CASE STUDY

Major Payments Provider

Bridging global innovation gaps through digital transformation

Challenge

A major payments technology company had over many years developed a network of 10 innovation centers around the world. Each innovation center was designed and launched by leaders in different geographies and with differing capabilities, operating models and approaches to serving company account teams and their clients.

While some cross-pollination of ideas and frameworks was taking place, there was no standardized agreement on what might be necessary to drive greater value.

The company recognized that a more consistent operating model was needed, and in 2018 the company decided to move all the innovation centers under a single global leader. This new leader was tasked with driving synergies between the innovation center leaders and establishing a new, universally accepted operating model.

Solutions

The company engaged Prophet to bring the innovation leaders together to rapidly build trust among them and encourage knowledge sharing. From there they could work toward consensus on a go-forward operating model and action plan for putting it into practice.

To start the alignment process, Prophet’s team led the innovation leaders in activities that provided insight into their own preferences and motivations within the innovation process, allowing each leader to meet each other on equal footing. The subsequent knowledge-sharing activities were designed to quickly establish commonality and shared interests. The first two activities were so effective that aligning on the go-forward operating model, key areas for standardization and the action plan was remarkably straightforward.

Results

The team quickly aligned on priorities, an action plan and expectations moving forward.  The head of global innovation and design at the company said:

“Designing and delivering this kind of iconic event for a team of highly independent and experienced innovation leaders (who regularly run these kinds of events themselves for our global clients) required a firm who could confidently bring deep, demonstrated subject matter expertise in innovation, digital product development and event facilitation. I trusted the Prophet team to rapidly get us to breakthrough team dynamics and an actionable plan, and they totally delivered.”

CASE STUDY

Renowned Performing Arts Institution

Determining the best marketing technology stack

Challenge

A nationally renowned performing arts institution needed to upgrade its technology stack to implement new, innovative digital practices, including website personalization, integrated multi-channel marketing, and digital asset collaboration. The new marketing tools needed to integrate with its existing technology and operate within the budget of a non-profit organization.

Solutions

Altimeter, in partnership with Prophet set out to create a comprehensive list of features and functionalities for the new platforms based on the needs of the institution’s marketing, PR and artistic planning teams.

To do this, we interviewed representatives of every single department to establish their priorities and major challenges. We then created an RFP document for four types of technology platforms; a content management system, a digital asset management tool, a content collaboration tool and a web personalization platform. We then created a shortlist of vetted vendors and invited them to participate in the RFP process. During this process, we ran live demos and Q&A sessions for our clients to help them make understand the pros and cons of each software and the implementation process.

Results

After a lengthy RFP process, we made final recommendations for the best vendors in each software category, which the client acted on. In addition, we also delivered recommendations for new processes and governance in order to ensure the successful use of the technology stack. Finally, we created job descriptions for employees to run the newly installed platforms.

CASE STUDY

Alteon Health

Creating a customer-centric healthcare brand

Challenge

In 2017, New Mountain Capital, a private equity investment firm, brought together Emergency Medical Associates (EMA) and Island Medical Management (IMM), two U.S.-based leaders in outsourced healthcare practice management services, to create a best-in-class organization focused on delivering the highest quality healthcare. Prophet helped New Mountain Capital and IMM/EMA executives create a new brand—including the brand strategy, name and visual identity, as well as a dynamic website to act as a recruiting tool for the new organization —in only five months’ time.

Solutions

We began by articulating the brand’s strategy. The positioning needed to speak to the positive impact the integrated organization creates for its patients, physician employees and hospital customers, while reflecting its core differentiators — most importantly, the passion, loyalty and expertise of its physicians and medical professionals, as well as the use of cutting-edge data analytics to empower them to be at their best. Reflecting on these strengths, we articulated a simple, compelling positioning: “Positive Outcomes, Powered by People.”

We then translated this positioning into a new name. We explored around 1,000 name candidates across territories and styles, but one name stood out from the beginning: Alteon Health. A coined name, Alteon brings together “alta,” speaking to heights, and “eon,” which signals constant or continuous forward momentum, telling a story about the relentless passion of Alteon’s people and partners in delivering better outcomes for their patients.

Our next step was to bring the name to life visually. We created a graphic logo mark with a horizontal notch in the “A”, creating an upward arrow that reinforces the meaning of the name. We complemented this mark with a bright color palette and graphic system that uses neon concentric circles, which suggest the organization’s ongoing impact and create a device for highlighting data.

We then coupled the visual system with the brand strategy and messaging to create a dynamic website that introduces Alteon Health to the world.

Results

The Alteon Health brand launched in October of 2017, and now supports 125 hospitals and facilities in delivering high-quality medical care to more than three million patients each year. With its new brand in place to unite, inspire and galvanize its people, Alteon Health is looking to the future, continuing to find new ways to help its partners deliver better outcomes to their patients and communities, every day.

CASE STUDY

Gatorade

Rehydrating an iconic beverage brand

Challenge

Gatorade, the one-time leader in the $5BN hydration category, was losing relevance among competitive athletes. The landscape was proliferated with energy drinks, enhanced waters and other sports drinks, and athlete needs were changing.

Prophet partnered with Gatorade to rehydrate this iconic brand, and create an unprecedented path for growth through new athlete needs, occasions and categories.

Solutions

We conducted extensive elite athlete research – attended (and participated) in marathons and triathlons, conducted digital ethnographies and hired videographers to journal athletes’ journeys in training and competition.

Through this research, we uncovered eight functional needs that athletes had in addition to hydration, as well as what they consumed, when, where, why, etc. We learned that Gatorade was the #1 most trusted brand in sports fuel, yet only participated in hydration. And although Gatorade continues to dominate the hydration category, less than 10% of athletes’ consumption needs are related to hydration.  For the remaining 90% of athletes’ consumption needs, there is no trusted brand. Gatorade is one of the most trusted brands in the category, but it didn’t even have a product.

