— ABOUT GORDON G. ANDREW
Most people in this business
have theories.
I have scars.
Here's what four decades at all levels of institutional communications, crisis management, and business development actually taught me — and why it matters for your firm.
— THE SHORT VERSION
AT A GLANCE
I didn't study how credibility
gets built. I've built it.
For 40 years, I've worked at the center of some of the most consequential institutional communications challenges in American business — advising CEOs navigating mergers that remade the financial landscape, managing crises that made front pages, and helping organizations of all sizes articulate who they are and why it matters when the stakes were real.
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Today, I apply that same experience to a narrower but important mandate: helping the founders and managing partners of boutique advisory firms close the gap between the expertise they have and the market recognition they deserve.​
Princeton, New Jersey. Serving clients nationwide.​
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40+ years. Corporate and agency sides. Boutique and institutional.
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American Airlines, Bain & Co., NYSE, Prudential Venture Capital, Russell Reynolds Associates, Phibro Energy, Epstein, Becker & Green, Cornell Graduate School of Business, and dozens of boutique advisory firms.​​​
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PRSA Counselors Academy. Forbes Agency Council. Nicholson Award.​
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Directly. You don't get a team. You get me.
BASED
CAREER SPAN
CLIENTS SERVED
INDUSTRY RECOGNITION
HOW I WORK WITH CLIENTS
ON BEING ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE TABLE
I've also been on your side of the table. Before founding Highlander Consulting, I co-founded AssetSight — an alternative investment firm built around a proprietary benchmark for the managed futures market, with institutional licensing agreements in place and a launch scheduled at the New York Board of Trade.
September 11, 2001 ended that chapter before it began.
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That experience — building something from nothing, carrying real risk, and losing it to forces entirely outside my control — is part of what makes me a different kind of advisor. I don't give counsel from the sideline. I think like a business owner because I have been one.
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When I tell a client that their credibility and market positioning directly affect their firm's value — to clients, to markets, and to potential acquirers — I'm not speaking theoretically. I'm speaking from experience on both sides of that equation.
I work with a small number of clients at a time. That's not a limitation — it's the point. The firms I take on get everything I have. And the measure of success isn't what we produce together. It's whether your firm is more capable of generating market engagement on its own after we're done.
A PATTERN WORTH NOTING
A disproportionate number of Highlander clients have been acquired by major institutions after engagements focused on clarifying positioning and strengthening market credibility. Not because we focus on M&A — but because a firm whose expertise is clearly understood and credibly positioned is more valuable to everyone evaluating it. Including these acquirers of my clients:
— THE CAREER BEHIND THE METHOD
Where the scar tissue came from.
The following isn't a résumé. It's an accounting of some experiences that shaped how I think — and why the Highlander Method™ is built on what actually works, not on what looks good in a case study.
MAJOR INSTITUTIONS - CORPORATE SIDE
SVP Marketing Communications, Prudential Financial
Responsible for marketing communications across five operating units of one of the largest financial services firms in the world. This is where I learned the difference between communications that look impressive and communications that actually shift market perception. Most of what looked impressive didn't move the needle.
HIGH-STAKE COMMUNICATIONS
Head of Communications for CEO Sanford I. Weill, Travelers Group, and Chief Marketing Officer, Travelers Life & Annuity
Reported directly to Chairman & CEO Sandy Weill and President Jamie Dimon as Travelers Group executed one of the most ambitious acquisition campaigns in American financial history — Commercial Credit, Primerica, Smith Barney, Travelers Insurance, and Salomon Brothers — before the combination with Citicorp that created Citigroup.
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Each acquisition brought new brands, new cultures, and new reputational challenges to manage simultaneously. Keeping the narrative coherent across that volume of change, under that level of scrutiny, is where I developed a deep understanding of how institutional credibility is actually built — and how quickly it can be lost.
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Also served concurrently as Chief Marketing Officer of Travelers Life & Annuity.
ONE CAREER DEFINING MOMENT 1996 -1997
When management feared the story, I convinced them to let me pitch it — and put my career on the line.
Primerica was "the company the industry loves to hate." I proposed an exclusive profile to Best's Review — the insurance industry's leading publication — over significant internal resistance.
