Fractional Brand & Marketing Leadership

Your Head of Brand and Head of Marketing. On fractional terms.

Second Empire is a long-term brand and marketing leadership partnership, at a fraction of the time of a full-time hire. Two senior operators with a combined 42+ years of Fortune-500 work, embedded inside your business as your Head of Brand and Head of Marketing — for as long as the work needs them.

Built on 27+ years of brand leadership and 15+ years of marketing leadership. The industries change. The work stays the same.

Hospitality · Cannabis · Retail · Services · Health tech · Consumer goods · Nonprofit · Enterprise SaaS

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Why Second Empire

Long-term leadership. A fraction of the time.

Brand without marketing is theory. Marketing without brand is noise. Most established companies need both at a senior level, but if the amount of work doesn't justify two full-time hires, an agency can't make it pencil.

Second Empire is built for the in-between. Kory leads brand. Aimee leads marketing. We embed inside your business as your Head of Brand and Head of Marketing on a part-time cadence, and we stay for as long as the work needs us. Multi-month, multi-year, no fixed end date.

The companies who hire us are usually navigating one of three inflection points: a repositioning, a category shift, or a moment when their in-house team has outgrown its current ceiling. We don't leave when the inflection point is over. We become the senior brand and marketing function the company keeps growing with.

Kory Kapfer

Head of Brand

Aimee Kapfer

Head of Marketing

How we work

Three shapes. Every engagement custom-scoped.

Ongoing Leadership

The heart of the practice

For companies that need senior brand and marketing presence at a steady weekly cadence. Multi-month, multi-year, no fixed end date. We sit in your leadership meetings, run your brand and marketing function, and own the outcomes a Head of Brand or Head of Marketing would.

Focused Initiative

Defined outcome, defined timeline

For companies with a defined outcome and timeline: a rebrand, a category repositioning, a market entry, a campaign launch. We scope, lead, and deliver the initiative end-to-end, then hand the keys back to your team.

Advisory

Senior access, lower cadence

For founders and CEOs who need a senior sounding board on brand and marketing decisions without the full embed. Lower cadence, executive access, no agency overhead.

Sound familiar?

We've seen this before. Probably more than once.

Nobody on your team can explain what you do in one sentence?

We fix that. Brand clarity isn't a nice-to-have — it's the difference between a team that rows together and one that improvises expensively.

Your brand looks like it was built as you went?

Because it was. We find the position worth owning, build the foundation, and make sure every function carries it forward.

You paid for a brand strategy and got a beautiful PDF that collected dust?

We've seen it too. Strategy without execution isn't strategy, it's words on a hidden page. We stay until the brand actually changes how you operate.

Your marketing spend keeps going up but the results don't?

Without a brand foundation, more content just means more noise. We fix the story first. Then the spend works harder.

You've got designers, developers, and marketers, but no one owns the brand?

That's fragmentation. We're the connective tissue that gets everyone telling the same story.

Your competitor is winning and you can't explain why?

Usually it's not the product. It's the brand. The clearest story wins — not the best one.

Launching into a market with no playbook?

We've built GTM strategy from zero, more than once. Consumer genomics, FDA-cleared diagnostics, enterprise health SaaS: categories where the product was ahead of the market's ability to understand it.

Multiple buyer audiences with nothing in common?

We'll build a messaging framework that speaks to all of them without losing clarity.

Campaigns running but pipeline isn't moving?

We'll find where prospects are stalling and fix the funnel, not just the creative.

Sales team pitching but not converting?

We build the enablement infrastructure that closes the gap between marketing and revenue.

Budget allocated but no idea what's working?

We track what matters and cut what doesn't.

Product evolving faster than your messaging?

We build feedback loops that keep positioning in step with reality.

Your Head of Brand and Head of Marketing. On fractional terms.

Long-term leadership. A fraction of the time.

Three shapes. Every engagement custom-scoped.

Ongoing Leadership

Focused Initiative

Advisory

We've seen this before. Probably more than once.

The body of work Second Empire is built on.

Most rep agencies compete on coverage. Western Component Sales now competes on what happens after the meeting.

One roofing company became three. Second Empire built the brand to hold all of them.

How a single brand campaign helped Camelot outsell the luxury downturn by 18%.

An institutional rebrand that earned Phoenix Art Museum global digital recognition.

Not sure which fits? That's the conversation.