Fractional CMO · New Orleans · Est. 2009
Fractional CMO leadership and the team to execute it. When growth stalls, a brand outgrows its story, or a team needs a senior head in the room, we step in.
We don't diagnose from the sidelines. We step in, build the team, and fix the problem.
What we fix
You usually know which one you've got. Sometimes it's two. The fifth is not knowing, and it's the call we get most.
Revenue is flat. The pipeline is thin. The plays that built the business stopped working and nobody can say exactly when. The instinct is to spend more. The fix is almost always to aim better.
You've outgrown your own story. Customers can't say what you stand for, and neither can half your team. The logo is fine. The meaning behind it went missing.
Too many priorities and no owner. Marketing that reacts instead of leads. Good people doing busy work because no one senior is setting the agenda. You don't need another hire. You need a head in the room.
A product, a campaign, a film, a date that does not move. You need a team that has shipped under pressure before, built to the job and gone when it's done. We've run large-scale commercial production, and we've run the strategy behind it. Usually both.
Something's off. Growth, brand, team, or all three, and nobody inside can say which. This is the most common call we get, and it is what the diagnosis is for. You get the real problem, a plan, and a team built for it.
Engagements
Every engagement starts with the diagnosis, done alongside your team. Then you choose how much of the work you want us to carry.
Fractional CMO · Advisory
You have a team. You need a seasoned head at the table. We set the strategy, pressure-test the plan, review the work, and give leadership a senior marketing voice without the senior marketing salary.
For founders and CEOs who need a CMO's judgment, not a CMO's headcount.
Fractional CMO · Embedded
We join the company, not just the project. A seat in the leadership meetings and the team meetings. We set the plan, run the cadence, lead and develop your people, and report to leadership on what moved. Your team gets a leader who's in the room, and a culture that grows with the work.
For companies whose marketing team needs a leader in the room, not another vendor.
Fractional CMO · Built team
We lead, and we staff the work. From our collective of preferred specialists in strategy, creative, film, PR, and digital, we assemble the exact team the problem needs. Fast to form. Accountable to the outcome. Dissolved when the job is done.
For companies with a problem bigger than their bench.
No price list. Every engagement is scoped to the problem, and you'll get a number quickly. If you're not sure which one you need, that's what the first conversation is for.
How we work
We find the real problem. It's rarely the one in the brief.
Two to three weeks inside your business. We talk to your customers, your people, and your numbers. We come back with a diagnosis you can argue with, a plan you can act on, and a team built for it.
We build the right team for the job, not the team we happen to have.
Seasoned operators, hand-picked from a collective we've worked with for years. Weekly cadence. Clear owners. Decisions made in days, not quarters. You see the work as it happens.
We leave you stronger than we found you.
Systems that run without us. A cadence your team keeps. A brand that can carry itself. Then we get out of the way, and we're a phone call away when the next problem shows up.
Work
Three from the current slate. More on request, under the usual discretion.
A women-owned heavy civil contractor growing fast: a serious safety record, an expanding fleet, and a new hydro excavation division. The company had outgrown its own story, which is the best problem a brand can have.
Rebuilt the capabilities story around four divisions. New brochure system and billboards. A full-length safety training film on operating heavy equipment near energized transmission lines, and a welcome commercial, both shot in Louisiana with a Louisiana crew and Valence as production company. Then an SEO and content realignment of the website to match.
Build. Fractional CMO plus a built team: design, copy, film production, and web.
A program with real results and real momentum: governors at ribbon cuttings, new states signing on, new teams carrying the story into new markets. Growth that fast needs one spine everyone can build on.
A messaging architecture the whole organization could carry. State-by-state reports, sales presentations in English and Spanish, a family guide, and event coverage, all built on the same foundation, so every new market hears the same Star Academy.
Lead. Embedded fractional CMO, inside the leadership team, with specialists brought in as the work demanded.
A startup built from zero by a founder out of fintech who had run a company before and knew exactly what he didn't have: a brand, a marketing function, or a go-to-market. A product on the way and no one in the CMO seat.
Fractional CMO from day one. Positioning and brand, the launch film and creative, the measurement stack built before the first dollar went out, and the first demand program. Weekly cadence with the founders. Decisions in days.
Build. Fractional CMO plus a built team: brand, film, web, and paid.
Earlier work includes First Guaranty Bank, Port of New Orleans, Abita, and Ducks Unlimited.
Who you're working with
Founder & Principal · Fractional CMO
Ron founded Valence in New Orleans in 2009 after two decades in consumer goods marketing, most of it in beer. At Miller Brewing he ran sponsorship, activation, and marketing partnerships, including the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation and Talladega Superspeedway.
He has led Valence through three models: a full-service agency, an embedded fractional CMO practice, and now a collective of senior specialists built to each client's problem. Every engagement is still led by him, start to finish.
Today he sits inside client leadership teams as fractional CMO, most recently as CMO of NOLA Education, where he built the messaging architecture behind the Star Academy program's expansion across states.
The collective
Around the principal is a collective of senior specialists in strategy, creative, film, public relations, and digital. Each runs their own practice. Each has worked with Valence for years. We assemble them to the brief, one point of accountability, and dissolve the team when the job is done.
Member profiles are being added as the collective grows. Senior specialist who should be here? Tell us what you fix.
Brand experience
About Valence
Valence was founded in New Orleans in 2009 on one idea: build the team to the problem, not the problem to the team. We're still based here, and we work from Los Angeles to New York. Business changes. So have we, three times, each time because clients needed something different from us.
The agency years. Full-service brand, creative, and production for companies from Fortune 500 to family-owned. We learned to ship at scale, and we learned that the deliverable is rarely the problem.
The embedded years. Clients stopped asking for campaigns and started asking for a head in the room. We became fractional CMOs: a seat in leadership, ownership of the plan, accountability for the number.
The collective. Senior leadership plus a hand-picked team of specialists, assembled to each problem. You start with Valence. We build the team, and we execute.
We stay small on purpose. When we embed, we join the team: the meetings, the culture, the hard conversations. Assembled fast. Accountable to the outcome. Gone when the job is done.
We use the best tools available, and yes, that includes AI. But nobody has ever hired us for the tools. They hire us because we've been in the room when it mattered, and we know what to do next.
Questions we get
Yes. That's most calls. You don't need a brief, a budget, or a diagnosis. You need to be able to say "it's not working," and we take it from there.
No. We were, for years. An agency sells you its services. We find the problem, build the team it needs, and solve it. Sometimes that's a strategy and a new org chart. Sometimes it's a large-scale commercial production. We start with the problem, not the deliverable.
Consultants hand you a deck and leave. We stay and do the work. The diagnosis is where we start, not what we sell.
Yes. When a tool makes the process better, faster, or more efficient, we use it. We don't sell AI and we don't hide it. What you're paying for is twenty years of knowing what to do next. The tools just get us there faster.
It depends on the problem, and we won't pretend otherwise. Tell us what's not working and you'll get a scope and a number fast. No retainer you don't need. No team you don't need.
The first conversation can happen this week. The diagnosis takes two to three weeks. If it's urgent, say so. We move at the speed the problem requires.
A principal, start to finish. We bring in specialists from our collective as the work demands, but you will never be handed off.
Heavy industrial, education, consumer brands, hospitality, financial services, technology startups. The industries change. The problems don't.
Start a fix
Tell us in a few lines. A principal reads every message and you'll hear back within one business day.