Continuing in our brand series, in this iteration, we will explore the importance of understanding, creating and maintaining brand value and why 'brand' is a key driver of commercial value.
Helene Mills is a Partner at STRAT7 Advisory. She has 20+ years’ experience advising business leaders and investors on growth strategy based upon consumer and market intelligence. Her particular specialism lies in leisure, retail, food & beverage sectors.
To many, ‘brand’ is an elusive concept, belonging in the dreamy realms of the creatives. At STRAT7, we believe brand is the epicentre of commercial outcomes, a key driver of enterprise value, and fully deserving of a place at the top table. We support our clients to create strong, customer-centric brands that deliver commercial impact.
Developing a strong brand is all about growing profits without making more stuff. Who would not want to do that? Our friends at Piper Equity, who focus on ‘Building Brand Legends’ (with success stories like Mindful Chef, Boden and Loungers), hit the nail on the head by articulating the benefits of a strong brand as directly enabling the business to:
- Acquire customers for less
- Create loyal customers
- Push prices
- Stretch into more products, categories, markets and channels
- Attract the best employees
Do you need to breathe new life into your brand to generate more sales and increase market share?
In our experience, establishing a strong brand and ensuring it grows well long-term, relies on anchoring strategy in data and understanding of trends. Far from being elusive or ‘fluffy’; it is essential to first bring the science to then create the magic. We deploy our customer-centric toolkit to work with our clients to understand, create and maintain brand value. This enables us to bridge the gap between being visionary and being truly adaptive to align with commercial goals.
Do you really know what your audience wants and needs most from your brand?
Being customer-centric amplifies brand value and feeds growth. A deeper understanding of what consumers want from your business enables you to align with their current needs and allows you to forecast potential future expectations. We look at brand through the lens of the consumer, culture, category and market, considering the business, competitor and technology context. We work with clients on where and how to invest for maximum return and identify strategic opportunity to grow brands and optimise portfolio architecture.
Do you have a commercial brand strategy in place to guide your business to growth?
The building blocks of the brand include cultural relevance, salience, authority in the category and meaningfulness to the consumer. You can unlock business potential by creating brand value through solid, evidence-based strategy for your brand or portfolio. We identify strategic opportunities to realise full brand potential and bring the strategy to life through clear initiatives and actions, with strategic roadmaps that connect the vision to the execution to realise value.
Is your brand equipped to tackle the changing tides?
A strong brand must, of course, be fit to adapt and continue to win at change. We empower clients to navigate shifting market and consumer dynamics, helping them to stay on the front foot to maintain relevance. In diligence, we ask the right questions, gather the right data and give an evidence-backed view of brand equity and ongoing potential/risk in market context. We empower clients through mechanisms to measure performance and respond to flux.
To demonstrate some of these points we have been running an internal assessment of brand strength across categories, including those facing disruption. Our analysis will highlight who is responding better than others and ‘ones to watch’.
If you would like to see these results and hear more about how we align the brand with the business strategy to make brand strategy tangible, actionable and commercially impactful, please get in touch at enquiry@strat7.com.
We combine an evidence-led approach, commercial expertise and creative/cultural capabilities to uncover, realise and capitalise on key strategic opportunities. We work with many leading consumer businesses to help grow their brands and optimise portfolio architecture.
Interested in more?
Be sure to check out our previous posts on this topic below and stay tuned for more on leading your brand through change successfully.
- Blog: Brand value is more tangible than you may think
- Blog: Key pillars to brand success in changing times
