Dix & Eaton Launches "Grow and Protect": A New Integrated Approach to Help Organizations Accelerate Growth, Manage Risk and Preserve Value

AI Summary:
Dix & Eaton has launched the Grow and Protect framework, an integrated approach designed to help organizations accelerate growth while managing risk and protecting long-term value. The framework builds on the firm's acquisition of Standing Partnership and aligns marketing and sales growth strategy and channel ecosystems under the Grow platform, while consolidating risk intelligence, reputation management and stakeholder engagement under the Protect platform. Together, the framework helps B2B companies and organizations who sell through channel partnerships navigate complexity and create sustained enterprise value.

CLEVELAND and ST. LOUIS, Jan. 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Dix & Eaton (D&E), one of the country's largest employee-owned marketing communications and business strategy firms, today announced the launch of its Grow and Protect framework. This unified enterprise offering is designed to help clients grow and scale their businesses, while protecting trust, reputation and long-term value in an increasingly complex business environment.

"This framework recognizes that success requires playing both offense and defense," said Melissa Lackey, Enterprise President of Dix & Eaton. "We help our clients grow through insight-driven marketing, sales, and partner channels, and we help protect their well-earned trust and reputation during periods of significant disruption and rapid change. Together, those elements create sustained enterprise value."

The Grow and Protect platforms reflect both Dix & Eaton's evolution following the acquisition of St. Louis-based Standing Partnership in November 2023 and the continued market shifts affecting business performance. The integration of sales and marketing services with growth strategy and channel partner ecosystems aligns to the Grow platform under the Standing Partnership brand. Risk intelligence, sustainability/ESG, issues management, stakeholder engagement, and crisis expertise comprise the Protect platform under the Dix & Eaton brand.

"Our clients are operating every day in a world where opportunity and risk co-exist, and proactively managing both of them with rigor is vital for success," added Chas Withers, Chairman and CEO of Dix & Eaton. "We repeatedly hear that organizations need partners who can help them grow intelligently while protecting against threats – both known and unknown. They want to see around corners, understand the ripple effects of decisions before they happen, and they want insight that matters. These offerings are especially relevant for B2B and technology-driven organizations managing complex partner and stakeholder ecosystems across regions, products, and regulatory environments."  

The Grow Platform

The Grow platform focuses on helping clients build and scale high-performing channel and partner marketing ecosystems, leveraging Standing Partnership's deep expertise in the technology sector and its proven ability to orchestrate complex alliances. The Grow team delivers scalable growth by building partner-focused strategies, designing scalable programs, and activating strategic alliances.

These solutions are increasingly supported by AI-powered insights that enable clients to identify growth opportunities, optimize partner investments, and scale programs with greater precision and predictability.

In practice, the Grow platform has delivered meaningful revenue impact across complex partner ecosystems. For one global client, Standing Partnership supported priority initiatives across multiple routes to market – contributing to more than $1 billion in partner-created pipeline growth in a single year, representing year-over-year growth of more than 40 percent.

The Protect Platform

The Protect platform brings together Dix & Eaton's reputation, corporate communications risk intelligence, issues management, and crisis and regulatory expertise under its proprietary Anticipate, Engage, Mitigate (AEM) framework. AEM is designed to be applied both proactively and during real-time issues, enabling faster, more coordinated decision-making – especially under pressure. This approach to building and protecting trust and reputation includes risk identification and scoring, crisis preparedness and response, change management, sustainability/ESG reporting and disclosures, and stakeholder engagement. For more information about the AEM Protect framework, visit https://view.ceros.com/dix-and-eaton/protect.

The AEM framework is reinforced by AI-driven monitoring, risk-signal detection, and data-informed scenario planning, enabling clients to identify emerging threats earlier, prioritize response strategies, and act with confidence in moments of uncertainty.

The approach delivers measurable impact. For one global manufacturer in a highly regulated industry, the risk intelligence program identified and actively managed more than 160 emerging risks over a two-year period, with over 70 percent either resolved or mitigated before escalation. By improving early detection and cross-functional coordination, the program has helped reduce exposure to high-cost issues and crisis events.

Technology as a Force Multiplier

At the core of Grow and Protect is a firmwide commitment to AI-enabled transformation. Dix & Eaton is embedding artificial intelligence and advanced analytics across our client delivery, operations, and strategic advisory.

AI+digital technology is designed to augment the human expertise, freeing our teams to focus on higher-value strategy, judgment, and creativity while AI accelerates analysis, pattern recognition, and execution.

"Strategic use of AI is an integral part of how we think, operate, and deliver," Withers said. "By combining deep human expertise with intelligent technology, we're helping clients move faster, see ahead and around corners, and scale solutions that would be impossible through manual effort alone."

About Dix & Eaton

Dix & Eaton is a marketing, communications and business strategy firm that helps organizations grow, protect, and enhance enterprise value. Through integrated expertise in marketing, communications, risk, and reputation management – and a focus on AI-enabled delivery – D&E partners with clients across industries to deliver insight-driven, outcome-oriented solutions. For more information, visit www.dix-eaton.com and www.standingpartnership.com.

SOURCE Dix & Eaton