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BrandPoint
Process
The Brand Point Process is a
systematic way of discovering your BrandPoint and
converting that into powerful Business Building
Ideas. When you view your business from the paradigm
in this SagePoint-of-View, you realize that understanding
your BrandPoint is the central key to a great
business. Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great,
refers to this same thing by the term "hedgehog"
concept.
This process provides a
mechanism to systematically work through the issues you
need to deal with to create a clear and single-minded
BrandPoint.
Details
on the BrandPoint Process
Below is the BrandPoint
Process in detail. This page is very daunting when you first
glance at it, and, indeed, it carries an extreme amount of
information. But once you understand it, you have a
powerful one-page strategy development guide.
Pictorially, many, many profound concepts
are captured in this single
meta-system. Each picture stands for a construct or tool
that is used to improve your strategic insight. We don't
always use all of them. Some will not apply in certain
situations, but knowing what we are leaving out is better than
not knowing what we should have put in.
We use
this process to make sure we think about your business from as
many possible perspectives as possible. The art of our
craft come primarily from balancing the implication of all
these constructs; distilling from all the chaos of inputs and
analyzes a single minded concept, your BrandPoint!
The process starts with
Inputs and moves to the right. Once you have the
necessary inputs you proceed to analyze the Customer
Dynamics and Business Dynamics. This is the "Black
Box" of strategic thinking. Out of that black box will
distill a handful of power insights, or strategic
imperatives. These are findings that are just too good
to loose, but they are not the BrandPoint. From the milieu
of analysis, thinking, discussion, pondering and hypothesizes
comes the BrandPoint. Following the discovery (discovery
is the right word, since we rarely make them up out of thin
air) of the BrandPoint, we develop a TouchPoints map and mix,
Answer the Great Marketing Question and provide guidance to
many of businesses most troubling questions.
Upon gaining consensus on
the BrandPoint, we unleash the creative hounds and start to
translate that BrandPoint into creative ideas, ranging from
corporate ID to acquisitions.
Inputs
The inputs into the
process range from hard-fact based research to soft and
squishy human emotions. Depending on the availability of
data and the risk profile and budget of the client we
systematically sift through the input to create a working
knowledge of the company, channel, customer and all other
applicable constituents.
The first and most
important input is Vision. See the side bar on Vision
Questing. The second most important input is the
corporate knowledge extraction. Frequently what we need
to know is already contained in the collective brain of the
company. The challenge is to extract it, by interviewing
the right people and asking the right questions. We have
a 110 point knowledge extraction list that helps guide our
questioning. We typically interview a broad range of
people asking them selected questions on areas that they can
be most useful in.
Hard-fact based research
includes the analysis of the company performance, database
research, simulated test markets, quantitative research.
We have strong statistical research backgrounds and are
capable of complex analysis including regression, conjoint,
cluster and factor analysis.
Soft, squishy research
includes many of the typical customer research techniques,
focus groups, one-on-ones, etc. (of which we have managed or
conducted hundreds). But we expand on those traditional
techniques when we can with ethnographic research, home
movies, photo journals, on-the-job observation, etc.
It's essentially spying on your customer, with their
permission of course.
The Strategic
Constructs
Once we have gathered all
the inputs we can afford (either in time or money) we then
commence the analysis portion of the process. We have
two broad areas of analysis. These are not handled as
sequentially as the graphic would imply. Rather all the
constructs (shown on the left) in Customer Dynamics and
Business Dynamics are handled in an iterative and fluid
way. The trick is to think about the situation and the
inputs from as many perspectives as possible. The
constructs are simply best practices used or developed by
great minds in the field (with a few of our own homegrown ones
thrown in).
We use the constructs to
remind ourselves of all the perspectives we must examine the
business from.
These constructs are ways
of thinking or techniques of thinking. When you examine
the problem from the perspective of any of the constructs it
forces you to develop hypothesizes that are tested against the
construct. By conducting many of these thought experiments
you are able to iterate toward a solution that is most likely
right.
Think of it as a way of
jump starting the thinking that must be done about a business
to make it successful. The problem with most business
people is that they suffer from a lack of unfettered
time to do this thinking and a lack of a structured way
to systematically process all the information.
The Final BrandPoint Plan
The BrandPoint
Plan is the outcome of all the thinking about inputs and
constructs. It is the plan of action that summarizes
your insights, your crystal clear statement of what the
BrandPoint should be and all the executional implication of
to make that BrandPoint become a reality.
The typical
BrandPoint Plan will contain all of the following:
The
Power Insights
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This is probably a lousy
name for this outcome, but we couldn't think of anything
else. As you go through this process you have maybe a
hundred little insights. The Power Insights are the few
that rise to the top as the most significant strategic
imperatives. These are just too good to leave by the way
side, so we gather them along the way and package them into a
collection of insights called the power insights.
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The
BrandPoint Statement
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The
BrandPoint Statement is that pithy distillation of
the perception you want your constituents to hold in
their mind about your brand. You could think
of it as the DNA of the brand. It is what
guides all the branding actions within the company.
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Business
Building Ideas
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The
ultimate purpose of the BrandPoint is to provide
direction for Business Building Ideas or TouchPoints
that will influence your constituents to act in the
way that you would desire. A Strategy is a
plan of action. We aim to develop actions that
use the magic of innovation to supercharge your
TouchPoints with power. |
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The Awareness
to Advocacy TouchPoints Plan
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The
goal of our TouchPoints is to move our constituents
along a path from Awareness to Consideration to
Purchase to Retention to Advocacy. Each
TouchPoint in our arsenal must be pointed into the
right situation and used to move people up the path
one more step. Thinking through not only the
innovative TouchPoints, but also choosing when and
what point they are to make is the goal of this part
of the plan. |
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TouchPoint
Alignment
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The
BrandPoint creates a direction in which all
TouchPoints should point. By reviewing,
re-pointing and developing all TouchPoints with this
synergistic alignment in mind, we create value and
unlock potential communication power that was
wasted. |
TouchPoint
Brief
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The
TouchPoints Brief brings the plan of action for all
the TouchPoints (the Strategy) together into a
organized format. It is a planning document
that lists all the TouchPoints and who in the
organization is responsible for them.
Furthermore, the Brief indicates the overall
objective of the TouchPoint and the specific action
desired when a constituent is "Touched".
This document naturally summarized and makes
tactical all the preceding work. |
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