Industrial Products

CASE STUDY

MetLife

Creating a differentiated retirement solution value proposition for the new generation of customers

Challenge

MetLife, one of the largest life insurance companies in the world, is committed to providing deep and meaningful values to its customers as a trusted life partner.  

Prophet has been a long-term partner with MetLife to help the brand propel its customer-centric transformation across the globe. In China, we started by helping MetLife China develop the overall customer value proposition – “Global Protection, Human Care.” We have also developed a series of customer-centric value propositions and solutions, including health, wealth, and education, to accelerate its transformation ambition in China. 

Retirement planning has been a rising need for Chinese consumers, given the aging population, declining fertility rate, shortage of public retirement funds and the shortage of retirement facilities in China. MetLife partnered with Prophet to uncover insights into Chinese consumers’ retirement needs and to co-create a distinctive and compelling retirement value proposition and solution that truly meets Chinese consumers’ retirement needs. 

Solutions

Through our research, we found that younger Chinese consumers, between the ages of 30 to 45, feel anxious and uncertain about retirement.  

To understand consumer retirement needs, we spoke to people from different life stages and household statuses. From there, we identified four consumer insights that create distinctive market opportunities for MetLife China to develop its retirement value proposition: 

  • Retirement preparation: First, retirement needs do not start in people’s 60s. Consumers want to start retirement planning early. Health issues often trigger consumers to start thinking about retirement planning. Protecting themselves from aging-related health issues has become a big part of their retirement preparation beyond financial preparation. 
  • Retirement services: In China, while most retirees prefer to stay in their homes for retirement, there’s a shortage of retirement services and facilities options. Consumers are less worried about covering their daily living expenses and medical bills and are instead concerned about access to quality services and facilities.  
  • Family support: For Chinese consumers, retirement is not an individual need but requires planning as a family. Most of them need to ensure support for their elderly parents before they can think about retirement preparation for themselves which still requires not only financial support but also quality retirement and health service support. 
  • Mental health: Retirement is more than just financial stability. It is also about the long-established life rhythm and goals. Many Chinese consumers feel a loss of identity and meaning after they retire. A critical part of ensuring individuals thrive in retirement is to figure out how to be mentally prepared and how to leverage the abundant free time to explore new hobbies, expand their horizons and socialize. 

After gaining a deep understanding of these needs, our team worked with MetLife to articulate its retirement value proposition– “Helping you and your family achieve total preparation towards a fulfilling life post-retirement.” We also worked with MetLife’s key stakeholders to co-create the product, service and experience of the retirement solution and developed a clear roadmap to bring the retirement solution to life and for future upgrades. 

Next, our design team created graphics to bring the value proposition to life visually by developing detailed design guidelines for the retirement solution to ensure its visual identity system is compatible with MetLife’s master brand visual system and architecture. Additionally, we have designed brochures and other communication materials for internal and external communications. 

Results

MetLife China launched its new retirement solution, 360Future, in December 2022. Through a live-streaming launch event, MetLife shared inspiring stories and distinctive insights from their employees, customers and industry experts. 

Prophet’s Associate Partner, Lily Wen was invited to join the panel discussion to highlight global and Chinese consumers’ unique challenges toward retirement. “Consumers’ retirement needs are multi-dimensional. Helping them develop the numerical financial goal alone can’t truly solve their worries, anxiety, and confusion toward retirement,” Lily said, “Financial service companies must address Chinese consumers’ holistic needs, by supporting their desire to secure their parents’ retirement while providing quality health and medical services beyond just financial security.” 

CASE STUDY

Kuraray Paper & Packaging

Creating a compelling, customer-centric brand campaign

Challenge

The Paper & Packaging segment of Kuraray Group, a Japanese manufacturer of chemicals, fibers and other materials, plays a central strategic and commercial role in the organization. But because it functioned in business-unit silos, it often missed opportunities to respond directly to customer needs, cross-sell and collaborate with other business units. Segment leaders hoped that with Prophet’s help and a clarified value proposition, the team could better communicate the potential impact of the integrated Paper & Packaging division. 

Solutions

First, our team researched the industry and competitors, interviewing Kuraray stakeholders and customers to understand perceived strengths and unmet customer needs. This analysis helped identify value proposition themes. We then refined each of these thematic building blocks, combining them to create a differentiated and unified value proposition. 

Next, we developed a holistic brand campaign to allow the company to talk about its many products and cross-sell effectively, and to also elevate the Kuraray brand as a single entity, one with deep expertise, a global network of experts and exceptional innovation skills.  

