Dan Bleakman – Founder & Director

Dan has worked with technology companies from day dot. Originally beginning life in public relations, Dan started his career in the early 2000’s in London for Next15’s Bite Communications, working with the likes of Oracle, Siebel, VERITAS and Symantec to name but a few. In 2007, Dan jumped at the chance to work in Sydney, where he spent eight wonderful years working with WPP’s Howorth Communications, leading campaigns for the likes of SAP, Microsoft and Toshiba.

With an eye of how technology companies were embracing new ways of marketing, Dan approached the powers that be at WPP with an idea for a new type of business, The Factuary. One that embraced content at its core. Much of that time was spent working with Telstra across their Wholesale, Enterprise and International businesses, along with SAP and Rackspace.

After building The Factuary from scratch, Dan founded Meta Strategy as an independent marketing agency in 2019. While content is still an important component of what Meta Strategy does, Dan and his team have taken things further; embracing customer understanding and behaviour as part of the technology buyer’s journey and the role information plays in that journey.

Dan believes Meta Strategy differs on a few simple levels. First, is a deep understanding of the technology market, gleaned from over 20 years’ of working in an industry that has evolved from mainframe computing, through hardware, software, cloud and beyond. It’s because of this deep understanding and the ability to grasp what clients do and how it relates to their customers that enables Meta Strategy to deliver quality work, fast.

Second, having worked in large agencies for 20 years, Dan saw how agency models were built around internal processes rather than what client’s needed. Meta Strategy embraces a flat structure, with no egos, a shared understanding of respect and getting the job done.

When he’s not working, Dan spends time with his wife and three children, as well as running on the trails in the Blue Mountains. To date, Dan has run over 50 ultra marathons.

John Fearn – Senior Consultant

Beginning life in the UK in public relations, John provided strategic communications advice and delivered effective public affairs programmes for a range of clients including Virgin Money, the Paragon Group, Veritec, Expedia, TripAdvisor, Charterhouse Capital Partners, The Crowdfunding Forum and the UK government’s Intellectual Property Office.

In 2015, John jumped ship to Sydney where after a year working with Hill & Knowlton Strategies, he was hired by Dan to join The Factuary in the early stages of its inception in 2016. Working alongside Dan, John was instrumental in developing content for Telstra, SAP and Atlassian.

John joined Meta Strategy in January 2021, playing a major role in developing better customer understanding and content for NTT Ltd., Telstra Wholesale and Hostopia.