You are a Series A–C challenger brand at $5M–$100M in revenue.
Pre-product-market-fit is too early; $200M+ is usually too late. The sweet spot — and the 87-engagement median — sits inside this band.
A paid 90-minute strategy diagnostic
The Amoral Autopsy.
Ninety minutes. One room.
Four founding partners.
A standalone diagnostic — not a discovery call, not a chemistry meeting — run by one of the four founders of the firm. You leave with three documents you can hand to your board. We close the brief in 11 days. The Big Agency benchmark is 67.
$1,400 flat fee · invoiced on booking · NDA in 24 hours · IP is yours on delivery
Definition, plain
Ninety minutes. One room. Three documents you can hand to your board.
The Amoral Autopsy is a paid 90-minute diagnostic, run over a single video session, led by one of Amoral's four founding partners — not a junior strategist, not a new-business director. You arrive with one brand problem worth solving; we arrive with the seven-year pattern library from 87 challenger engagements behind us.
It is not a pitch. It is not a brainstorm. It is a working session in which we diagnose what is structurally wrong with your current positioning, name the three categories of buyer you are quietly losing, and write the brief that a competent in-house team — or any agency — could execute against.
Within five business days you receive three documents: a Positioning Autopsy (where the brand is leaking, in plain English), a Permission Map (the territory your category still believes is off-limits), and a 90-Day Brief (the exact scope a winning relaunch would run, with budget ranges and named hires). All three are yours. We do not withhold the diagnosis to win the engagement.
Pre-qualification
You should book one if…
Four conditions, named without softening. If three of four are true for you, the Autopsy will pay for itself before the next quarter.
Your current agency feels too safe.
You have a deck you cannot tell apart from the competitor's. You have had three "explorations" that converged on the same answer. The work is approved, not remembered.
You have a board, an investor, or a CEO who signs the rebrand check.
The Autopsy produces documents a board can read in ten minutes. We have written them for nine-figure acquisitions; they survive that room.
You can name the brand problem in one sentence.
"We look like everyone else." "We are winning on product and losing on story." "Our DTC site converts but retail does not." If you can name it, we can diagnose it.
Disqualifiers
We will tell you no if…
This list protects your time and ours. We say no out loud because the alternative is a polite yes and a wasted ninety minutes.
Will be declined
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Fortune 500 procurement teams.
We are 14 people. We do not run seven-month RFP processes or compete on headcount matrices. We have never done this work and we are not going to start.
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$500K rebrand RFPs.
If your budget requires an in-house procurement office and a written SOW before the first conversation, the Autopsy is the wrong shape. So is the engagement that follows.
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Anyone who wants a free brainstorm.
An Autopsy is paid ($1,400, invoiced on booking) precisely so the room has weight. Free brainstorms produce free answers. We have built the firm on the opposite idea.
Will be taken seriously
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Founder-led challengers between $5M and $100M.
Seventy-one of our 87 engagements sit in this band. Median tenure, post-Autopsy: 2.8 years — about four times the RSW/US Agency Search 2023 industry average.
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CMOs who already know their agency is too safe.
You do not need us to make the case internally. You need a founder-led diagnostic that arms the case with evidence. That is the entire point of the Autopsy.
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Brands preparing for a fundraise, acquisition, or retail expansion.
Three of our portfolio companies were acquired in 2023 — Glow Bar (Unilever), Rook Coffee (JAB Holdings), Fieldlab (Coty) — combined disclosed value $412M. The Autopsy is the same room those teams sat in.
The math, audited
Autopsy, vs. the Big Agency benchmark Ad Age tracked in 2023.
Every number below is named, dated, and traceable. None of them require a "world-class" adjective.
11days
Average strategy engagement close
Amoral, 2023 — measured across 9 engagements
vs. 67 days, Ad Age Big Agency benchmark, 2023
0juniors
Junior staff assigned to client work
Amoral policy, since founding in 2017
Every project is led by one of the four founding partners.
3.4×
Lift in unaided brand recall, six months post-relaunch
Amoral client panel, 2017–2024 (n=41 measurable relaunches)
across 87 challenger brands repositioned since 2017
92%
Client referral rate, 2023
8 of 9 new engagements sourced from existing clients
We do not have a new-business team. We do not need one.
2024 Anthem Awards — Independent Agency of the Year
2023 Adweek — Agency to Watch
Featured in The Drum, Contagious, Forbes CMO Network, Fast Company (2022–2024)
Procurement-grade answers
Questions a CMO asks before booking.
Six answers we have given so many times we wrote them down. If yours is not here, write to [email protected] and a partner will reply within one business day.
What does the Autopsy actually cost, and what does the fee cover?
The Autopsy is a flat $1,400, invoiced on booking, paid before the session is held. The fee covers 90 minutes with one of the four founding partners, the three written deliverables delivered within five business days, and a 30-minute follow-up call inside 30 days of delivery. It does not cover the engagement that may follow; if you want one, we will quote that separately and in writing before any work begins.
Who is in the room — really? Will a junior strategist run my session?
No. Amoral is a 14-person firm built around a single rule: every project is led by one of the four founding partners. Your Autopsy is held with that partner for the full 90 minutes; a second partner joins for the last 15 minutes to pressure-test the diagnosis. There is no producer, no account manager, and no junior note-taker. We have turned down engagements that required us to break this rule.
Can we sign an NDA before the session, and who owns the work afterwards?
Yes. Send your mutual NDA to [email protected] before booking and we will countersign within 24 hours. If you do not have one, we will send our standard mutual NDA the same day. All three deliverables — Positioning Autopsy, Permission Map, and 90-Day Brief — are assigned to you on delivery. You may execute them with us, with another agency, or with your in-house team. We do not retain IP and we do not withhold the diagnosis to win the engagement.
What happens after the Autopsy — and is there an obligation to hire you?
None. Roughly 62% of Autopsy clients do not hire us for the engagement that follows — by choice, often because they have an in-house team or because the brief is clear enough to run internally. Of the remainder, most come back inside 90 days, when their team has run the brief into the ground and they want a senior room to rewrite it. Either outcome is fine. We do not run a follow-up sales sequence and we do not retarget you.
How quickly can we book, and how do we pick a date?
The booking calendar below shows the next eight weeks of available partner sessions. Most slots fill inside 48 hours. If you need a session inside 10 business days, mark the priority field on the form and we will hold one slot per week for genuine urgency; we do not move existing bookings to make room.
What if the Autopsy tells us something we do not want to hear?
That is the entire point. The Autopsy is built to be uncomfortable in the first 20 minutes and useful in the last 70. Our 2023 referral rate was 92% (8 of 9 new engagements sourced from existing clients) — the work survives being told the truth because the work is the truth. If we cannot find anything structurally wrong, we will tell you that on the call, refund the second half of the fee, and recommend a different firm.
Booking — paid in full on confirmation
Book Your Autopsy.
A 90-minute diagnostic with one of the four founding partners, $1,400 flat. We confirm sessions inside one business day; the calendar below shows the next eight weeks.
- NDA countersigned inside 24 hours
- Three written deliverables in five business days
- IP assigned to you on delivery — keep it or build on it
- Zero obligation to hire us afterwards
Rather talk to a partner first? Write to [email protected] or call +1 212 555 0184. We reply inside one business day.