Brand Architect

Financial Brands in the Age of VUCA

Branding in Banking & Finance 2011 | P Collings

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Above is the presentation I gave at the Branding in Banking and Finance Conference 2011 held in Johannesburg. The presentation applied Sagacite’s work in developing brand strategies for volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environments to brands in the banking and financial sector. I have added speaker notes to some of the slides.

Shift from Descriptive to Predictive Analytics

In an increasingly uncertain world we are seeing a shift from descriptive to predictive analysis as brands realize that past performance is no longer a guarantee of future performance. Accenture explain the difference between descriptive and predictive nicely in a report title The Allure of Pricing Predictively.

“Descriptive analytics—already in wide use in many ad hoc ways—looks at historical data, helping companies answer such basic questions as what happened, why it happened, and how much it helped or hurt results.

"Predictive analytics extends those findings using sophisticated statistical modeling, forecasting and optimization algorithms to anticipate the impact of various actions, such as promotions, price changes and advertising, on business outcomes.

“Predictive analytics is about more than simple linear what-if exercises. It enables complex, dynamic research with multiple variables and often involves flurries of concurrent, low-cost, fast-turn market experiments. Forecasts become more about facts than about hunches.”

The report focuses on using predictive analysis to determine optimal pricing for a brand’s offering. You can access the report here.

Management Tools and Trends for Brand Strategists

A common mistake among junior, and even some senior, brand strategists is that they restrict their thinking to the marketing arena and only use marketing tools and methodologies. At Sagacite we believe that brand strategy and business strategy are closely intertwined to the point that brand strategy is business strategy. Therefore brand strategists need to be knowledgeable about wider business issues and make use of tools and methodologies from the broader business strategy and management arena.

Management consultancy Bain & Company provide a useful resource for keeping track of the most popular management tools and methodologies. In their latest report, Bain note that growth was the most important priority for executives and that executives “are shifting away from downsizing and outsourcing toward innovation, scenario planning and pricing optimization”. You can access the Bain & Company Management Tools & Trends website here.

When using any management tool or methodology it is important to keep in mind the tool or methodology must be appropriate for the challenge or opportunity facing the brand.

Too often I find strategists trying to phrase the challenge or opportunity in a way that suits the tool or methodology. Rather adapt the tool or challenge to handle the issue at hand, or, if that doesn’t work, develop something that will. Some of the best known management tools and methodologies were developed when the exiting toolkit failed to provide a solution.

Brand Positioning and Strategy Workshops

My lecture circuit for 2011 kicks off end February with the first of two workshops on brand positioning. Using the successful 2010 brand masterclass as a foundation, these workshops focus on brand positioning and strategy in volatile and evolving markets.

The new workshop spends more time looking at the use of scenarios as a basis for rapid adaptive strategy and the importance of an organization’s capacity to successfully position and manage a brand. The workshop also contains an updated methodology to develop and implement brand strategies (the brand review, brand strategy and brand marketing phases of the diagram above).

Key tools from the brand masterclass remain in the brand positioning workshop. These include using a strategy canvas to position a brand; the brand neighbourhood grid to track the movement of brands; the brand stratline; the customer-based brand equity pyramid; and the brand value creator.

I also cover the digital arena looking at trends such as the rise of online video, omnipresence of mobile, augmented reality, transmotion and constructed contextualization among other things.

The Johannesburg workshop runs 23 - 24 February and the Cape Town workshop runs 22 - 23 March. If you are interested in attending please contact Magdeline Matlatse at +27 (0)11 880 8540 or magdeline@knowres.co.za.

Measuring Brand Value

Measuring Brand Value | Patrick Collings

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This presentation provides an introduction to brand valuation and, among other things, discusses some of the more prominent methodologies and why they produce such different results. The presentation looks at the importance of brand valuation but also highlights the criticism of the current methodologies. I am retiring this presentation from my lecture series and in future will integrate brand valuation into a broader presentation on brand measurement.

