Chris Cureton: Your Strategic Alignment Champion
Simply put, I work alongside leadership teams to get product, marketing, and sales moving in the same direction.
I’m Chris Cureton, the creator of The United State of Brand Design™ Framework, a strategic alignment framework that helps leadership teams clarify direction, unify messaging, and accelerate execution across the business.
For nearly two decades, I’ve partnered with CEOs, Founders, CMOs, and cross-functional leaders to eliminate the internal confusion and misalignment that slows teams down.
So whether you’re heading toward a big launch, planning your next phase of growth, or just tired of not having a better system, I bring the tools, facilitation, and strategic perspective to get you aligned and moving forward.
CRC Industries: Category Leadership Reclaimed
Cross-functional GTM Alignment
Work completed while embedded as VP Brand Design at BOLTGROUP.
Jack Henry: Aligning a Fintech for Enterprise Growth
Executive Narrative & Transformation Strategy
Work completed while embedded as VP Brand Design at BOLTGROUP.
NSI Industries: Repositioning for Acquisition
Brand-Led Growth & Organizational Alignment
Work completed while embedded as VP Brand Design at BOLTGROUP.
Pure Fishing: Aligning a Multi-Brand Portfolio
Brand Architecture & Systems Thinking
Work completed while embedded as VP Brand Design at BOLTGROUP.
SteelPoint: Launching a Challenger Brand
Strategy → Visual Identity Alignment
Work completed while embedded as a Creative Leader at Birdsong Gregory.
Metabo HPT: Messaging That Powered a Relaunch
GTM Messaging & Retail Enablement
Work completed while embedded as VP Brand Design at BOLTGROUP.
Go-to-Market Impact
-
Examples:
Growing Manufacturer of Electrical, Building Technology, and HVAC Products: I led a repositioning and brand relaunch that transformed the company from an electrical parts brand to a holding company connecting distributors and end users to market leading electrical, HVAC, and building technology brands; the increased value facilitated acquisition of the company 2 years later
Leading Home Improvement Retailer: I designed the logo for a now popular private label cleaning product brand. Case Study →
Leading Database Management Provider: I designed the visual identity and key communications; helping increase the value of the company, and facilitate its acquisition 2 years later. Case Study →
-
Examples:
Growing Manufacturer of Electrical, Building Technology, and HVAC Products: I led a repositioning and brand relaunch that transformed the company from an electrical parts brand to a holding company connecting distributors and end users to market leading electrical, HVAC, and building technology brands; the increased value facilitated acquisition of the company 2 years later
Leading Home Improvement Retailer: I designed the logo for a now popular private label cleaning product brand. Case Study →
Leading Database Management Provider: I designed the visual identity and key communications; helping increase the value of the company, and facilitate its acquisition 2 years later
-
Examples:
Pro-Preferred Tool Manufacturer: I led the development of a new messaging platform to relaunch a cordless power tool line. The platform and launch was so successful that the company adapted and applied it to the rest of their product lines
Leading Global Provider of Fishing Products: I led the identity refinement, and development of brand guidelines for market leading brands that had been acquired; clearly defining differentiation and creative direction for each brand, and paving the path for scalability and internal implementation
“During our time working together, Christopher consistently demonstrated a wonderful ability to adapt while driving an elevated approach to product development and nomenclature strategy making a significant impact on the end result. He was a true partner, and exuded patience and thoughtfulness. His approach was thorough, innovative, and highly effective with great attention to detail.”
- Audrey Rodriguez, Head of Global Brand Marketing, Golf Pride
Go-to-Market Skills
-
Decades of experience that includes:
Go-to-Market Strategy Development
Identity System Design
Communications
And Complementary Skills:
-
I have led dozens of successful creative efforts and deliverables produced by various teams that include: product design and marketing leaders, sales leaders, researchers, strategists, copywriters, creative directors, art directors, graphic designers, photographers, models, animators, videographers, UI/UX designers, digital developers, industrial designers, and engineers.
I also facilitate workshops that accelerate the progress of business initiatives by building buy-in and consensus among cross-functional team members.
-
I have supported teams tasked with driving innovation at companies like Chick-fil-A and Golf Pride; facilitating workshops, leading conceptualization, and design for their continuous improvement.
