BE 6 Brand Vision: Guide

Overview
The key messages in this guide are:

The Brand Vision Strategy sets the future direction for the brand, based on a deep understanding of consumers’ needs and the opportunity that filling those needs represents.

The strategy document you create contains three elements:

• The Brand Vision statement.
• The Brand Promise.
• The Brand Challenge.

Altogether, they express a Brand Vision Strategy - where you want to take the brand to maximize sales and profit potential.

In this guide, you learn:

What the Brand Vision Strategy is.

Why Brand Vision Strategy is important.

How to develop a Brand Vision Strategy for your brand.

What is the Brand Vision Strategy?
The Brand Vision Strategy is made up of three components:

Where you want to take the brand.

The promise you make to your consumers and the brand equity you seek to build to reach your Brand Vision.

The gaps you must close to achieve your Brand Vision.

Developing the Brand Vision statement, Brand Promise and Brand Challenge is an iterative process. Identifying the most appropriate Brand Vision Strategy for the brand may take a number of ideation and evaluation sessions.

• The Brand Vision describes the overall direction in which you want to take your brand over the next 3-5 years to maximize its sales and profit potential. You develop a Brand Vision Strategy document to articulate how you are going to achieve that Vision.
• The Brand Vision Strategy should be an expansive and ambitious goal, developed from an understanding of the corporate intent for the brand, the Consumer Domain Strategy Recommendation (if available) and the Brand Situation Assessment.

Why is Brand Vision Strategy Important?
Defining the Brand Vision Strategy is a fundamental step in constructing a growing, profitable brand franchise. A Brand Vision Strategy:

• Focuses the business team and the organization on exploring, articulating and developing brand equities that represent a strong position of preference, loyalty and emotional bonding with consumers.
• Ensures that the brand does not languish, become outdated and/or lose relevance (such as Bartles & Jaymes in the USA). Good brand-owners never let brands languish.
  • They revive them, renew them, reform them, fold them into others, or if they’re truly dying, they kill them.
  • But they never let them languish – because brand building is a dynamic process, focused on the ever-changing consumer and their dynamic needs.

Without a single Brand Vision, marketing efforts often lack focus.
Example
T-Mobile is a good example. There is brand advertising (T-Mobile lets you communicate any time), co-op advertising with handset manufacturers (latest hand-phone), network advertising (500 rollover minutes), separate business unit advertising (T-Mobile Hot Spots) – without a single brand equity management framework. This results in consumers being bombarded with different product messages, and an overall sense that the T-Mobile brand does not stand for any one particular benefit.

• Creates the framework for the Long-term Equity Appreciation Plan (LEAP), the final phase of the Brand Equity Development process.
  • The LEAP translates the Brand Vision Strategy into specific strategies that will be implemented in the annual Brand Plans, and sets out the metrics that will help track progress towards the Vision.
• Provides three components that serve distinctive purposes:
  • Brand Vision sets out the strategic direction by articulating an ambitious but realistic future state with which all stakeholders can align.

Brand Vision: “British Airways will achieve industry leadership levels of revenue and profit through continuous, excellent, innovation in airline customer service.”
Brand Vision: “Crest will become a brand that delivers enhanced self image to consumers through a range of products that transcend Oral Care and extend into high revenue growth beauty and health care sectors.”
Brand Promise summarizes what the brand stands for. It is the desired brand equity that drives the preference, loyalty and emotional bonding.
Brand Promise “Assurance that BA will connect you to the world with speed and unsurpassed comfort”.
Brand Promise “Beauty through bright healthy smiles.”
Brand Challenge identifies the gaps to overcome between the brand’s current state and its envisioned end-state to achieve the Brand Vision.
How do you develop a Brand Vision Strategy?
There are six steps to developing a Brand Vision Strategy:

1. Develop the Brand Vision.
2. Identify the Brand Promise and support.
3. Identify/describe the Target Audience, Key Consumer Insights and the Competitive Framework.
4. Evaluate likely competitive reaction.
5. Identify/define the Brand Character.
6. Identify the Brand Challenge.

