Experience strategist

Dale Conour is a brand and experience strategist with 15+ years of practice at the intersection of digital, brand, storytelling, and behavioral design — a career that began in editorial leadership, where the instinct for narrative, clarity, and what makes ideas transferable to experience was first built.

He has spent his career in agency environments developing or translating organizational outcomes into the systems, frameworks, and interactions through which audiences form beliefs, discern value, and make decisions. Colleagues and clients consistently point to the same thing first — narrative: the ability to take a chaotic or ambiguous starting point and produce a compelling, executive-level story the room can act on.

At frog (Idean/Capgemini), as Principal Brand Strategist, Dale was integral to enterprise-scale brand and experience engagements for Amazon, Honda, AT&T, and Penske — advising on product categories ranging from $1B to $238B. At John McNeil Studio, he led DX and content strategy as part of the brand transformation of CA Technologies (acquired for $18B) and led focus group sessions for Microsoft Surface marketing. At Dial House, he guided development of the brand and marketing strategies for Nokia’s navigation division (ultimately a $2.9B acquisition), engaged in crisis management for Coca-Cola, and developed brand, innovation, and marketing strategies for such clients as Audi, Kingsford, Burt’s Bees, Kraft, and Cadbury.

As Senior Experience Strategy Lead at Verndale (2023–2026), Dale led experience and brand strategy across a portfolio that included WilmerHale, Boston Beer (Dogfish Head, Sam Adams, Angry Orchard, Truly), Western Health Advantage, Road Scholar, and Canada’s largest healthcare organization, University Health Network — while also driving new-business development through strategic briefs, proposal frameworks, and pitch leadership that helped win and retain $3M+ in business. In support of the Accounts, he helped identify retention and growth opportunities across 30+ enterprise brands. He also ran AI strategy workshops for premier law firms WilmerHale and Davies, and founded and led Salon, a recurring internal thought-leadership series exploring AI-era experience design, behavioral science, and brand theory. He also led a team of engineers to first place in Verndale’s company-wide AI hackathon.

CV

Core Competencies

  • Enterprise Account Strategy

  • Category & Market Intelligence

  • Research & Positioning Analysis

  • AI Strategy & Governance

  • Discovery & Workshop Leadership

  • Executive Relationship Mgmt.

  • Sales Proposals & Presentations

  • Client Retention & Growth

  • Presentations + Narrative

Professional Experience

Senior Experience Strategy Lead │ Verndale │ San Francisco, CA (remote) │ April 2023 – July 2026

Hired to bring strategic, creative, and innovative thinking to an organization transitioning from tech implementation only.

  • Performed as the senior strategic point of contact for client execs and stakeholders for brands such as WilmerHale, Boston Beer (and its individual brands), Western Health Advantage, Road Scholar, and Canada's largest healthcare organization, University Health Network — ensuring in our phased engagements that Discovery led to Design led to Build.

  • Helped win ~$3M in business as pitch lead; supported Accounts team, identifying opportunities for retention and growth for 30+ enterprise brands.

  • Ran AI strategy workshops for two premier law firms, WilmerHale and Davies, identifying opportunities to improve operational efficiency and front-end experience for their audiences.

  • Built Road Scholar a visitor-intent framework to replace journey mapping.

  • Founded and led a monthly talk series on AI, behavioral science, and creative innovation that turned emerging DX trends into points of view client teams could actually use; led a small team of engineers to first place in Verndale's company-wide AI Hackathon.

Principal Brand Strategist │ frog/Idean (Capgemini) │ San Francisco, CA │ March 2018 – September 2022

Hired to connect design strategy to brand strategy to business strategy — work that provided inspiration for clients to evolve their digital and product experiences, and designers to execute with impact.

  • Advised Amazon on building brand equity and accelerating customer adoption for personal care innovation in a $1B+ product category; and workshopped engineers to an evolved search experience.

  • Showed Honda Design Group how to grow market awareness through product innovation in an anticipated $28 billion category.

  • Performed potential-market analysis in a $238 billion category for a major EU telecom organization's home entertainment device prototype.

  • Developed a strategic approach for AT&T to build unique brand experiences for a consumer product targeting a $6 billion-and-growing rural broadband market, leading to new work translating their new brand strategy into packaging guidelines.

  • Uncovered customer experience opportunities for Penske to better compete against market-leader U-Haul.

Brand Consultant │ Self-Employed/Concurrent│ San Francisco, CA │ October 2014 - April 2023

Retained by creative studios and organizations to bring instant impact to experience, innovation, and brand challenges experienced by clients.

  • Identified opportunities to drive revenue increases (up to 20%) and reduce costs (up to 30%) through digital transformation of Wells Fargo banker-teller tools.

  • Created an experience-innovation strategy for IDEO to prototype Nike's “superstore of the future.”

  • Leveraged data and positioning analysis to accelerate customer adoption for market-defining products in biotech, fintech, health and wellness.

Senior Strategist │ John McNeil Studio │ Berkeley, CA │ April 2016 – July 2017

Recruited to enable clients to accelerate customer adoption, increase customer retention, and capture increased revenue.

  • Led the digital experience and content strategy behind a full marketing makeover for CA Technologies — the company was acquired for $18 billion not long after.

  • Coaxed incoming college freshmen into revealing how Microsoft can best market Surface to them.

Head of Strategy│Dial House│ San Francisco, CA │ March 2010 – September 2014

Mandated to increase client retention and revenue by producing compelling marketing research and strategy for clients that reflected the studio’s “maverick” approach. 

  • Built brand awareness for Nokia's new B2C navigation division and led its signature product-innovation effort — the division was later acquired for $2.9 billion.

  • Identified innovation opportunities for Audi to evolve its connected car experience and grow their audience and build loyalty.

  • Led brand-extension strategies for Burt's Bees and Kingsford, and marketing strategy for Microsoft's Visual Studio — work the client called, “a new internal standard.”

  • Concepted a Cadbury product to rival the US's most popular candy (at $600 million per year in revenue).

  • Concepted Cadbury product to rival the US’s most popular candy (at $600 million per year in revenue).

  • Leveraged ethnography of the barbecue social occasion to grow business for Kingsford.

  • Unlocked secret appeal of Burt’s Bees lip balm to drive further product innovation while growing brand equity. 

Media Specialist│Innovative Leadership │ San Francisco Bay Area, CA │ August 2000 – September 2010

Hired to deliver innovative approaches to editorial and communications in order to grow audience and build advertising revenue. Roles included: 

  • Executive Editor, Travel + Food, Sunset Magazine.

  • Senior Editor, Technology, The Industry Standard.

  • Content Designer, Booyah (social-location-mobile app).

  • Editorial Director, eHow.

  • Editorial Director (interim), TV.com, CBS Interactive.

  • Senior Associate Editor, Parenting. 

Education

Bachelor of Arts, Communications, emphasis in Journalism │ California State University, Chico

Marketing Week Mini MBA with Mark Ritson │ Marketing │ September–December 2024