Earning Attention and Brand Yourself as a Marketing Consultant | David Cohen, Superposition

Most consulting firms market the same way they did 15 years ago. A case study here. A thought leadership PDF there. Maybe a webinar that 12 people attend. The work might be excellent, but the packaging is forgettable. And in a market flooded with independent consultancies, forgettable is the same as invisible.

David Cohen, founder of Superposition, a data and AI strategy consultancy, recognized this problem early. Not because he read about it, but because he lived it. After spending years inside large firms like Accenture, he saw firsthand how the consulting world defaults to safe, boring, and undifferentiated when it comes to marketing. When he launched Superposition in 2024, he made a deliberate choice to do the opposite.

On this episode of Marketing by Design, David breaks down how he built a consultancy brand from scratch, why he turned his content strategy into a game show, and what other consultants and founders can learn about standing out in an industry that rewards sameness.

From Layoff to Launch

David's path to starting Superposition follows a pattern a lot of founders know well. He always wanted to build something of his own. The timing never felt right. Work got in the way. Lifestyle creep got in the way. Then he got laid off.

Rather than jumping back into another role, he made the call to go all in. He launched Superposition in stealth mode in early 2024 and officially kicked things off by late spring. Within four months, he had a functioning brand, a content engine, a growing audience, and a clear point of view on how consulting should work.

What stands out about David's approach is that he didn't just start a company. He reverse-engineered the entire brand from the work itself. Every visual, every piece of content, every format choice ties back to what Superposition actually does and how David thinks about his craft.

The Problem With How Consultants Market

David's core argument is simple and hard to argue with. The consulting industry is years behind the curve in how it presents itself.

Big firms like McKinsey, Deloitte, and BCG get hired on reputation alone. They don't need to market creatively because the brand does the heavy lifting. But for smaller, independent consultancies competing in the same space, that playbook doesn't work. You can't rely on name recognition you haven't earned yet.

The default for most independent consultants is to copy what the big firms do. Put out a case study. Write a thought leadership post. Hope that someone in your network refers you. David argues that this approach is both lazy and ineffective, not because the work behind it is bad, but because nobody pays attention to it.

His solution was to build a brand that communicates what he does through how it shows up. Motion-heavy graphics. Bold color. Memes mixed in with strategy content. And most notably, a game show.

Why a Game Show Instead of a Podcast

Superposition's flagship content vehicle is not a blog, a newsletter, or a traditional interview podcast. It's a game show.

David built the format to directly reflect the work he does for clients. His core offering is interactive workshops, collaborative sessions where he brings consultants and their clients together to work through real problems in real time. The game show mirrors that same energy. Multiple guests. Active participation. A format where people engage rather than just talk.

The thinking behind it is practical. If your differentiator is the experience of working with you, then your content should give people a taste of that experience. A static blog post can't do that. A lecture-style webinar can't do that. But a live, interactive show where guests actually participate in structured exercises? That's a direct preview of the product.

David is also honest about the challenges. The format runs long. Producing a multi-guest interactive show is harder to edit and repurpose than a standard one-on-one interview. He's actively working on shorter spin-off formats that capture the same energy in five minutes instead of an hour. But the core principle holds: your content should be a demonstration of your value, not just a description of it.

Workshops as a Business Model

The workshop format isn't just David's content strategy. It's his entire delivery model. Superposition uses interactive workshops across every stage of the consulting lifecycle: sales, scoping, execution, and growth.

In a traditional consulting engagement, the sales process often looks like a pitch deck and a proposal. The consultant tells the client what they should do and why. David flips that. Instead of lecturing a prospect on why a data or AI project is worth investing in, he brings them into a workshop where they can experience the value firsthand.

From a scoping perspective, workshops replace weeks of back-and-forth requirements gathering with a focused one or two-day session. You bring the stakeholders into a room, physical or virtual, and work through the problems together. The output is a clear, shared understanding of what needs to happen and why. That's something that normally takes weeks of emails and meetings compressed into a structured, facilitated experience.

On the growth side, the workshops create a natural feedback loop. Because David is actively listening to what his clients' teams are struggling with, he can identify new opportunities organically rather than guessing at what they might need next.

The second layer of his business serves consultancies themselves. David runs internal development workshops for smaller, scaling consultancies in the data and AI space. These sessions help founders and teams think through go-to-market strategy, service differentiation, pricing models, hiring, and internal operations. The workshop is the delivery method, but the work is classic strategy consulting applied to the business of consulting itself.

Language for Positioning vs. Language for Expertise

One of the sharpest insights from the conversation is David's distinction between two types of language consultants use.

There's language for positioning, the words you use to signal credibility and connect with buyers. And there's language for expertise, the words you use to actually explain what you do at a conceptual level. They're not the same thing, and knowing when to use each is a skill most consultants underestimate.

David uses the buzzword "actionable insights" as an example. In the data world, every insight should be actionable by default. You don't create insights just to create them. So the phrase is redundant. But it persists because it helps non-technical buyers understand the behavior change that data work is supposed to drive. It's positioning language, not expertise language.

The takeaway for marketers and consultants is to be intentional about which mode you're operating in. Jargon isn't inherently bad. Sometimes a complex term is the exact signal that resonates with the person you're trying to reach. But if you're using it because you don't know how to explain the concept more simply, that's a problem.

Branding as a Reflection of the Work

David was extremely intentional about Superposition's brand from day one. The colors, the motion-heavy graphics, the cat mascot, the game show format, none of it was accidental. Every element was reverse-engineered from the work itself and from how David wanted the company to feel.

His philosophy is that branding and marketing should always communicate something about what the company actually does. Not just look good. Not just be different for the sake of being different. But actively reflect the principles behind the work. For Superposition, that means play, collaboration, and energy, the same things that define the workshop experience.

This is a lesson that applies well beyond consulting. Too many companies build their brand in a vacuum, disconnected from their actual delivery model and client experience. David's approach treats the brand as a direct extension of the product. If the workshops are interactive and fun, the content should be interactive and fun. If the work is collaborative, the brand should feel collaborative. It's obvious in hindsight, but very few companies execute on it this cleanly.

The Connector Role

One byproduct of David's model that he's still figuring out how to formalize is the connector role. Because his clients are other consultancies in the data and AI space, he naturally sits at the center of a growing network. He's constantly meeting people, making introductions, and identifying partnership opportunities.

He hasn't built this into a formal offering yet, but the potential is clear. Community, events, and curated introductions are natural extensions of a business model built on bringing people together. For anyone building a consulting or service business, this is worth paying attention to. The relationships you build through your content and delivery can become an asset in their own right if you're intentional about nurturing them.

What Founders Can Take From This

David's story is a good case study in building something differentiated from the start rather than trying to retrofit differentiation later. A few things stand out.

Your content should demonstrate your value, not just describe it. If your differentiator is how you work, find a format that lets people experience a version of that before they ever become a client.

Your brand should be reverse-engineered from your delivery model. Don't build a brand in a vacuum and then try to connect it to your services after the fact. Start with the work and let the brand reflect it.

The consulting industry rewards sameness, but the market doesn't. Standing out requires going about 10% outside your comfort zone on everything you put out. That's uncomfortable, but it's the cost of being memorable.

Self-doubt is universal and it doesn't go away. David is four months in and already building something impressive. He still questions what he's doing constantly. Every founder does. The ones who win are the ones who keep going anyway.

Listen to the Full Episode

Catch the full conversation with David Cohen on Marketing by Design, available wherever you listen to podcasts.

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