Step 1: Develop the Brand Vision
To develop the Brand Vision, the team identifies the brand’s opportunities by reviewing the Consumer Domain recommendation, if one is available. The following scenarios explain how to develop a Brand Vision, with or without a Consumer Domain recommendation.
Scenario 1a – Developing a Vision knowing the Consumer Domain

Review the Consumer Domain Strategy recommendation to find:

• The consumer needs and the brand’s validated opportunities.
• The size of opportunity, competitive activity, brand fit and a ranking of benefits perceived by consumers. (This ranking will form the basis for a Brand Promise).

Review a completed Brand Situation Assessment

Both of these will help you form a realistic Brand Vision of what can be achieved over the next 3-5 years.
Scenario 1b - Developing a Vision without knowing the Consumer Domain
Although you won’t see the entire range of brand opportunities provided by a Consumer Domain strategy, you can use the Brand Equity Situation Assessment to see the brand’s current performance in its categories. You can also know what it will take to win in your current space, and perhaps the immediately adjacent spaces, by looking at analysis of competitors and your brand’s strengths and weaknesses.

Example

The Tide brand has focused for years on building and reinforcing its position as market leader in the laundry categories. Because its Brand Vision has remained set on being number 1 in that space, it has set a clear path for innovation in product, communication, and packaging that has kept it in the leading spot worldwide.

Regardless of what information you have, ask yourself:

What are you trying to achieve with your brand?

What will it take to maximize revenue and profit?

Where is your product innovation path currently leading you towards?

What is the space that your brand can occupy – is it a leader, a close follower?

Writing the Brand Vision
Although there are no hard and fast rules for writing a Brand Vision statement (the content, length or cadence), here are some guidelines:

Be ambitious

• A good Brand Vision seeks to aggressively grow the brand, in terms of consumer loyalty and/or product categories.
• A poor Brand Vision offers a limited horizon – perhaps only rolling out flankers and line extensions within the current business. (This risks becoming marginalized by a competitive brand with a more powerful statement closer to the hearts of consumers.)

Be grounded in reality and/or rationale

• A good Brand Vision explains the rationale behind the “consumer permission” the brand has to grow in new spaces. Explain the rationale behind how the brand will grow into the new spaces. In the British Airways example above it was “through continuous, excellent, innovation in airline customer service.”

Focus on the business intent

• Explain how will the business grow and in what direction.

Example

The Brand Vision for Unilever’s Dove brand passed both the above “tests” and enabled the brand to record super-normal growth from 1995 to 2002:

Dove will become the leading women’s personal care brand by transcending the current bar soap category into multiple personal care categories by leveraging the core, powerful consumer insight of restoring femininity to create highly satisfied, loyal consumers worldwide.

Tip

When you start thinking of a Brand Vision, don’t be limited by the current constraints – ask yourself: where CAN we go before you ask where SHOULD we go. Constraint-free thinking can lead to breakthrough ideas and plans. For example, if Virgin had used constrained thinking, they would have stayed in the recording business and would not have expanded to airlines, cola, insurance, trains, wedding dresses, and mobile phones.

After you write the Brand Vision Statement and identify its rationale, ask yourself:

Why do we think our business can go in this (perhaps) new direction?

What is the attraction of this path:

• New revenue and profit to be gained?
• Competitors to be thrown off-balance?

Articulate for your management the core rationale in a short paragraph or series of bullet points.
Step 2: Identify the Brand Promise and support
Identify a Brand Promise that when delivered will allow you to achieve the Vision. Also identify the ‘support’ - the reasons consumers will believe that we can deliver on the Brand Promise.
The most successful brands ‘own’ specific benefits in consumers’ minds. Ideally, these benefits fill the consumer’s highest-level emotional need over the long term. To build Brand Equity, you need to identify the consumer’s highest level needs and develop a plan to “own” that benefit. Identifying the highest-level need involves understanding the way consumers consciously, and subconsciously, organize their needs in a hierarchy (from functional needs (such as clean teeth) to emotional needs (such as self-esteem).