Our campaign introduced a much-sharper, game-changer Kuraray brand to inspire its customers, using attention-getting visuals that further set it apart from competitors  – and where the company hopes to go in the future. 

To support this new approach, we created strategic tools and assets, such as a sales presentation that all customer-facing employees can use in conversation with existing or potential customers. These tools ensure the new value proposition is implemented consistently and effectively, throughout all levels of the company.  

Lastly, we created a playbook to help employees activate the value proposition and execute the campaign, as well as internal efforts to increase awareness and understanding of Kuraray’s new cross-segment approach. 

Results

The strengthened Kuraray brand is being rolled out across Kuraray’s social and digital channels, as well as industry conferences where it is distinguishing itself from competitors, breaking through the noise and reaching its customers with a consistent message. The company is integrating the new tools into customer interactions, effectively supporting the new Kuraray Paper & Packaging positioning and leading to positive business outcomes. 

“The Prophet team completely immersed themselves in our field, becoming experts on our business and its needs. The work they delivered has been truly transformational and is the uncontested gold standard for marketing communication at Kuraray”

Bettina Plaumann
Head of Communications and Marketing, Kuraray Europe

CASE STUDY

Multinational Manufacturer

Modernizing customer engagement through digital selling

Challenge

Our client, a large global manufacturer, sells a wide range of materials used in consumer products, medical devices and more. As a top-200 private U.S. business, this company had achieved a great deal of success by driving product innovation founded on scientific excellence.

Although the company’s seasoned team of field sales representatives had historically driven solid performance results, the global health crisis (COVID-19) severely impacted its access to key buyers.

The business was in urgent need of a new approach to selling and hired Prophet to modernize its digital experience and the engagement capabilities of its salesforce.

Solution

As Prophet’s team of Marketing & Sales consultants dug into the issues facing this organization, they uncovered that by taking a digital-minded approach, our client could:

  • Better reach its core target audiences
  • Develop content that was more engaging to its customers
  • Leverage engagement data to inform offline sales interactions
  • More efficiently orchestrate the sales process

To get started, our team focused on how sales and marketing could partner to improve its digital selling capability through digitally-powered content, stronger messaging effectiveness and the use of data and platforms to improve the sales experience.

Prophet delivered a compelling business case for change and proved the value of evolving its digital selling capacity against a defined set of use cases with pre-post-defined outcomes. The business case was supported by a new operating model which detailed the requirements for developing, maintaining and optimizing the proposed new digital selling capabilities. Our consultants partnered with the client’s marketing, sales and customer experience teams to roll out the new digital selling capability, including new digital tools for frontline sales teams.

Results

Our work for this client extended beyond strategy to provide a detailed, sustainable operating model to deploy and sustain its digital selling transformation. We helped to accelerate this client’s vision, maximize its investment and ease the implementation of its new digital selling capabilities.

Following this project, this manufacturer observed a direct lift in sales, improved customer satisfaction and increased sales associate productivity.

CASE STUDY

Rubix

An award-winning new brand for a leading industrial powerhouse

Challenge

When American private equity firm Advent International merged French industrial supplier IPH with Brammer it marked a major consolidation in the European industrial supplies and solutions market. The combined IPH-Brammer entity presented Prophet with a critical challenge: to create a new brand for this powerhouse to stand out and reach its full market potential.

Solutions

Our team worked quickly to develop a brand strategy to support the evolved priorities and future growth of this newly merged company. Based on the defined brand positioning a name that spoke to the human approach the company adopts to problem-solving was needed, capturing this along with an essence of ingenuity, we landed on Rubix.

We then set about creating a brand identity that would differentiate Rubix from its competitors. In an industry that is widely self-referential, we used storytelling both visually and verbally to stand out from the crowd. Three key brand elements were created to achieve this; a verbal approach that explains how Rubix helps their customers, a brand colour intended to highlight their presence and reach, and a visual device that communicates how they drive their customers’ businesses forward.

Results

With the new brand and go-to-market approach in place, Rubix is uniquely positioned to transform the industry, moving beyond product to become a trusted advisor. Featuring consecutively in the prestigious Sunday Times Top Track 100 in 2018 and 2019 (a league table that ranks Britain’s top private companies with the biggest sales), the reported four percent year-over-year sales growth clearly reflects the successful path the rebranded business is on.

Prophet’s work for Rubix was also acknowledged at the Transform Europe 2020 awards, which recognises excellence in rebranding and brand strategy. Rubix scooped three awards including ‘Best Creative Strategy’ and ‘Best Corporate Rebrand Following a Merger or Acquisition.’

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