The fastest moving companies today plan on a continuous basis rather than on an annual one, and use business scorecards to map their performance in each area of the action plan from total business to individual performance level.
- Brand planning
Key issues for brand planning include:
- how to make it a continuous, rather than an annual process
- how to involve everyone in the development of the plan
- how to implement the plan
- how to communicate performance against the plan
Making it continuous
The classic scenario for any brand plan is that it rapidly becomes out of date in fast moving markets.
Most companies recognise that they should be planning on a continuous basis, some actually do. In order to achieve this you have to:
- build a climate of ongoing change – companies that fail to do this tend to generate the BOHICA (bend over, here it comes again!) reflex
- free up management time for strategy discussions – most managers have a preference for discussing tactics over strategy. Fast moving companies have to free up their time and bias them towards strategic planning, usually by building regular strategy planning days into their diaries
- have processes that deliver timely information, including the reporting of weak opportunity/threat signals – plans need to change either when they are not working, or when the brand environment changes. In both cases, knowledge/insight flows are needed to support this
- develop procedures for rapid breakthrough planning – as new situations arise, they need to be quickly assessed and reacted to, probably within at least a 6 month time frame. Providing managers with strategic consultancy tools, so as to effectively turn them into brand consultants, is a powerful way of doing this
- have standard formats for communicating brand plans and changes – this is where business scorecards are very effective
- have strong implementation processes – activities have to be de-resourced as well as resourced, and reward and recognition schemes must be adapted
Involving everyone in the planning
One of the main reasons why brand plans fail is that only a clique of people were involved in generating them in the first place.
Involvement motivates commitment. In the electronic age, there are some excellent tools which can quickly impart and solicit information across even the largest companies.
For more details on one example of such a process, the PROVING GROUND technique, click here.
How to implement and communicate the plan
Business scorecards work on the principle of “what gets measured gets done”. They are often also supported by performance assessment procedures, and reward and recognition plans. If people know and understand the plan, can see it is being used to run the business, and are rewarded according to the results, things are likely to happen.
If you do not wish to go to the considerable investment of putting a formal balanced scorecard in place, the tool we use to turn an action plan into a contract is the "Route Planner" Brand Marketing Plan Review Format.
- The brand plan
The brand vision
The brand vision is usually a high aspiration/stretch statement about where the managers want the brand to end up. They usually involve taking over the world, or at least a decent size chunk of it (“We are not in yoghurts, but in the human health and happiness business”).
The brand mission
Mission statements classically should be the 4Ms:
- meaningful (credible)
- motivating
- measureable
- memorable
When did you last remember your mission statement? One of the great mission statements of all time was “Get the Cat”, when Komatsu targeted the company on beating Caterpillar in the heavy earth-moving market.
Market definition
It is possible to define a market in any way at all. The trick is to keep the definition constant until you deliberately decide to change it.
The GE rule is that when you reach 40% market share, you need to redefine your market so that you now only have 10% - a recipe for aggressive market share growth.
Situation analysis
- market size and forecasts
- market dynamics and trends
- market structure and share of trade at supplier, intermediary, and end customer level segmentation
- brandscape (own and competitor brand architectures and performance, brand definitions, comparative brand strategies, brand competencies)
- market attraction vs. brand competency chart
The first three are probably relatively self-explanatory and commonly used.
End-customer segmentation: this should be defined in terms of demographics, behavior, situation and needs/values.
The brandscape: is developed to understand in depth the role of each competing brand. This might well culminate in a “conversion chart” which depicts each brand’s customer base by segment, and the extent to which their customers are committed, satisfied or vulnerable.
Market attraction vs. competency chart: this is the classic McKinsey porfolio planning chart which shows the attraction of each market segment to your brand and your brand power within each segment, with the size of each bubble depicting the size of each opportunity in sales, profits or lifetime value.
Alternative scenarios
Most markets will not be operating in quite the same way in 2 years’ time, especially with the growth of e-marketplaces and Internet-based competition. Scenario planning can help identify potential futures that will at least test your current market model.
Key programs and their goals
What activities are you betting the success of the brand on this year, and how will you know if they are successful?
Increasingly, brands require focused larger-scale investments to maintain and build their competitive position. Picking out two or three critical programs tells the rest of the organisation where the focus is.
Brand objectives and change analysis
Objectives should be measurable. The reason for the change analysis is to highlight what has to be done differently.
Brand action plan and component plans
The action plan provides the detailed activities that need to take place. The component plans provide more detailed information on specific areas within the brand plan, such as the new product development program, the contribution of e-CRM activities or the advertising plan.
We can help you in two ways - we have a mass of smart strategic brand marketing tools, processes and workshop techniques for you to use, and a mass of smart brand marketing agencies as members across the world with niche knowledge and experience to support you thereafter.