Example

Volvo owns ‘confidence that I’m keeping my family safe.’

Pringles owns ‘uninhibited fun in snacking.’

Gillette owns ‘feeling, being my very best as a man.’

Venus owns enhanced well being through ‘revealing my inner goddess.’

The high-level benefit is the Brand Promise. This term suggests the importance of the brand’s emotional message to its target audience.

Note:

What about the Brand Promise for existing brands versus new brands?
Your brand probably has a functional or emotional benefit that you already communicate to consumers. During the Brand Vision Strategy process, evaluate how important and meaningful this benefit is to consumers. Is there a way to elevate the benefit into a powerful, emotionally-based Brand Promise?
Unless your brand is new, the current Brand Promise has already been widely communicated to consumers, customers and partners (you have some brand equity). Because the values and impressions consumers have of your brand are sometimes hard (and expensive!) to change, changes to brand equity are always incremental in nature. Gently guide your consumers where you want them to go; avoid major changes that can be jarring, discontinuous, and ultimately off-putting and confusing.
Often, benefit statements are functionally-based rather than emotionally-based, and therefore do not allow the brand to expand beyond its current reach. For example, here are some examples of functionally based benefits that could be laddered up to more powerful emotionally based benefits:

Functionally-Based Benefits
Related Emotionally-Based Benefits

Smooth skin
Enhancing my femininity

Healthy gums
Increasing my self confidence

Absorbent (paper towels) that clean up spills
Self-esteem by making me feel like a better homemaker

Diapers that prevent baby rash
Self-esteem by making me feel like a better parent

To determine the high-level emotional need the brand can realize over the long term, use the Hierarchy of Needs. The high-level emotional need you select to become the Brand Promise depends on four factors:

• ‘Permission’ the brand has to deliver on this emotional need. Do consumers believe that your brand is capable of filling this need? Their belief depends on their prior experience with your brand and with other brands in the category.

Tip

You can evaluate consumer ‘permission’ by using small-base qualitative testing – but don’t be too constrained by the results. For example, Porsche would never have introduced the high-selling Cayenne SUV had they listened solely to consumer’s permissions.

• What the brand already owns in the minds of consumers. Although the brand may not have the consumers ‘permission’ right now to own a Brand Promise, is there evidence that this can change? Use the Hierarchy of Needs to evaluate if permission could be captured over time. For example, there may be functional and low-level emotional benefits currently being delivered to consumers that could extend to higher-order benefits.
• The economic value of achieving the Brand Vision. Use research and product/services segment sizing to estimate the economic value of the brand vision. Analyze how much consumers spend, or are prepared to spend, on filling the needs in the space. This important factor will help you decide what benefits you want to own.
• The competitive environment. Can the brand uniquely own the brand promise? What functional and emotional benefits are competitive brands currently delivering?

Ensure that your Brand Promise is distinct from your competitors who are after the same target audience. In many categories, there may be a number of brands vying to own a similar high-level benefit.
Example:
In the female hair care business, many brands compete to meet the need for self-confidence through beautiful hair. Even where competition is fierce, it is still possible to achieve uniqueness by:

• Developing and leveraging a unique insight into the target audience (for example, the Venus insight that revealing a woman’s ‘inner’ beauty is the key to her feminine self-confidence).
• Communicating a unique reason-why (such as Folgers “Mountain Grown Coffee”)
• Being the first to market by communicating that benefit and building a strong association in consumer’s minds between the brand and that benefit.

Over time, you can track your Brand Promise ownership with the Brand Equity Scorecard.
Evaluate the Hierarchy of needs for your brand based on the above factors
Tip:
An alternative way of viewing the hierarchy of needs is via the Means-End Chain.
Example:
Michelin Tires determined a hierarchy of needs for car tires that lead to ‘Confidence that I am protecting my family” at the very top. This became their Brand Promise and was translated in advertising to “You have a lot riding on your tires.”
Note:
Mega brands and sub-brands
Some large companies have a handful of mega-brands and a number of ‘sub-brands’. In the Complete Brand Building Way, a mega-brand has a single Brand Vision and its Brand Promise is reflected in the sub-brand communications. Although the sub-brand’s positioning elements and the reasons-why may vary, it will always support the overarching Mega-brand Promise.
Here are some examples of successful Brand Visions and the Brand Promises.