Integrated Brand Strategy Workshop

A couple of times a year I present a masterclass workshop on integrated brand strategy which looks at crafting and implementing brand strategies that embrace both the business and creative sides of branding, particularly in turbulent and ever-changing socio-economic environments. We call this approach fluid branding. My next workshop is scheduled for Johannesburg 9 & 10 March and builds on previous workshops by drawing more from management and social science thinking and tools not normally associated with branding. In addition, the workshop will include the popular sessions dealing with research and insight, developing a brand stratline, digital brand strategy and measuring the brand strategy. You can find out more about the workshop here.

Strategy in Uncertain Times

One of the big questions occupying the minds of brand strategists and managers (as well as other organizational managers and strategists) is how to make the right decisions in fluid and evolving socio-economic environments.

Increasingly I find strategists exploring the use of management tools and methodologies that don’t provide a definite answer but rather encourage flexible and adaptive thinking. I am also seeing managers come to the realization that much long-term planning is a wasted nod to past and outdated conventions.

Lowell Bryan, a director in the New York office of management consultancy McKinsey, had this to say in an article titled Dynamic Management: Better decisions in uncertain times

“If you require managers to use decision-making-under-uncertainty techniques (such as scenario planning, decision trees, and stage gating) to make actual decisions, they will quickly learn how to think differently about the future. And if you have them apply these tools in teams involving executives from diverse corners of the organization, they will gain a greater appreciation for the power of collective insight in volatile times, when information, almost by definition, is fragmentary and fast moving.”

The more managers realize that flexibility is the new “three-year business plan” the better they will be able to navigate increasingly unpredictable futures.

Integrated Brand Strategy Workshop

I will be leading a two-day integrated brand strategy workshop in Johannesburg 30 September to 1 October. In broad strokes, the workshop will cover the business and creative sides of building and managing brands in volatile and constantly evolving business and socio-economic environments.

The sessions covered will be a combination of the very latest management theory and creative brand strategy and how they can be applied in today’s environment. Among others things we will look at new research methodologies, scenario planning for brands, developing a brand strateline, implementing and measuring brand strategies including brand valuation, digital brand strategy looking at concepts like transmotion for an audience increasingly moving between the physical and digital worlds, branded entertainment, regional branding and branding in a recession.

For more information please click here or contact Magdeline Matlatse at 011 880 8540 or magdeline@knowres.co.za

The Beauty of Data Visualization

Data Visualization is big and getting bigger and Aaron Koblin is at the forefront of extracting visual meaning from the data that society produces. Above is a visualization of SMS messages in Amsterdam. Koblin recently shared some of his key learnings with BBH Labs who, in turn, shared it on their blog. The points below were taken from the BBH Labs blog and more of the interview with Koblin can be read here.

Looking at everyday things in new ways completely changes your perspective: there is no ”mundane” data when you set it in context.

Use multiple visualisation techniques: there’s more than one way of seeing things  

Stay true to the data, not the “real world”: There is a random-ness to data-it will make patterns you never anticipated. Respect the random-ness.

You don’t have to use all the data: sometimes seeing patterns is about what you leave out.

Set the data free: open-source and let other people play with your data

Defining Transmotion

Transmotion is Sagacite’s second addition to the mash-up dictionary (the first was brandmentary). Google returned a couple vague mentions of transmotion but I couldn’t find a formal definition, so above is ours.

We have been using the word for several months to talk about people moving from the physical world to the digital world and back again. It first popped into my head at a new media conference just over a year ago as I watched delegates take down notes from the presentations as well as blog on the conference and Twitter.

They were transferring their attention and involvement from one device and medium to other. They were in motion between the physical and the virtual.

These days many are in constant transmotion and that has implications about how brand messages are structured and communicated as well as how brand experiences are delivered.

Related posts:
Adding Brandmentary to the Lexicon