The problem
Sustainability and technical teams speak one language. Marketing speaks another.
You know your work inside out, and that's exactly what makes it hard to explain. What comes out is accurate, careful and full of the detail that matters to you, and somewhere between your head and the page, the point gets lost. Nobody's doing anything wrong here, it's what happens when experts describe their own work.
That's the communication gap: the distance between how good the work is and how much of it the people outside can actually see. And while it stays open, the funding and the contracts drift towards whoever is easiest to understand. It's rarely about who's best. It's almost always about who's easiest to say yes to.
Three ways we can work together
Some people want a single session to sharpen their message, others are ready to build the full foundations. Each one leads naturally into the next, so start wherever feels right.
The Messaging Sprint
A good place to start.
A single working session with a clear outcome: your message, in a sentence people actually repeat. We build it together in the room, using the same reframing method I teach in my workshops.
For founders who need clarity quickly, and for anyone who'd like to see how I work before committing to more.
The Strategy Engagement
The full foundations.
10 to 14 weeks of proper digging: who you are, who you're here for, and why you matter, built on what your actual customers tell us. Then we shape the identity and website to carry it.
For organisations whose work has outgrown their brand, ready to scale on strong foundations.
Fractional CMO
Alongside you as you grow.
Senior marketing and brand leadership that stays with you. I'm fully embedded in your team, planning the launches, steering the brand and keeping the story consistent as you grow. You get the strategic value of a marketing department without having to build one.
For organisations ready to move past DIY marketing, without taking on a full-time hire.
Whatever your starting point, you work directly with me the whole way through. No handoffs, no account managers, and when the work needs specialist skills, I bring in people I know and trust.
What it's worth
24
to
33
percentage points
When NYU Stern and Edelman tested real sustainability messages on real audiences, the clear, credible ones outperformed each brand's best conventional marketing message by 24 to 33 percentage points.
That's what closing the communication gap is worth.
NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business and Edelman, 2023.
Case study
Risk Pool Alliance knew exactly what they did and why it mattered. Explaining it was the hard part: every conversation started from scratch, and partners who spoke on their behalf weren't sure what to say.
The turning point was something they'd always treated as a footnote. One area of impact has since grown to four, and we're still working together.
Clients
What's on your mind?
Questions we get asked before the first call
Pure Flow State is a brand and marketing strategy studio working with sustainability and mission-led organisations. I'm Adele Kelly, and the work starts with your foundations: who you are, who you're here for and why you matter. Then comes the identity, website and content that carry them.
The communication gap is the distance between how good your work is and how much of it the people outside can understand. It opens when experts describe their own work, accurately and in full detail, to people who don't share the background. Funding and contracts then drift towards whoever is easiest to say yes to.
Sustainability and mission-led organisations, mainly advisory and consultancy firms, foundations and philanthropy, and organisations at the point where they're scaling. Clients have included Risk Pool Alliance, Echologika, the WASH Funders Group and Together 2030.
A strategist works out what you should be saying and who needs to hear it, before anyone writes or designs anything. Copywriters and designers then have something solid to work from. I do the strategy, and the identity, website and content get built on it.
Yes, and that's most of the job. Accuracy is the point of the work, so nothing gets flattened to make it easier to say. What changes is the order you say things in, so the part that matters most to the person in front of you comes first, and the detail is there when they ask for it.
When NYU Stern and Edelman tested real sustainability messages on real audiences in 2023, the clear, credible ones outperformed each brand's best conventional marketing message by 24 to 33 percentage points. Echologika saw 556% more store visitors after three months of brand and digital work.
The Messaging Sprint is a single working session that ends with your message in a sentence people repeat. The Strategy Engagement is the full foundations, usually 10 to 14 weeks. Fractional CMO is senior brand and marketing leadership on retainer, embedded in your team for as long as you need it.
With listening. You'll arrive with a challenge in mind, maybe a rebrand, a new website or a pitch that isn't landing, and quite often the thing you think you need isn't the thing that will make the difference. So we keep digging until we find the root, then build from there together.
Free download
Find out why your message isn't getting through
Six questions to ask about something you've already sent out: a funding bid, a pitch, your about page. It takes 15 minutes and a pen. By the end you'll know which sentences your reader actually needs, which ones are only there for you, and what to change before you write the next one.