Brand Vision Brand Promise

To become the leading women’s personal care brand by transcending the current bar soap category into multiple personal care categories through leveraging the core, powerful consumer insight of ‘restoring femininity’.
Enhanced self image through caring for my skin.

To extend passenger safety and robust heritage into all consumer demanded vehicle types.
Confidence that I’m keeping my family safe.

Deliver Virgin’s ideal of a better deal for the consumer into any and all spaces where consumer choice is limited.
A better and more fun deal for the consumer.

Drive new revenue from leveraging Mr. Clean’s insight and benefits to new target audiences and applications.
Self-satisfaction / congratulation through perfection in home and family cleaning tasks.

A compelling Brand Promise can revitalize a category! Think of coffee before Starbucks – a commodity category owned by Maxwell House, Folgers. Starbucks proved that the decline in coffee drinking by young people wasn’t due to dislike of coffee but instead a lack of brand vision.
Support for the Brand Promise
What about your brand offering will lead consumers to trust you to deliver on the Brand Promise?
Do you have excellent delivery of rational and/or functional benefits on the consumers’ hierarchy of needs?

Example

A Brand Promise of “feeling the very best I can be” might be supported by “a closer shave and smooth skin gives me confidence to feel the best”.

To develop support points:

• Look at your category, or domain hierarchy of needs, and identify the ‘rungs’ on the hierarchy below your Brand Promise.
  • Some will be ‘price of entry’ needs – fundamental benefits or attributes you must offer (basic level of quality, a reasonable price, portability, etc.).
• Examine these rungs and identify what your brand already stands for. Will these be sufficient to support your Brand Promise or will you need more? Will you be able to communicate the support in a compelling and relevant manner?

Step 3: Identify/Describe Target Audience, Key Consumer Insights and the Competitive Framework
Compare your existing brand positioning to the new Brand Promise and determine if you need to change it to ensure that it supports the Brand Promise and Brand Vision. You may need to modify the positioning language to better reflect a new higher-level Brand Promise.
To translate the new consumer knowledge into a broader description, review your positioning statement and find the major components. You will insert these into the final Brand Vision Strategy document to add more depth and rationale.
Include these Brand Positioning components in the final Brand Vision Strategy statement:

• Target Audience: What are the key audience descriptors, extending beyond demographics to attitudinal and psycho-graphic segmentation information?
• Key Consumer Insights What do we know about consumer behavior, attitudes, or perceptions that we can use to leverage to drive trial, loyalty or other desired behavior?
• Competitive Framework What are the competitive brands in the space? What is their Vision and what are their expected intentions?

Step 4: Anticipate and Plan for Competitive Reaction
Competitors always react – in a low-intensity manner through increased promotions or aggressive discounting; or in a high-intensity manner through competitive product launches, repositioning and/or heavy media spending.
As a team, map out some scenarios and assess the impact on the Brand Vision. If you develop a more compelling brand positioning, or expand to new categories that encroach upon existing or new competitors ‘territory’, they will react. Anticipate this and be prepared.
Step 5: Identify and or Define the Brand Character
Brands are like people – they have their own individual character and personality. Just as we remember friends and acquaintances by their unique character traits, consumers also remember brands by their overall character. And, just as a person’s out-of-character behavior can be off-putting, also a brand’s out-of-character actions can be poorly received by consumers.
A brand’s character is represented by a collection of beliefs, attitudes, values and style. Consumers learn the brand’s character in every touch-point. If this character is not explicitly defined, and consistently built into each touch-point, the brand’s character can appear disjointed and neurotic.
A brand character is usually expressed as a short collection of adjectives that best describe the brand’s identity.