“Chris is a great collaborator and creative thinker who understands the ins and outs of successful brand development and is skilled at helping his clients bring that strategy to market.”
- Hillary Cirillo, Global Brand Strategy Manager, Sealed Air
Go-to-Market Experience
-
3A Composites
Alucobond
Abbott
Alinity
Acuity Brands
Aéropostale
Baxter
Spectrum IQ
Cato
Carnival
Beer Station
RedFrog Rum Bar
Chick-fil-A
Circle K
Sea Quest
Coats
EcoVerde
CRC Industries
CRC Brakleen
Crawford & Company
Diversey
Beer Clean
Dollar Tree
Sure Scents
Domtar
EarthChoice
Lynx
Xerox Paper
Eaton
Golf Pride
Jack Henry
Kroger
Harris Teeter
LeGrand
Lowe’s Home Improvement
Moxie
Style Selections
Microsoft
Azure
Lync
MPN / Microsoft Partner Network
MSN
Office
One Drive
Outlook
Surface
Windows
Morrison Supply / Morsco
Expressions Home Gallery
Muzak / Mood Media
Myers Industries
PlayCore
Pure Fishing
Abu Garcia
Berkley
Fenwick
Penn
Plano
Shakespeare
Ugly Stik
Solid Surface Care
Tesa Tape
Xylem
-
Addison Whitney
Agdata
Aptevo Therapeutics
Biodesix
Birdsong Gregory
Boltgroup
Broad Green Pictures
Chung’s Foods
Elements International
Metabo HPT
NSI Industries
Olde Mecklenburg Brewery
Oransi
Pendopharm
Precidian Investments
SteelPoint
Summit Leadership Partners
Tedor Pharma
-
Glovescaler
Little Burros
Taptivate
Wrap Buddies
“I had the opportunity of partnering with Christopher as a client for two major transformation programs. He possesses a unique blend of Customer Design Focus and Business Acumen. His design leadership helped our business to truly understand the Customer Experience and apply it to create a transformational Value Proposition.”
- Shane Hill, Director, Supply Chain Transformation, Chick-fil-A
Whether I’m embedded with your team or partnering at the leadership level, I translate business objectives into decisions that product, marketing, and sales can act on.
Below is an overview of how we can work together, and the capabilities I bring to support strategic alignment and creative transformation.
What Working Together Looks Like
For In-House Teams:
I guide leadership, product, marketing, and sales teams through structured alignment, strategic clarity, and brand-led decision-making. This includes executive alignment facilitation, strategic workshops, operating system development, messaging clarity, and ongoing leadership support.
In-House Teams Bring Me In When:
Their organization needs clarity, and a unified strategic direction across product, marketing, and sales efforts.
For Agencies / Firms:
I join agency and firms as a senior strategist and creative leader — supporting discovery, brand strategy, positioning, messaging, identity development, naming, design systems, and client-facing presentation work. They use me because they get a highly adaptable, flexible, and high-value extension of their team.
Agencies and Firms Bring Me In When:
They need strategic depth, presentation strength, and senior-level brand leadership on high-stakes projects.
Both paths lead to the same outcome: a durable Strategic Operating System™ for companies that need greater alignment between product, marketing, and sales to reach the next level.
Strategic Domains I Operate Inside:
Strategy & Alignment:
How Systems Are Designed
High-intent, high-impact capabilities that bring clarity to organizations.
-
Defining the core ideas, beliefs, and value propositions that guide how you communicate, compete, and grow.
-
Establishing where your brand fits in the market, who you serve, and why customers should choose you over competitors.
-
Aligning product, marketing, and sales around a unified plan for reaching customers and accelerating adoption.
-
Creating a structured system of messages that clarifies what you say, how you say it, and how your team communicates value across every channel.
-
Developing names, terminology, and language frameworks that help teams speak consistently and confidently.
-
Conducting interviews, landscape reviews, and competitive analysis to reveal customer motivations and market opportunities.
-
Structuring products, services, and sub-brands so customers understand how everything fits together.
-
Guiding executive teams toward clarity, shared priorities, and confident decision-making.
Creative Guidance & Execution:
How Systems Are Activated
Senior-level creative direction paired with practical execution support.
