EMI is a strategic consultancy for financial services marketing. We don't produce campaigns and hope they work. We diagnose the real problem, build the strategic position, and execute the work that changes outcomes. Thirty years of proof.
Most marketing firms are structured to produce things — campaigns, content, deliverables. Their economics reward volume. Their timelines reward speed. Their processes reward the appearance of progress.
EMI was built to produce something else entirely: strategic clarity. The kind of clarity that changes how an organization competes, how its prospects perceive it, and how its marketing performs — not for a quarter, but permanently.
That required building a different kind of firm. One that employs the diagnostic rigor of a consultancy, the creative craft of an agency, and the sustained intellectual investment of a research organization. A consultancy built not for volume, but for clarity.
These aren't taglines. They're the convictions that shape every engagement we take on — and every one we don't.
The merchant services category had calcified around rate sheets, terminal specs, and transaction speeds. Wells Fargo needed to elevate the conversation to where its actual value lived — business intelligence, growth partnership, and commercial advisory. EMI built the strategic position, then executed it across video, sales enablement, and channel marketing.
Visa's commercial portfolio — cross-border payments, virtual cards, enterprise AP automation — serves CFOs, treasurers, and procurement leaders who evaluate with institutional rigor. EMI developed positioning that matched the sophistication of the buyer, translating deep product complexity into language that created genuine competitive preference.
State Street Global Advisors serves institutional allocators, pension funds, and sovereign wealth offices. These audiences evaluate marketing with the same analytical rigor they apply to portfolios. EMI built strategic positioning and campaign architecture that treated that rigor as a feature — producing work that earned attention by deserving it.
EMI Strategic Marketing was founded in 1993 on a single premise: that financial services deserved a different kind of firm. Not a general agency with a financial client. Not a production house. A strategic consultancy with the depth to diagnose the real problem, the intellectual honesty to name it, and the creative craft to solve it.
Thirty years later, what started as a conviction has become a body of evidence. Every engagement adds to the pattern. Every pattern sharpens the next insight. The result is a firm that gets more valuable with every year — not less.
EMI's research and perspectives on financial services marketing — wherever you go to sharpen your thinking.
Campbell, Ian, and Mark publishing sharp takes on financial services marketing and positioning.
ActiveThe thinking, on camera. Short-form and long-form.
Coming SoonThe hardest questions in financial services marketing. No filler.
Coming SoonOne genuine insight, twice a month.
Coming SoonSubstantial thinking published where serious readers find it.
Coming SoonThe full EMI archive. Subscribable. Searchable.
Coming SoonNot a blog. A publication.
ActiveEMI Podcast on all major platforms.
Coming SoonIf what you see here reflects the standard your marketing should be held to — or the standard you wish it were — we should talk. Not a pitch. A diagnostic conversation about what your organization actually needs.
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