Category: Blog

Launching and nurturing a successful brand doesn’t just ‘happen.’ And for you and your brand leadership team to accurately identify current opportunities, and/or create new ones, requires a thoughtful and inclusive process.

Success will require you and your team to step out of your normal roles and perspectives. Remaining open-minded and innovation-focused is often easier when meeting away from your traditional workplace; optimally a place that itself aids in innovative thinking. As well, completely objective, experienced professionals can help lead you and your team through the process.

As a company leader, your role is to ensure whatever is developed through the process stays true to your company’s culture and values. It’s wise to be willing to step back and consider opportunities that don’t currently fit within your capabilities, primary strategies and even your business model.

Also, opening this process to a wide range of people from various areas of the company and with different backgrounds and expertise can provide fresh insights and different considerations.

Think of this process as a potential way to BE the disruptor by being so “on target” with what market customers seeks that your brand(s) become known as ‘game changers’ increasing your ability to maximize current opportunities now and set the stage for continued innovation. Build flexibility, agility and resilience into your brand plans.

As you begin, it’s important that everyone involved genuinely believes their input, questions and ideas will be heard and valued. Then create that reality!

Insights

Thankfully, you aren’t starting with a blank slate. Identify what’s known, and begin to identify critical components for strategic brand decision-making.

Compile, review, analyze and synthesize published information about your brand(s) and competitive brands as well as trends, trend drivers and the pace of change. Who or what has the potential to create positive or negative impact on your brand(s)?

Your specific objectives and expected scope of impact you expect will drive how broad or narrow your process should be. In general, the more substantial the change and impact, the greater the benefits of a broader learning initiative.

Ideas

Given the knowledge and insight necessary to make key strategic brand plans and decisions, articulate specific components for the team.

What can be solidified through these team sessions? Optimally, team members came with solid information that when combined and analyzed creates the majority of knowledge needs.

However, it’s highly likely some gaps exist. Together, identify needs, methods and expectations. Create small focused teams made up of individuals from different areas of responsibility who don’t often work together.

Ensure everyone receives a summary of learning to date and team tasks.

Strategies

Combine outcomes from your team session with insight gained by your small teams to develop an overarching brand plan and roadmap for implementation.

Ensure your plan includes:

• Vision and differentiators for each brand
• Brand business review including external and Internal influencing factors
• Brand goals
• Brand performance metrics and accountabilities
• Brand experience platform (what it is and what you want it to be)
• Customer segment prioritization and personification
• Communication channels – platforms and devices for today
• Sales channels and methods to stay on trend and engaged

Implementation

Implement the plan developed by your team. Given how quickly customers and markets change, set frequent leadership reviews.

Building brands, keeping them relevant and maximizing their success is never a complete task. New planning, exploring and development initiatives are triggered by learning from implementation results and external events.

Action Items:

1. Identify the current status of each of your company’s brands. Prioritize a brand planning and strategy process based upon brands with greatest opportunities/in most need of being revitalized.
2. Ensure brand leadership creates and maintains a consistent internal summary combining financial information, strategies, operations, customer base, marketing/communications programs and recent performance of each brand. Each brand merits frequent review, and adjustments.
3. Evaluate customer engagement and strength of customer relationships across customer segments for each brand. Take whatever steps this learning identifies and create an ongoing program to enhance customer engagement and develop deeper brand and customer relationships in key customer segments.

Recalibrate Strategies

Recalibrate Strategies help companies grow their business. We apply proven business systems to recalibrate their business and their brands by collaboratively creating a success blueprint. We facilitate a process that harnesses insights, generates new ideas and provides a strategic roadmap. Our founder and lead consultant has 30+ years of experience as a CEO, entrepreneur and marketing expert with exceptional leadership and facilitation skills.

Susan Spaulding, Recalibrate Strategies
816-560-5416
susan@recalibratestrategies.com
www.recalibratestrategies.com
Twitter: @Spaulding_Susan
www.linkedin.com/in/recalibratestrategies

Engage: the Power and Profit of Facilitating Collaboration, an e-Book that contains key ingredients to help you achieve business results, whether you are a professional facilitator, corporate executive or budding entrepreneur.