-
Creating the elements that define a recognizable and cohesive brand, while establishing scalable design frameworks that create cohesion across digital, print, and physical experiences.
-
Developing a mark that embodies your brand’s strategy, presence, and personality.
-
Documenting how your brand should look, sound, and behave so teams and partners work with consistency.
-
Providing the conceptual, aesthetic, and narrative direction that shapes campaigns, content, and executions.
-
Ensuring your digital presence communicates value clearly and aligns with brand strategy.
-
Developing decks, presentations, proposals, and customer-facing materials that align with your strategic story.
-
Developing the central idea, narrative, and visual approach that anchor multi-channel campaigns. This includes creative territories, conceptual directions, messaging angles, and executional systems that ensure cohesion across touchpoints.
-
Defining the visual and verbal expression of products—packaging systems, product naming alignment, on-pack messaging hierarchy, and brand-forward design that strengthens differentiation at the point of decision.
Background & Professional Profile
-
Full Name: Christopher Cureton
Birthdate: April 8, 1987
Birthplace: Monroe, North Carolina
Current Residence: Charlotte Metro Area, North Carolina
Spouse: Amy Cureton (married 2019)
Children: Liam Cureton, Grayson Cureton
Parents: Frances Cureton, Barry Cureton
-
Chris Cureton is a recognized expert in strategic alignment, brand design, and executive-level marketing, advising growth-stage companies on how to align product, marketing, and sales for transformational growth. His proprietary ideas and frameworks—including the USBD Framework and Strategic Alignment Model™, the Misalignment Tax™, the StrategicOS™, and Almost Aligned™—have helped executive leadership teams unlock clarity, consistency, and commercial success.Item description
-
Christopher Cureton was born in Monroe, North Carolina, and raised primarily in the neighboring rural town of Waxhaw during the 1990s. He attended Western Union Elementary—originally founded as the first high school for Black students in Union County—then Parkwood Middle School, and later Parkwood High School, a place marked by both controversy and legacy. While the school’s Confederate soldier mascot symbolized a divisive past, Monroe was also the hometown of civil rights leader Robert F. Williams and NASA’s Christine Darden—figures whose legacies quietly shaped the cultural duality of his upbringing.
Chris was raised by his mother, a well-respected early childhood educator, in a single-parent household. His father, a Navy veteran with a natural knack for the arts, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and remained a distant yet caring presence until his death in 2022. Navigating a Black Southern experience in a small-town setting gave Chris both grit and grace. He balanced football and track with art club and music, embodying the duality of discipline and creativity that would define his future work.
It was a high school teacher who first named what she saw in him—a “Renaissance Man”—and encouraged him to pursue a career in design, where his natural curiosity, work ethic, and emotional intelligence could converge. That early mentorship became a turning point, eventually leading Chris to Alfred University in upstate New York, where he began his formal studies in fine arts and design.
The belief that anchors his life and leadership today is rooted in faith and action: “Faith without works is dead.” For Chris, vision only becomes reality when backed by deep, consistent effort—a principle that continues to guide how he shows up for the work, his clients, and the mission of alignment.
-
Education:
Associate Degree, Graphic Design, The Art Institute of Charlotte
Studied Fine Arts and Graphic Design at Alfred University and The Art Institute of Tampa
Professional Development Certifications (2025):
AI for Organizational Leaders – Microsoft & LinkedIn
Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy – LinkedIn
Generative AI for Business Leaders – LinkedIn
Product-Led Generative AI Innovation for SaaS Companies – LinkedIn
Change Management Professional Certificate – LinkedIn
Managing a Cross-Functional Team – LinkedIn
Strategic Partnerships – LinkedIn
Email Marketing: Strategy and Optimization – LinkedIn
Using AI as Your SEO Assistant – LinkedIn
SEO Professional Certificate – Moz
-
BOLTGROUP
Principal & VP Brand Design (Jan 2024 – Present)
VP Brand Design (Apr 2022 – Jan 2024)
Creative Director (Apr 2020 – Apr 2022)
Chris Cureton, Strategic Alignment & Brand Design Consultant
Independent practice advising executives on alignment, brand, and go-to-market strategy (2007 – Present)
Previous Roles
Art Director, birdsong gregory (2017–2020)
Senior Art Director, Concentric (2016–2017)
Visual Branding Manager, Addison Whitney (2016)
Senior Graphic Designer & Graphic Designer, Addison Whitney (2013–2016)
Designer, Mood Media & BOLTGROUP (2010–2012)
Image Editor, Charlotte ViewPoint (2011–2014)
-
Upcoming Book: The Five Laws of Brand Design: Achieve Strategic Alignment Across Product, Marketing, and Sales
Charlotte Ideas Festival (2024): Panelist, "Humanities + DESIGN"
Appalachian State University (2023): Guest speaker on brand-led business scaling
Charlotte Podcast Festival (2020): Panelist on podcast branding and SEO
-
The United State of Brand Design™ Framework: Strategic alignment model leveraging brand as a StrategicOS™.