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→ Cover story, Best's Review, February 1997
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Most requested reprint in the publication's history
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→ Deployed by thousands of agents as a sales credibility tool
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→ Primerica policy sales spiked and never came down
The story that a firm is afraid to tell is often the most powerful story it can tell.
WHEN IT REALLY MATTERED — CRISIS WORK
Spokesperson, Former CFO of Enron Corporation
Engaged by a leading white-collar litigation firm as communications counsel and spokesperson for Enron's former CFO during one of the most high-profile corporate scandals in American history. I've been in rooms where the stakes were about as high as they get — where the wrong message, the wrong timing, or the wrong tone had genuinely serious consequences.
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What that experience teaches you about credibility cannot be found in a textbook. Credibility is either there when you need it — because it was built deliberately and consistently over time — or it isn't. There is no middle ground, and no shortcut.
The firms that managed their reputations most effectively through that era weren't the ones with the best crisis PR team. They were the ones who had built genuine, consistent credibility before the crisis began.
A LESSON THAT SHAPES EVERY ENGAGEMENT I TAKE ON TODAY
EARLIER CAREER — CAPITAL MARKETS AND FINANCE
Head of Marketing Services, American Stock Exchange & Director of Financial Communications, Continental Group
​Before the major corporate roles, I learned the capital markets side—working in financial communications at the American Stock Exchange and Continental Group. This is where I developed an understanding of how institutional credibility is built and maintained with sophisticated, skeptical audiences, while adhering to legal and regulatory mandates. The same audiences your boutique advisory firm is trying to reach.
AGENCY SIDE — THEN FOUNDING HIGHLANDER
Founder, Highlander Consulting Inc., Princeton, NJ
After two decades on both sides of the table, I founded Highlander Consulting to apply everything I'd learned to the toughest challenge facing boutique advisory firms: converting genuine expertise into visible authority that drives business. I've been doing this work for more than 20 years — long before "thought leadership" became a LinkedIn buzzword, and long after most of the tactics currently being sold as innovation stopped working.
— WHAT FOUR DECADES ACTUALLY TEACHES YOU
Three lessons that don't appear
in anyone's methodology deck.
This is a deliberate choice, not a limitation. The firms I work with get my complete attention, my full experience, and a genuine commitment to achieve business outcomes — not marketing "deliverables."
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Visibility without credibility is noise.
Getting noticed isn't the hard part. Getting noticed by the right people, who then believe what they see — that's the work.
Most firms have the first problem backward. They're optimizing for reach when they should be optimizing for trust.
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Old school tactics still work. Most people have forgotten them.
Direct outreach with a compelling, credibility-backed message opens doors that no algorithm will ever open for you.
Some of the most effective business development moves I make for clients involve approaches that have worked for 40 years and that most younger advisors have never learned or tried.
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Content that doesn't start a conversation is overhead. Not an asset.
I've watched firms spend years and serious money producing thought leadership that sat on their websites and did nothing.
The question isn't whether the content is good. It's whether it's being deployed — deliberately, personally, strategically — to initiate conversations with specific people you actually want to reach.
"I was very pleased and impressed by the work that Gordon did for First Investors, at a time when we really needed the services he provided. From the beginning, he immersed himself in the details of our company, and soon seemed more like a longer-service employee than a consultant.
He does not get rattled.
He is a gifted writer, a creative thinker, and a flexible strategist. He has strong ideas, but recognizes that the client ultimately makes the decisions. I would hire Gordon in the future without reservation, and I recommend him to others with enthusiasm."
Robert M. Flanagan
Former President
First Investors Corporation
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— REPRESENTATIVE WORK
What this looks like
in practice.
Every engagement is different. These two examples illustrate the range of challenges I work on — and the kind of outcomes that matter.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP ACTIVATION
How a Leadership Advisory Firm Converted Expertise into Executive Conversations — and New Revenue
A veteran executive search CEO had spent 30 years using every major leadership assessment tool on the market. His conclusion: they were fundamentally limited. So he built a better one.
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The problem wasn't the tool. It was the market. The leadership assessment category was crowded, institutionally entrenched, and deeply skeptical of new entrants. Traditional product marketing would go nowhere.
