Overview

This guide explains how to summarize the Key Issues from the Situation Assessment (SA) exercise.

The key messages are that the Key Issues Summary:

• Synthesizes and prioritizes a wide range of issues preventing brand growth and suggests alternatives for handling them.
• Identifies the critical issues that the Annual plan needs to address.
• Is an important communication vehicle with Senior Management.

In this guide, you learn:

• What the Key Issues Summary is.
• Why the Key Issues Summary is important.
• How to develop a Key Issues Summary for your brand

What is the Key Issues Summary?

The Key Issues Summary document contains the key issues collected from all of the situation assessments. It presents an overall summary and a summary of each topic. This document serves as an important guide for Annual Plan development.

Overall Summary

The Overall Summary prioritizes the top issues that have the broadest impact on the future of the brand.

The most effective way to develop the Overall Summary is to:

• Identify the various issues raised in the SAs.
• Assess the issues raised, with particular attention to those raised in the Brand and Regional/Country SAs.
• Prioritize the issues relating to the future of the Category and the brand(s) within.
• Include the implications for each issue.

This summary will give you specific guidance as to what should be included in the Annual Plan development process and how the issues should be prioritized.

Summaries by Topic

To summarize the key issues for each topic, consider the following for each topic:

• Brand Equity and Positioning
• Advertising
• Media
• Promotions
• Customer Management/Sales
• Market Research/Consumer Insights
• Finance
• Product
  • Product Line Gaps/New Product Development
  • Product – Configuration and Packaging
    • SKU’s
    • Packaging

• Marketplace Issues
  • Competitive
  • Merchandising

• Other
  • Supply Chain
  • Legal/Regulatory

Although all of these topic areas are addressed in the Key Issues Summary: Template, a review of the SAs for each category will generate somewhat different issues. Summaries by topic will vary depending on the specific issues facing each brand.

To prioritize the key issues so that they can appropriately guide the Annual Plan development, consider the following:

• The magnitude of the threat they pose to immediate category volume, revenues and profits as well as future growth.
• The opportunity to drive future growth.
• Impact on long-term competitive position.
• Impact on important account/channel relationships.
• Impact on long-term brand equity and consumer relationship with the brand.