StrategicOS™: Internal framework that turns static strategy into operational rhythm.
Misalignment Tax™: Hidden cost of poor alignment across teams.
Misalignment Cascade™: The compounding breakdown from unresolved disconnects.
Almost Aligned™: Superficial consensus that fails in execution.
Strategic Brand Design™: The intentional structuring of how value is communicated—aligning product, marketing, and sales to strategic intent.
-
AutoCare Association (2025): Best 360 Degree B2B Campaign – CRC & BOLTGROUP
Transform North America Awards:
2025: Bronze – Best Creative Strategy; Consumer (Plano, Ugly Stik)
2025: Bronze – Best Visual Identity; Sports and Leisure (Shakespeare)
2023: Bronze – NSI Industries
GDUSA Awards (2021–2025): Recognized for branding, packaging, advertising, and digital design across clients including Oransi, CRC, Metabo HPT, and Elements Brands
AAF AAAwards Charlotte (2018): Silver ADDY – Integrated Brand Identity Campaign (AGDATA)
-
Most engagements begin with the Strategic Misalignment Diagnostic™.
If misalignment is showing up inside an organization, the correct starting point is a diagnosis.
Frequently Asked Questions
-
Traditional branding agencies typically focus on visual identity, messaging, and marketing collateral. My approach goes deeper by turning your brand strategy into a strategic operating system. This means aligning leadership, messaging, and execution across the entire organization — not just marketing. It’s about creating a system that helps the whole company move forward together.
-
Brand is often misunderstood as only marketing. In reality, a strong brand strategy serves as the foundation for business alignment. When integrated as a strategic operating system, brand guides decision-making, communication, and execution across departments — helping sales, marketing, operations, and leadership work in sync.
-
It means developing a repeatable framework that connects your vision, values, and messaging with everyday business processes. This system ensures consistent internal and external communication, aligns cross-functional teams, and accelerates strategy execution. Think of it as the engine that drives alignment and growth.
-
My work is ideal for mid-size to large companies facing challenges with leadership alignment, siloed teams, or inconsistent brand messaging across departments. It’s especially valuable for CEOs and Marketing Leaders looking to accelerate growth by ensuring their entire organization works as one.
-
Many clients have faced similar frustrations. Unlike surface-level initiatives, my method embeds brand strategy deeply into daily operations and decision-making processes. This creates sustainable alignment by building a shared operating rhythm that leadership and teams commit to over time.
-
While true alignment and culture shifts take time, clients often see immediate benefits from diagnostic assessments and workshops — including clarity on key gaps and quick wins. These early wins create momentum toward lasting change.
-
A diagnostic typically includes interviews, surveys, and analysis to identify where misalignment exists. Workshops bring leadership teams together to co-create alignment on vision, messaging, and operating rhythms. Both are interactive and tailored to your company’s unique challenges.
-
I understand that budgets and time are limited. That’s why I offer flexible engagement options — from low-risk diagnostics to focused workshops — designed to deliver high impact without overwhelming your team.
-
Absolutely. My work complements agencies by focusing on internal alignment and execution. Many clients maintain their marketing agencies while working with me to ensure brand strategy is operationalized throughout their business.
-
I respect that time is a precious resource. My approach fits into your existing workflows and leadership rhythms, minimizing disruption while maximizing impact. Engagements are designed to be efficient and focused on what moves the needle.
-
Success is measured by improved alignment across leadership and teams, consistent messaging externally and internally, faster decision-making, and ultimately, accelerated business growth. We track progress through follow-up assessments and feedback loops.