Strategy, growth & brand · Warsaw
Inside your business. Outside your assumptions.
Van Kannel & Co. works inside companies on strategy, growth and market entry, with the perspective of someone not bound by how things have always been done. Thirty-five years of building, running, funding and advising businesses in Poland.
Approach
The outside view, from the inside
Every engagement is shaped around the situation. These are the principles that don't change.
Outside
See it as the market does
Fresh eyes on the assumptions an organisation has stopped questioning: its brand, its customers, its competitors and its own habits.
Diagnosis
Say what is actually wrong
A plain-spoken diagnosis and a short list of priorities, not a deck of ambitions. The conclusion comes first, with the reasoning behind it.
Execution
See it through
Strategy only matters once it is in place. We work alongside the management team to put the plan into practice, measure what it delivers and adjust when the market pushes back.
What we do
We offer specialised services for the decisions where an experienced outside view makes the difference:
Market Entry & Expansion
For international companies entering Poland and Central Europe, and for Polish companies taking their business abroad: market assessment, partners, positioning and the first years on the ground.
Growth Strategy
Where to grow, what to stop doing and how to fund it — for owners and boards weighing commitments over the next three to five years.
Strategic Reviews
Independent, outside-in reviews of a business, division or brand, for owners and boards who want an honest second opinion before they commit.
Owner & Board Advisory
Counsel from fifteen years as a supervisory board chairman, seven as a CEO and years as an angel investor — on growth, governance and decisions that are hard to reverse.
Brand & Marketing Leadership
Brand positioning and senior marketing direction, as an adviser or as interim marketing director: strategy, budgets, agencies and building the in-house team.
About
Thirty-five years of growing businesses in Poland
John Van Kannel
Founder & President
John Van Kannel has spent thirty-five years helping companies grow in Poland and beyond: as an agency founder, a CEO, a supervisory board chairman and an angel investor. He works closely with government and diplomatic circles, and with companies on both sides of a market entry.
In 1996 he brought TBWA to Poland, becoming a founding equity partner alongside Omnicom, and built it into a top-ten agency. He later ran Lowe Lintas GGK, chaired the supervisory board of Perła Browary Lubelskie for fifteen years and led Dynamic Biogas as president for seven. Along the way his agencies worked on many of Poland's best-known brands, and created some of them. Today he is also external marketing director for a publicly traded financial services group.
He started as a journalist and came to Warsaw in 1991 to write for The Warsaw Voice. The newsroom taught him to find the real story fast and tell it plainly. He takes on a few engagements at a time and works on each one personally.
The name
Always open. Always closed.
US Patent 387,571 · 1888
In 1888 Theophilus Van Kannel patented the revolving door: a door that is always open and always closed at once, letting people through while keeping the weather out. His company went on to build them from offices in New York, London, Paris and Brussels.
The medallion in our mark is his door. The motto is also a fair description of how we work — open to every possibility, firm about what matters.
A decision that would benefit from an outside view?
The firm takes on a small number of engagements at a time. Send a few lines about the situation and John will reply personally.
john@vankannel.com