We start with a Strategic Roadmap to build the strategic foundation your content needs. Then we move into a Content Partnership if you're ready for an ongoing team to create, manage, and measure your content for you. Everything we do together is grounded in the Content With Purpose framework: strategic thinking that clarifies exactly what to say, who to say it to, and how to say it in a way that genuinely connects with the audiences you most care about.
Strategy
Your Strategic Roadmap: a 3-phase approach
Before you can create content that works for you, you need to be clear about your unique goals, audiences, and what to say to drive results. The Strategic Roadmap builds the complete strategic foundation your content needs, covering all six layers of our proprietary Content With Purpose framework. Start at Phase 1 and move forward at your own pace, or commit to the full sequence upfront — each phase delivers real, usable content.
Phase 1
Your Strategic Foundation
Who you are, what you stand for, and where you want to go.
We'll audit your brand content, map your competitive landscape, and build the strategic foundation every content program needs, including a clear set of marketing goals to measure what matters.
What you get: Brand foundation document · Content + competitive audit · Content marketing mission and goals
Phase 2
Your Brand Voice & Identity
A system for saying the right things to the right people — every time.
Real audience personas, a complete story & messaging system, and a visual brand kit that makes your content look and feel unmistakably like you. Essential guidance for today's teams (human and AI).
What you get: Audience personas · Five-part messaging system · Visual brand kit · Tone and voice guide
Phase 3
Content Flow & Execution
Clarity on how to get it done: what to publish, where, when, and why.
We translate your strategy into a system your team (or ours) can run with optimal efficiency: a full channel and format plan, a 90-day content calendar, a measurement framework, and your first batch of content ready to publish.
What you get: Channel + format strategy · 90-day content calendar · Measurement framework · Content ops setup · First content batch ready to publish
Partnership
Got your strategy? Now let's create that content.
Once you know what to say, you need a team to help you say it — consistently, beautifully, and without adding more to your plate. Choose the level of support that fits your goals, your team, and your pace of growth.
Essentials
For organizations that need one channel done well.
Single-channel focus. Strategic foundation built in. Content planned, created, and delivered every month — so your brand shows up consistently without you having to manage every detail.
Best for: growing organizations that know where they need to show up, and want a senior partner to help them do it well.
Growth
For teams ready to show up with impact across multiple channels.
Multi-channel strategy and content, senior-led and fully managed. We plan your content direction, create across your key platforms, and report on what's working — so you can focus on leading your organization instead of managing your content.
Best for: marketing directors who need a strategic team they can trust to own execution.
Strategic Leader
For organizations that need a fractional content leadership team.
This is more than a retainer. It's a fully integrated content partnership. We set direction, manage production across your entire content program, align your team and stakeholders, and are accountable for results as if we were part of your organization.
Best for: larger, complex organizations that need senior content leadership embedded in their business.
What Our Clients Say
Lara (Forge & Spark's VP of Creative Strategy) is incredibly creative, solves problems, manages client anxiety with grace and finesse, is very flexible, responsive and generous. We couldn't ask for more!
The best part about working with Forge & Spark is that they have a roster of diverse writers with diverse backgrounds who could help us tell authentic stories without having to start building those relationships from scratch. They also help us expand our team’s bandwidth by acting as an additional team that we can depend on.
Forge & Spark supports our marketing efforts at Genus with a focused and talented content team that listens to our needs and meets our expectations consistently.
It's rare to work with someone in marketing who truly understands your values. With Forge & Spark, I didn't have to explain or temper my language—they got it. They helped me turn my messaging into marketing assets and a plan that feels authentic and powerful.
Collaborating with the team at Forge & Spark was an experience rooted in care, clarity, and deep listening. Their guidance helped surface the heart of our work, and their thoughtful strategy offered a path forward that feels both aligned and expansive.
FAQs
Questions worth asking before you commit
For smaller organizations, a light Roadmap takes about a month. For larger enterprises with more complexity — multiple stakeholders, multi-brand environments, or deeper strategic work required — expect six to eight weeks.
If you're joining us for a Content Partnership, your strategic foundation is built into the first four to eight weeks of the engagement depending on your tier, and content production begins as soon as the foundation is in place.
Every engagement — whether a standalone Roadmap or a Content Partnership — works through the same six layers of the Content With Purpose framework. What changes is the depth.
We start with the foundation: your purpose, your values, and the reason your organization exists beyond the bottom line. From there we move into your brand story — the narrative that makes you distinct and the positioning that tells your audience exactly why you're the right choice for them.
The third and fourth layers are about your audience and your messaging: who you're actually talking to, what moves them, and the complete messaging system your team uses to communicate consistently — key messages, proof points, tone, vocabulary, and the language that's distinctly yours.
Layer five is content strategy: which channels to show up on, what formats work best for your audience, what cadence makes sense for your team, and a clear 90-day plan to execute from. The sixth layer is content operations — the systems, workflows, and processes that make consistent content creation possible without everything running through one overwhelmed person.
Here's what makes our approach different: we don't just build frameworks and hand you a document. As we're developing your strategy, we're working with real messaging, real brand visuals, and real content. By the time we're done, you're not staring at a plan and wondering where to start — you have actual assets ready to publish.
The clients we do our best work with share a few things in common: they're purpose-driven, they care about doing things well, and they understand that content is a long-term investment in trust — not a quick fix.
More specifically, we work best with founders, marketing directors, and communications leads at values-driven organizations who are serious about growth and ready to build something that lasts. They often have some content in market already, but it's inconsistent, or the strategy isn't clear, or they know they're not showing up the way they should be. They're not looking for the cheapest option — they're looking for the right partner.
We're probably not the right fit if you need high-volume, low-cost content production, if strategy feels like an unnecessary step before publishing, or if the first question on your mind is how to get the price down. That's not a judgment — it's just not the kind of work we're built to do well.
Less than you might think, but not zero.
For the Roadmap, you'll need roughly three hours of focused time for each phase. Most of that is in structured sessions where we do the heavy lifting and you bring your knowledge of your organization, plus a review of the strategic materials we produce.
For Partnership clients, the ongoing time commitment is a monthly planning call (45 to 90 minutes depending on your tier), plus one round of content review each month.
The Strategic Roadmap is structured in three phases as a bundled sequence, at $18,000 CAD. We offer customized quotes based on your unique needs. For Content Partnership pricing, it varies by tier and scope — the best way to get a clear number is to book a discovery call.
We aim to price fairly for senior-level work that delivers results, ensuring that our experienced team earns fair living wages.
Fair question, and we'd rather answer it directly than hand you a list of logos.
We've been doing this work with care for over a decade. We're a Certified B Corp, which means we're held to real standards for how we work and who we work with — not just what we say about ourselves.
Shannon Emmerson, our founder, has spent more than 25 years in publishing, communications, and content marketing — and literally wrote the book on content strategy for purpose-driven organizations.