display connected raw wool, its origins and the finished shoe.
• In the debrief, the team moved beyond copying direct-to-consumer tactics to ask how Tide products could build a more direct relationship with customers.
• Read the retail safari story.

The safari paired a specific question with in-person observation, then used the debrief to turn the team’s observations into questions about its own brands.

For brands planning a campaign

Useful when a team is stuck in abstract competitor analysis or needs to see how product, retail environment and brand story work together.

Examples: Source 1

Their “Echo Check” asks people across an organization the same question, then compares their answers.

• If employees cannot explain the brand consistently, customers may struggle to understand what makes it distinct.
• Read the Echo Check example.

A sensing round gathers answers from multiple people before the team settles on a shared direction; Echo Check is the final module in the CAMPFIRE framework.

For brands planning a campaign

A fit for positioning or strategy work when teams need to know whether functions share an understanding of the intended brand idea.

Examples: Source 1

Stories about local market knowledge, retail observation and internal alignment show how the framework works in practice.

• In the Amazon Fresh example, the closing Echo Check matters because a shared vision can drift if earlier strategic choices do not add up to a clear direction.
• See the CAMPFIRE example.

The posts link individual modules to specific situations and decisions: a workshop, a retail safari and a sensing round.

For brands planning a campaign

Consider the framework when a brief needs structured facilitation across several linked brand questions; individual exercises can also address a focused decision.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

A separate post describes leading insights on Project Star Trek, a P&G Professional initiative to launch Salvo Professional dish detergent across Latin America, working with sales, finance, supply chain, and marketing teams.

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The post describes visits to Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores and an online fulfillment distribution center, using Just Walk Out technology and the Dash Cart.

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Ask whether they own the business, work for it, or have another relationship to it.

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Fleischer’s post about Allbirds, Everlane, and Shein covers the same brands Daisley takes a team through on a retail safari. Both ask why a direct-to-consumer story stops working.

Fleischer writes from the operator’s seat, describing what it felt like to back Allbirds on Kickstarter and chase an Everlane meeting.

• They ask readers to resist the shrug that follows a brand’s decline.
• Daisley writes from the facilitator’s seat: the example shows how a room full of brand leaders can be moved to a different question.
• Readers get an exercise, not a founder’s retrospective.

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Brett’s grocery and digital-growth posts share Daisley’s assumption that the most interesting finding is often inside the numbers or the store, then translate it into what a brand should do next.

Brett builds his argument from public filings, NielsenIQ category data, and comparable-sales figures, and typically recommends how to allocate resources.

• Daisley draws on workshops and store visits, recommending changes to how a team frames a problem.
• Brett’s posts also include an explicit commercial pitch for an eCommerce accelerator; Daisley’s close with an invitation to a facilitated workshop.

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Tina’s post about the AI shelf and the Vaseline hacks post both start with a small, concrete consumer moment and argue that the brand has been slow to notice what shoppers already do.

Tina draws on search behaviour, social listening, and AI-mediated product discovery, focusing on how products are found or described at scale.

• Daisley draws on rooms and store visits to ask whether a team has agreed on what it is building.
• Tina looks outward at consumer language; Daisley looks inward at internal alignment.

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In these posts, they write as a founder who backed Allbirds on Kickstarter and later got a meeting with the Everlane founder, describing the DTC playbook’s ceiling, funding pressure and brand drift at Allbirds and Everlane. For a regional food brand whose leaders are stuck on premium, value or heritage identity, that experience could reset the conversation from “which story do we tell?” to “what model can we sustain?”

The tradeoff is that Jess Fleischer’s posts don’t show them designing or facilitating a cross-functional alignment workshop.

• The two reflective LinkedIn posts cover DTC brands and trade policy, not a repeatable facilitation method, a sensing round, decision boards or a CAMPFIRE-style sequence.
• A consultancy choosing Jess Fleischer would gain founder-operator perspective on DTC strategy and brand reinvention, but would need another facilitator to run the structured alignment work or ask about their direct workshop experience.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The posts offer a concrete decision frame: separate retailer growth from digital growth, follow the growth when allocating people, media and capabilities, and treat each retailer individually.

• Brett uses Q1 2026 data on 52 public U.S. retailers and examples such as Walmart at +2.6% comparable sales versus +24% digital, and Amazon grocery frequency and spend figures.
• For a regional food brand whose sales and finance leaders disagree about where the next dollar should go, that analysis could make the workshop more commercially grounded than a general brand story exercise.

The tradeoff is that Don Brett’s posts are analytical commentary tied to Pattern, NielsenIQ, podcasts and newsletters, not documentation of workshop facilitation.

• They don’t show a method for surfacing disagreement among marketing, sales, R&D, supply chain and finance, or for leaving a team with a shared brand direction.
• A consultancy choosing Don Brett would get sharper ecommerce growth arguments, but would still need a facilitator to run the alignment session and turn the analysis into a shared positioning decision.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

These posts show a clear consumer-insight approach: treat 3.5 million organic Vaseline posts as unpaid consumer R&D, test and validate the useful hacks, and turn them into a platform; and explain how AI shopping creates an earlier moment when shoppers describe a real need before they see a physical or digital shelf. For a regional food brand that needs to ground premium, value or heritage claims in existing shopper language, that approach would steer the work toward evidence of current behaviour rather than internal definitions.

The tradeoff is that Tina T.’s posts don’t show them facilitating a multifunctional brand-alignment workshop or using a named sequence such as CAMPFIRE.

• The two marketing and insight posts include a personal AI-shelf example.
• They cover social listening and AI-era category discovery, but not structured decision exercises or internal alignment diagnostics.
• A consultancy choosing Tina T. would get a stronger consumer-behaviour starting point, but should ask about workshop delivery and may still need a separate facilitator for the room.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2