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Highlander designed a strategy built around one principle: credibility had to precede the conversation. We developed and placed a bylined article — authored by the CEO, published in a leading HR publication — that challenged the assumptions underlying existing assessment tools. No product mention. No promotion. Pure insight.
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That article became the centerpiece of a targeted CHRO outreach campaign and an exclusive pilot program that invited senior HR leaders to evaluate the tool firsthand. Pilot debriefs became discovery conversations. Discovery conversations became engagements.
The Result: executive-level access in a category that had been closed to new entrants — and new client relationships across multiple service lines.
MARKET CREATION THROUGH CREDIBILITY
How Phibro Energy Turned CFO Skepticism into a Dominant Market Position
In the early 1990s, Phibro Energy had developed a genuinely innovative solution to a real problem: derivative instruments — swaps, caps, and floors — designed to help major corporations hedge their energy price risk.
The obstacle wasn't the product. It was credibility. CFOs viewed derivatives as speculative Wall Street inventions. Anything resembling financial engineering carried career risk for conservative finance leaders. A direct sales approach would harden resistance rather than overcome it.
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The strategy: stop selling and start educating. We designed an invitation-only private forum for CFOs — positioned not as a product presentation but as an executive-level discussion on energy pricing and financial risk.
The keynote speaker was Peter Drucker.
Without endorsing Phibro — and without being asked — Drucker told a story from his own career that reframed the entire conversation: hedging is not speculation. It is responsible management. The room's mental model shifted permanently.
The Result: In the years that followed, Phibro executed hundreds of millions of dollars in energy risk management contracts and emerged as the dominant market player.
— HOW I WORK
The principles I've never
been willing to compromise.
These aren't aspirational values on a wall. They're the terms under which I work — and the reason I've been able to maintain long-term relationships with clients who could work with anyone.
I tell you what I think, even when it may be unwelcome.
The most valuable thing I can offer is an honest read — on your positioning, your content, your business development approach. Flattery doesn't build pipelines.
I only work with clients I can genuinely help.
If I don't believe I can deliver meaningful results for your firm, I'll say so directly. There are no bad clients — but there are bad fits. I've learned to identify them quickly.
I question conventional wisdom, including my own.
The marketing playbook that everyone is selling has a mediocre track record. I've spent 40 years watching what actually works — and staying current on what's changed.
Every engagement is connected to your business goals — not just marketing activity.
The word "craftsmanship" in Marketing Craftsmanship® isn't about aesthetics. It's about standards. Specifically, nothing we produce together is disconnected from the outcomes your firm is trying to achieve.
Carlos González Peña
Founder & President
Peña Search
Gordon combines strong strategic insight with a disciplined, execution-oriented approach. He consistently brings forward thoughtful, creative ideas while also ensuring that those ideas translate into clear priorities and forward progress.
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He has been patient, professional, and highly effective in guiding our team —
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Meeting us where we are, keeping us accountable, and helping us build momentum.
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In addition, he is a pleasure to work with and a trusted partner in every sense. I highly recommend Gordon to any organization seeking a marketing advisor who can both elevate strategy and drive meaningful results.
— BEYOND THE WORK
A few other things worth knowing.
The work matters. So does the person doing it. A few things that don't appear on a resume but say something about how I approach everything I do.
— SCOUTING AMERICA
National Jamboree, West Virginia
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With Brad Tilden, Chair of Scouting America's National Board and former Chair & CEO of Alaska Air Group. Gordon serves as Chair of the National Communications Committee for Scouting America — a role that reflects a lifelong commitment to the organization and the core values of Scouting.
— THE GREATEST GAME
The European Club, Ireland
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Pat Ruddy — renowned Irish golf course designer, former golf writer, and long-time owner of The European Club in County Wicklow — attempts to stick his walking cane in Gordon's ear. Golf has been a serious pursuit and a source of some of the most valued relationships in Gordon's personal and professional life.
— GREAT HIGHLAND BAGPIPES
A Late-Career Pursuit
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Gordon took up the Highland bagpipes five years ago and joined a local Celtic pipe band — proving that it is never too late to attempt something that requires significantly more discipline than it looks. His neighbors have been remarkably patient.