The Power and Profit of Knowledge, a primer on market research for small business.

Recalibrate: A Strategic Guide for Accelerated Growth, a book based on interviews with business executives from various industries, sizes and geographies and four tenets of Recalibration – Relevance, Differentiation, Engagement and Expression.

Launching and nurturing a successful brand doesn’t just ‘happen.’ And for you and your brand leadership team to accurately identify current opportunities, and/or create new ones, requires a thoughtful and inclusive process.

Success will require you and your team to step out of your normal roles and perspectives. Remaining open-minded and innovation-focused is often easier when meeting away from your traditional workplace; optimally a place that itself aids in innovative thinking. As well, completely objective, experienced professionals can help lead you and your team through the process.

As a company leader, your role is to ensure whatever is developed through the process stays true to your company’s culture and values. It’s wise to be willing to step back and consider opportunities that don’t currently fit within your capabilities, primary strategies and even your business model.

Also, opening this process to a wide range of people from various areas of the company and with different backgrounds and expertise can provide fresh insights and different considerations.

Think of this process as a potential way to BE the disruptor by being so “on target” with what market customers seeks that your brand(s) become known as ‘game changers’ increasing your ability to maximize current opportunities now and set the stage for continued innovation. Build flexibility, agility and resilience into your brand plans.

As you begin, it’s important that everyone involved genuinely believes their input, questions and ideas will be heard and valued. Then create that reality!

Insights

Thankfully, you aren’t starting with a blank slate. Identify what’s known, and begin to identify critical components for strategic brand decision-making.

Compile, review, analyze and synthesize published information about your brand(s) and competitive brands as well as trends, trend drivers and the pace of change. Who or what has the potential to create positive or negative impact on your brand(s)?

Your specific objectives and expected scope of impact you expect will drive how broad or narrow your process should be. In general, the more substantial the change and impact, the greater the benefits of a broader learning initiative.

Ideas

Given the knowledge and insight necessary to make key strategic brand plans and decisions, articulate specific components for the team.

What can be solidified through these team sessions? Optimally, team members came with solid information that when combined and analyzed creates the majority of knowledge needs.

However, it’s highly likely some gaps exist. Together, identify needs, methods and expectations. Create small focused teams made up of individuals from different areas of responsibility who don’t often work together.

Ensure everyone receives a summary of learning to date and team tasks.

Strategies

Combine outcomes from your team session with insight gained by your small teams to develop an overarching brand plan and roadmap for implementation.

Ensure your plan includes:

• Vision and differentiators for each brand
• Brand business review including external and Internal influencing factors
• Brand goals
• Brand performance metrics and accountabilities
• Brand experience platform (what it is and what you want it to be)
• Customer segment prioritization and personification
• Communication channels – platforms and devices for today
• Sales channels and methods to stay on trend and engaged

Implementation

Implement the plan developed by your team. Given how quickly customers and markets change, set frequent leadership reviews.

Building brands, keeping them relevant and maximizing their success is never a complete task. New planning, exploring and development initiatives are triggered by learning from implementation results and external events.

Action Items:

1. Identify the current status of each of your company’s brands. Prioritize a brand planning and strategy process based upon brands with greatest opportunities/in most need of being revitalized.
2. Ensure brand leadership creates and maintains a consistent internal summary combining financial information, strategies, operations, customer base, marketing/communications programs and recent performance of each brand. Each brand merits frequent review, and adjustments.
3. Evaluate customer engagement and strength of customer relationships across customer segments for each brand. Take whatever steps this learning identifies and create an ongoing program to enhance customer engagement and develop deeper brand and customer relationships in key customer segments.

Recalibrate Strategies

Recalibrate Strategies help companies grow their business. We apply proven business systems to recalibrate their business and their brands by collaboratively creating a success blueprint. We facilitate a process that harnesses insights, generates new ideas and provides a strategic roadmap. Our founder and lead consultant has 30+ years of experience as a CEO, entrepreneur and marketing expert with exceptional leadership and facilitation skills.

