field notes from 51°N
I'm Caroline. I turn technical credibility into customers, pilots and investment, in fixed projects with a clear finish line.
01 / sound familiar?
Note 01
Engineers love the detail. Energy directors want payback, risk and proof. Investors want the market.
Note 02
Procurement teams and sustainability leads have seen a lot of bold claims. Vague messaging costs you meetings.
Note 03
But marketing on a Sunday night isn't working either, and the raise or the launch won't wait.
02 / how I help
I already know climate tech and energy. No months of bringing me up to speed.
I turn engineering into value that buyers and investors understand, without dumbing it down.
25 years across corporate, agency and freelance. I do the thinking and the doing.
Fixed projects with a defined scope, price and finish line. No retainer creep.
03 / projects
Most founders start with a Survey. It shows you where you stand and what to do first.
A close look at your marketing, positioning and pipeline as they stand today.
You Get:
A written field report with your priorities ranked.
A positioning and messaging sprint, so everyone tells the same clear story.
You Get:
Positioning, a messaging framework, an audience map and core copy.
A go-to-market plan for a launch, first customers or a new market, with hands-on delivery.
You Get:
A launch plan, channel priorities and the assets to go with it.
04 / from the logbook
05 / how a project runs
30 minutes to understand where you are and where you're heading.
A short proposal with the project, the timeline and the price. No surprises.
Weekly check-ins, shared drafts and decisions made together.
Everything you need to carry on, whether that's your team, a hire or me again.
06 / about
I'm Caroline Sumners. I've spent 25 years in marketing across corporate, agency and freelance roles, and these days I work with climate tech and energy startups.
I like the hard part: taking something technical and important, and making it make sense to the people who need to buy it, fund it or back it.
Fifty One Degrees is just me. When you book a project, you work with me from the first call to the handover.
07 / next step
Book a 30-minute intro call. We'll talk about where you are, where you want to get to, and whether I'm the right person to help.
Solar heat for heavy industry
Odqa is an Oxford University spin-out turning sunlight into the high-temperature heat that industry runs on. Its technology reaches 800°C and stores that heat in rock, so it can replace fossil fuels in kilns, dryers and calciners, day and night.
The challenge
Industrial heat is one of the hardest parts of decarbonisation, and one of the least understood. Odqa’s buyers are sustainability and decarbonisation leads in sectors such as aluminium, phosphate and cement. They aren’t solar engineers, they face a crowded field of competing options, and they need to justify a new technology to a board.
The risk for a deep tech company at this stage is marketing that explains how the technology works but never shows why it matters.
My role
I lead Odqa’s marketing strategy alongside the founding team. My focus is on building a go-to-market approach that matches a long, considered B2B sale:
Underpinning all of it is a commitment to honesty. In a sector wary of overclaiming, being precise about what the technology can do today is a competitive advantage.
Making the switch to heat pumps simple
Ample helps UK homeowners move from gas boilers to heat pumps. It brings together finance, grant support, installation and aftercare, and it backs installers by taking care of admin, compliance and finance.
The challenge
Heat pumps are one of the clearest routes to lower-carbon homes, but for most homeowners the switch feels expensive, complicated and risky. Ample also had a two-sided market to win: homeowners on one side, installers on the other. Each needed a different message, and both needed to trust a new brand.
At an early stage, the most expensive mistake is scaling a message before you know it works.
My role
As fractional growth marketing lead, I helped Ample find out which messages worked before it invested in scale:
Software for energy retailers
ENSEK builds the cloud platform energy retailers use to run their customer operations, from onboarding and billing to collections, service and energy flexibility.
The challenge
Energy retail is regulated, competitive and changing fast. ENSEK sells to senior operations, technology and commercial leaders who know their market in detail. Generic software marketing doesn’t reach them. Campaigns have to show a real understanding of the pressures energy suppliers face, and they have to support a long, high-value sales process.
My role
As Growth Marketing Campaign Manager, I shape how ENSEK’s campaigns connect to its commercial priorities. That means:
The aim is a campaign programme that builds ENSEK’s authority in its market while contributing measurably to pipeline.
