About Cool Shades Media
25 years in marketing taught me to start somewhere else.
I’m Scott Meier, founder of Cool Shades Media, a business growth consultancy that helps businesses decide where their marketing time and money should go.
I’ve spent more than 25 years in advertising, marketing and creative production, much of it inside agencies doing work for national and global brands. All that time taught me where marketing tends to go wrong. The conversation usually starts with what to buy, before anyone has agreed on what the business actually needs.
Cool Shades Media starts with the business. The tools come after.
The experience
Most of my career happened where the work gets made.
My background is agencies and production: advertising, creative, digital execution. The kind of work where the deadline is real, the budget is fixed, and several people with different priorities all need it to land.
Some of that work was for very large brands. Once, during an emergency production push for AB InBev, I helped execute more than 50 pieces of work in roughly 72 hours.
The brands aren’t the point. What that work teaches you is.
You learn how marketing decisions actually get made when money, time and people are all under pressure. You also learn how often those decisions are made before anyone has looked closely at the problem.
- 25+ yearsAdvertising, production and marketing experience
- 2019Cool Shades Media established
- 2026CSM becomes a focused business growth consultancy
Brands I’ve worked on includeAB InBevMillerPurina
What the experience taught me
Businesses are often sold the answer before anyone asks the question.
After enough years around marketing, a pattern gets hard to ignore. A business has a problem, and the first conversation is about a tactic.
- SEO
- Paid advertising
- A new website
- Social media
- Automation
- Content
- Branding
Every one of those can be useful. None of them should automatically be where you start.
Most marketing conversations start with
“What should we do?”
I’d rather start with
“What are we trying to accomplish, and what’s actually getting in the way?”
The better questions come first
- What is the business trying to accomplish?
- Who is the customer?
- How are customers finding, evaluating and choosing the business today?
- Where are opportunities being lost?
- What does the data tell us?
- Which investment is most likely to change the outcome?
Modern Cool Shades Media is built around those questions.
How that became Cool Shades Media
Cool Shades Media didn’t start over. It grew up.
The name isn’t new. I’ve done freelance work as Cool Shades Media since 2019.
What changed is what the business is for. Years of client work, my own projects and watching how marketing decisions really get made turned a freelance identity into a consultancy with one focus: helping businesses decide where their effort and money should go.
Understand the business first. Then decide what deserves investment.
Strategy before tactics.
Websites, SEO, paid advertising, analytics, automation, branding, UX, content and AI are all tools. I use them. They just aren’t the product. The product is better business decisions that lead to measurable growth.
Data informs the decision. The business outcome judges it.
Traffic, rankings, impressions, clicks and engagement are useful signals. The question I care about is whether the work helps the business win customers, convert better, waste less or earn more.
Proof through practice
I use the same thinking on my own businesses.
Waterscape.net is the direct-booking site for a vacation rental condo I own and manage.
It would have been easy to start with “we need more SEO.” Instead, the work started with what vacation planners needed to know before they could confidently choose a property. The site was rebuilt around their real questions, so it became easier to trust and easier to book direct.
Organic discovery has grown, and the site now brings in meaningful direct bookings.
I’d rather prove an idea on my own business before I recommend it for yours.
From the case study
8–10
direct bookings during a recent two-month period
The full story covers the diagnosis, the decisions, and what we’re measuring next.
Working together
No predetermined package. A clear look at the business first.
You don’t need another vendor recommending more marketing.
My job is to understand the business, look at what customers are actually doing, and find where opportunities are being won or lost. Then we decide together what deserves investment, and you’ll know why.
- Understand the businessWhat you’re trying to accomplish, and what’s in the way.
- Understand the customerHow people find you, compare you and decide.
- Look at the dataWhat it shows, and what it can’t.
- Find the highest-leverage problemThe one costing you the most.
- Recommend what deserves investmentIn plain language, with the reasoning.
- Measure what happensSo the next decision starts from better information.
Where that leads
Sometimes it leads to SEO or advertising.
Sometimes to analytics, a website change or better content.
Sometimes the fix is something much simpler.
And sometimes the right recommendation is not to spend the money at all.
I sit on your side of the table. That independence is the point.
Start a conversation
Let’s talk about what’s actually happening in your business.
If you’re looking for someone to simply sell you SEO, ads or a new website, Cool Shades Media probably isn’t the right fit.
If you want to understand how customers are finding you, where opportunities are being lost, and where your next marketing dollar can work harder, that’s a conversation worth having.
No predetermined solution. Just a conversation about the business.