Susan Spaulding, Recalibrate Strategies
816-560-5416
susan@recalibratestrategies.com
www.recalibratestrategies.com
Twitter: @Spaulding_Susan
www.linkedin.com/in/recalibratestrategies

Engage: the Power and Profit of Facilitating Collaboration, an e-Book that contains key ingredients to help you achieve business results, whether you are a professional facilitator, corporate executive or budding entrepreneur.

The Power and Profit of Knowledge, a primer on market research for small business.

Recalibrate: A Strategic Guide for Accelerated Growth, a book based on interviews with business executives from various industries, sizes and geographies and four tenets of Recalibration – Relevance, Differentiation, Engagement and Expression.

Repositioning your business in the marketplace is no easy task. The innovative strategy that worked last year may no longer be valid in today’s environment. Sometimes, your staff can get so busy focusing on their day-to-day duties, they forget to think ahead and look toward the future. You’re not alone. One of the most respected motorcycle brands, Harley-Davidson, almost went bankrupt not just once, but twice. However, they turned it around and came back when they examined their approach to business.

Here are five tips to help you recalibrate your innovation strategy.

How Do You Operate?

Work on your business model. It’s not just about your customers, but all of the stakeholders in your organization, like your suppliers and employees. Consider the publicity that Chipotle received when they announced that they would stop using GMO ingredients in their food. This change impacts the way their brand is perceived among other fast food restaurants.

Focus on Your Customer

Create the environment that shows your customer what you’re doing to meet their demands. UPS highlighted how it serves customers in order to reposition itself against its rivals. Focus on the core values of your business and what you stand for. Talk to your consumers about their own needs. Then determine how you can bring those two things together in a message that benefits everyone.

Creativity Matters

Bring in creativity to your planning sessions. One of the oldest brands in England, Burberry, found its brand associated with gangs. The company repositioned itself in the luxury clothing market with a creative campaign that rebranded itself. It took new ideas from people in every department, working together to build the foundation that was the impetus to the change. Don’t work with the same people in the same teams. Switch it up.

Look at Your Competitors

Figure out how to set your business apart from your competitors. You may have forgotten that at one time, Target was considered just a low-brow discount store. Now, they are the second largest discount retailer in the United States and pull in the yuppie crowd that Wal-Mart doesn’t. They improved their brand by offering a higher quality product and using those high-profile brands in their marketing message. By making their brand distinctive against their competitors, they grew their company.

Use the Tools Available to You

Utilize social media effectively. Look at Old Spice, a brand that many thought was past its prime. A unique social media campaign revitalized the product and made it fresh and hip. The fans were engaged and interested, but it wasn’t the marketing department within the company that thought up the content, it was a marketing agency brought it to assist. Use the experts that are available to help you create innovation.

Recalibrate Strategies

Recalibrate Strategies help companies grow their business. We apply proven business systems to recalibrate their business and their brands by collaboratively creating a success blueprint. We facilitate a process that harnesses insights, generates new ideas and provides a strategic roadmap. Our founder and lead consultant has 30+ years of experience as a CEO, entrepreneur and marketing expert with exceptional leadership and facilitation skills.

Susan Spaulding, Recalibrate Strategies
816-560-5416
susan@recalibratestrategies.com
www.recalibratestrategies.com
Twitter: @Spaulding_Susan
www.linkedin.com/in/recalibratestrategies

Engage: the Power and Profit of Facilitating Collaboration, an e-Book that contains key ingredients to help you achieve business results, whether you are a professional facilitator, corporate executive or budding entrepreneur.

The Power and Profit of Knowledge, a primer on market research for small business.

Recalibrate: A Strategic Guide for Accelerated Growth, a book based on interviews with business executives from various industries, sizes and geographies and four tenets of Recalibration – Relevance, Differentiation, Engagement and Expression.

Launching and nurturing a successful brand doesn’t just ‘happen.’ And for you and your brand leadership team to accurately identify current opportunities, and/or create new ones, requires a thoughtful and inclusive process.