For example:

• Nike – individualistic, contemporary and positive.
• Virgin – rebellious, mould-breaking and friendly.
• BMW – posh, stylish and sophisticated.

When you define your brand’s character:

Limit the list to 3-4 adjectives that best describe the brand.

Use adjectives that suggest the very core of the brand and its identity.

Use adjectives you would use to describe the brand as a person.

Ensure that it is unique and easily distinguished from the competitors.

Step 6: Identify the Brand Challenge
After you develop a Brand Vision, evaluate the barriers you must overcome to reach the Vision. These barriers are called the Brand Challenge. The Brand Challenge describes actions you must take and forms the basis for building the long-term equity-building plan (LEAP) strategies.

Focus on making the Brand Challenge strategic, rather than tactical.

Example

Strategic Brand Challenge: ‘we do not currently have the breakthrough home appliances that meet consumer’s needs for lasting comfort”

Tactical Brand Challenge “we need to rollout our pastel line of refrigerators in the Iberian markets”.

Review the Brand Equity Scorecard to identify the specific gaps between the current brand equity and the Brand Vision.

• It helps to compare where the brand is currently positioned in the target consumers’ minds with the desired Brand Promise.
• Review the General Equities (Differentiation, Relevance, Esteem, Knowledge, Value and Loyalty Attitude) to identify where action is needed to achieve the Brand Vision.

Consider the Brand Equity drivers:

• Is the brand’s core audience fully understood?
• Are current communication programs/campaigns conveying the Brand Promise in a compelling manner?
• Is the brand appropriately distributed, presented and promoted to the consumer through the appropriate channels?
• Does the competition already “own” the Brand Promise? If not, are they striving, or likely, to do so?
• What new products or product changes are needed to support the Brand Vision?
• Have other options been considered to fully exploit the business model opportunities? For example, have you considered licensing to reach new audiences, channels or to enter new categories?

Note:
Use the Brand Equity Scorecard to see many, if not all, of the issues involved. Reviewing these issues will help you:

Reveal the relationship and gaps.

Identify areas of strength and weakness.

Identify key issues that prevent the brand from reaching the Brand Vision

Section 3: The Final Brand Vision Strategy Document
Assemble all the following components into the final Brand Vision Strategy.
See Brand Vision: Template and Brand Vision: Example for more help.
Approving the Brand Vision
Because the Brand Vision is a major strategic document for the brand, and it leads right into LEAP development, you will need to present it to the most Senior Marketers for approval and alignment before moving on to LEAP development.

Note:

Hierarchy of Needs tool

This tool is very useful for understanding the brand’s domain. The team must decide which ‘rungs’ on the hierarchy of needs the brand can compete on – where can the brand offer competitive solutions to those needs.

For example, below is a simple hierarchy. Dentifresh brand stands for fresh breath in addition to the price-of-entry cleaning requirements; Oral Care Super Brand already stands for healthy teeth and bright smiles, which are higher-level rungs. The question for Oral Care Super Brand is whether it can ‘climb’ another rung in consumer minds and stand for ‘self-confidence through oral care’, which is a higher-level, emotional benefit, ownership of which is predicted to drive loyalty.

Tip

Consider performing qualitative research, either focus groups or in-depth one-on-one interviews, with consumers to determine how much emotional power the brand packs. The more consumers are willing to associate emotional benefits to the brand, the higher up the hierarchy the brand will be able to go.

Even if today the brand has low emotional power, and is associated only with lower-level functional benefits, that doesn’t necessarily mean it cannot rise higher. Your job as the brand owner is to use consumer insight and marketing to drive the brand up the hierarchy as high as you can.

The Hierarchy of Needs developed in the Consumer Domain recommendation will certainly give you macro-level guidance on consumer needs across the broad domain. You may however, want to work with your MRD team to further delineate a hierarchy of needs for categories closer to your current business. This is straight-forward to develop, using qualitative research that ideally includes ethnographic work to really understand how consumers feel about the needs and the solutions available to them.