Nicole Hagedorn, Davis + Harper Brand Strategy and Creative
Categories
Brand Consultant Brand Development Brand Strategy
About
Nicole Hagedorn is the founder of Davis + Harper, a brand strategy and creative direction consultancy built on a simple belief: brand is not just about how a business looks. It is what keeps a growing organization aligned. When brand functions as a compass, decisions stop drifting and growth becomes easier to sustain.
Nicole works with founders and leaders of lean teams at moments when the business is moving, but progress feels inconsistent. Sometimes her clients know they are in a brand moment, such as a rebrand, a shift, or a new stage of growth. Other times they believe they have a marketing problem because they are already executing, but something still is not adding up. In both cases, the underlying issue is usually clarity upstream, not execution.
With more than 20 years of experience, Nicole has led brand strategy and creative direction across B2B, B2C, and DTC environments. Her work is intentionally industry-agnostic, shaped by principles and frameworks that apply across categories and business models. Her experience spans hospitality, consumer, healthcare, SaaS, and multi-brand portfolios, from early-stage companies to large enterprises.
Her strengths include brand strategy that connects business objectives to positioning and messaging that scale, strategic creative direction that ensures identity and storytelling serve the business rather than overshadow it, and thought partnership that brings calm, structure, and seasoned judgment to complex brand decisions.
Nicole has created, launched, and scaled brands from startups to Fortune 500 organizations, led rebrands and product launches, and built high-performing creative teams. Her work is defined by empathy, clarity, and the belief that brand is not cosmetic. When built well, it becomes one of the most powerful growth tools a business has.
Her perspective on leadership, visibility, and strategic presence was featured as the opening quote in Gal Magazine’s Bold Visions for 2026, highlighting how founders are thinking about what comes next.
A lot of founders and small teams feel like they have a marketing problem. They’re putting serious resources behind marketing, running campaigns, growing their operations—but they aren't seeing the positive momentum.
Most of the time, it's because the brand isn’t clear or fully established. Brand is often treated as a logo, a tagline, or a marketing output, when in practice it’s the structure that shapes how decisions get made.
That difference matters.
When brand lives only in messaging or visuals, creative and performance drift apart. Teams do good work, but priorities shift depending on the room. Marketing keeps moving, but nothing really compounds as the business grows.
That’s not a marketing problem.
It’s a clarity problem. Thus, marketing ends up carrying weight it was never meant to hold.
I work with founders and leadership teams who are already building, but feel the drag of misalignment as they scale. Organizations where brand exists, but isn’t fully doing its job.
I’m a brand and marketing executive with over 20 years of experience helping organizations turn scaling or underleveraged brands into growth platforms. My work focuses on providing clarity leaders can actually use: positioning, strategic direction, brand identity, and a practical brand guidebook teams can use to make decisions immediately.
I don’t execute marketing. I help leaders define who they are as a brand at their current stage, clarify what deserves focus, and provide direction their teams can act on with confidence as they scale. That clarity becomes the foundation marketing can actually build on over time.
In executive leadership roles, I’ve partnered closely with teams responsible for execution and growth outcomes. That work has included leading a legacy rebrand and national product line launch, supporting 40% topline growth through owned channels, scaling a membership model to $2M+ in ARR, and guiding brand and go-to-market strategy for a regional brand now generating $2.5M annually.
I founded Davis + Harper as a focused brand strategy and advisory practice, partnering with founders and leadership teams at moments of growth, change, or complexity. Engagements are designed to deliver clarity, direction, and a shared understanding leaders and teams can put into practice before investing further in execution.
I approach brand as infrastructure. Something teams can rely on when decisions matter and growth demands durability.
Additional Info
Type of Entity : LLC
Business Description : Brand Strategy and Creative Consulting