Success will require you and your team to step out of your normal roles and perspectives. Remaining open-minded and innovation-focused is often easier when meeting away from your traditional workplace; optimally a place that itself aids in innovative thinking. As well, completely objective, experienced professionals can help lead you and your team through the process.

As a company leader, your role is to ensure whatever is developed through the process stays true to your company’s culture and values. It’s wise to be willing to step back and consider opportunities that don’t currently fit within your capabilities, primary strategies and even your business model.

Also, opening this process to a wide range of people from various areas of the company and with different backgrounds and expertise can provide fresh insights and different considerations.

Think of this process as a potential way to BE the disruptor by being so “on target” with what market customers seeks that your brand(s) become known as ‘game changers’ increasing your ability to maximize current opportunities now and set the stage for continued innovation. Build flexibility, agility and resilience into your brand plans.

As you begin, it’s important that everyone involved genuinely believes their input, questions and ideas will be heard and valued. Then create that reality!

Insights

Thankfully, you aren’t starting with a blank slate. Identify what’s known, and begin to identify critical components for strategic brand decision-making.

Compile, review, analyze and synthesize published information about your brand(s) and competitive brands as well as trends, trend drivers and the pace of change. Who or what has the potential to create positive or negative impact on your brand(s)?

Your specific objectives and expected scope of impact you expect will drive how broad or narrow your process should be. In general, the more substantial the change and impact, the greater the benefits of a broader learning initiative.

Ideas

Given the knowledge and insight necessary to make key strategic brand plans and decisions, articulate specific components for the team.

What can be solidified through these team sessions? Optimally, team members came with solid information that when combined and analyzed creates the majority of knowledge needs.

However, it’s highly likely some gaps exist. Together, identify needs, methods and expectations. Create small focused teams made up of individuals from different areas of responsibility who don’t often work together.

Ensure everyone receives a summary of learning to date and team tasks.

Strategies

Combine outcomes from your team session with insight gained by your small teams to develop an overarching brand plan and roadmap for implementation.

Ensure your plan includes:

• Vision and differentiators for each brand
• Brand business review including external and Internal influencing factors
• Brand goals
• Brand performance metrics and accountabilities
• Brand experience platform (what it is and what you want it to be)
• Customer segment prioritization and personification
• Communication channels – platforms and devices for today
• Sales channels and methods to stay on trend and engaged

Implementation

Implement the plan developed by your team. Given how quickly customers and markets change, set frequent leadership reviews.

Building brands, keeping them relevant and maximizing their success is never a complete task. New planning, exploring and development initiatives are triggered by learning from implementation results and external events.

Action Items:

1. Identify the current status of each of your company’s brands. Prioritize a brand planning and strategy process based upon brands with greatest opportunities/in most need of being revitalized.
2. Ensure brand leadership creates and maintains a consistent internal summary combining financial information, strategies, operations, customer base, marketing/communications programs and recent performance of each brand. Each brand merits frequent review, and adjustments.
3. Evaluate customer engagement and strength of customer relationships across customer segments for each brand. Take whatever steps this learning identifies and create an ongoing program to enhance customer engagement and develop deeper brand and customer relationships in key customer segments.

Recalibrate Strategies

Recalibrate Strategies help companies grow their business. We apply proven business systems to recalibrate their business and their brands by collaboratively creating a success blueprint. We facilitate a process that harnesses insights, generates new ideas and provides a strategic roadmap. Our founder and lead consultant has 30+ years of experience as a CEO, entrepreneur and marketing expert with exceptional leadership and facilitation skills.

Susan Spaulding, Recalibrate Strategies
816-560-5416
susan@recalibratestrategies.com
www.recalibratestrategies.com
Twitter: @Spaulding_Susan
www.linkedin.com/in/recalibratestrategies

Engage: the Power and Profit of Facilitating Collaboration, an e-Book that contains key ingredients to help you achieve business results, whether you are a professional facilitator, corporate executive or budding entrepreneur.

The Power and Profit of Knowledge, a primer on market research for small business.

Recalibrate: A Strategic Guide for Accelerated Growth, a book based on interviews with business executives from various industries, sizes and geographies and four tenets of Recalibration – Relevance, Differentiation, Engagement and Expression.