By understanding the wide range of need states for athletes, it enabled us to build a plan for Gatorade’s growth from a “hydration brand” to a “sports fuel company” which included the launch of a variety of new products.

Results

As a result of our work, Gatorade has embarked on its most aggressive brand transformation ever from hydration to sports fuel and achieved remarkable business impact such as:

  • Double digit volume declines reversed to 15% growth in year 1 for Gatorade base brand.
  • Over $3B in franchise revenue increases since launch of the strategy.
  • Expanded frame of reference beyond $6B hydration market into the $72B sports fuel market.
  • Launched new product forms with new benefits -gels, bars, shakes, chews, powders, etc.
  • Expanded into technology enabled wearable/durable goods.
  • Fastest growing brand in the PepsiCo portfolio.

Impact

15%

growth for base brand

3b

dollar franchise revenue growth

1

fastest-growing brand for Pepsi

CASE STUDY

Funimation

Helping reinvent & remarket a next-generation entertainment studio

Challenge

Funimation, the leading anime distribution company in the world, wanted to make the transition from an analog DVD business to a digital-first, streaming-driven company. To succeed with their next wave of enterprise growth, the company knew they needed to take on today’s increasingly digital entertainment landscape with fresh products, and a new approach to how they went to market amidst a rapidly changing landscape and consumer fan base.

Solutions

We started by refreshing their traditional segmentation with a digital-first lens to better understand how their consumers engage and interact with brands, fellow fans and media in the online space. Development of digital profiles provided a more detailed perspective of digital behaviors, informing the customer experience journey, value proposition and go-to-market strategy. Based on what we learned from research, Prophet refined the brand positioning, grounding it more substantially in fans’ insatiable appetite to discover extraordinary anime content.

We designed a fan-first digital value proposition anchored on flexibility and customization – a highly differentiated position in a crowded anime market. This new model entirely reshapes product, pricing, content and community.

Prophet then drafted new customer experience journeys by identifying the target audience’s needs and pain points throughout, with an eye towards addressing key gaps. Each phase of the experience inspired signature product and experience offerings that brought the value proposition to life. The various experience touchpoint and offering ideas were prioritized based on technical feasibility and business impact. Experiences and ideas were codified and prioritized based on both technical feasibility and business impact. We worked with management and media teams to estimate revenue impact, design a marketing plan, including a revamped social strategy.

Results

Our project culminated in the development of a digitally-driven go-to-market plan and detailed roadmap and actionable playbook, which is enabling staff and repositioning Funimation and strengthening their lead in the streaming anime market. Funimation achieved its company subscriber goals, paving the way for its recent acquisition by Sony for $143mm.

CASE STUDY

Schneider Electric

Driving demand for a global energy management company

Challenge

Schneider Electric is a global specialist in energy management with operations in more than 100 countries. The company recognized that future business growth depended upon driving demand among end customers and the contractors who work most closely with them.

Solutions

In a complicated and multi-layered value chain, digital communications are crucial to forging relationships with end customers and contractors, while enhancing relationships with existing channel partners. By driving a deep understanding of how customers make decisions, and the role that digital plays in helping them, Prophet partnered with Schneider to identify and pursue opportunities to better engage customers across the entire value chain.

Results

Despite challenging market conditions and a slowdown in new economies, the execution of this strategy saw revenues increase by 6.6%. Customized online portals enabled Schneider to increase the share of wallets among contractors by helping them make smarter project execution decisions. The organization also drove greater demand with end-users through tools such as Building Insights – a building energy management platform.

CASE STUDY

Electrolux

Creating an integrated and engaging customer experience

Challenge

Savvy, digitally-enabled consumers expect great brand experiences online, in-store and after purchase. Electrolux, a global leader in household and professional appliances, realized the need for an integrated and engaging branded customer experience that would leapfrog the competition, and to do this, they needed a digital transformation.

Solutions

Electrolux leaders partnered with Prophet to map the consumer experience and seamlessly integrate and activate the brand’s digital and physical shopping experience touchpoints.

With a focus on the consumer, experience teams worked across business sectors and geographies to examine the consumer experience throughout the purchase cycle and identify key needs and pain points. With so many different opportunities, brands and geographies to explore, the main challenge was applying a razor-sharp lens to the channels (e.g., mobile, retail, etc.) and identifying signature touchpoints to create a multi-year, step-by-step customer experience roadmap to drive transformation and business impact.

Creating a culture of experience innovation was also a priority. To empower and energize the delivery of the experience, Prophet worked with the CMO, CEO and sector business leaders at Electrolux to deliver a unique growth leadership development program for the top 350 brands, experience and product innovators across the company. The program provides experiential learning and access to capabilities/ knowledge from across the organization in exciting formats that engage their leaders and build ambassadors for the transformation to a consumer-driven company.

Results

After Electrolux put the customer first, shopper experiences improved and the organization mobilized around a clear and common consumer vision.

As a result, The Electrolux Group delivered its ninth consecutive quarter of organic growth. The organization has produced a step-change in the number of products and experience innovations that exceed new, aggressive standards for meeting consumers’ needs.

CASE STUDY

Electrolux

Developing a demand-driven business growth strategy

Challenge

Electrolux, a global leader in household and professional appliances, set out to leapfrog competitors through a demand-driving business growth strategy. They viewed the emergence of digitally-enabled shoppers, the growth in new retail formats and the surge in consumer buying power in emerging markets as a unique opportunity to gain a competitive advantage.

Solutions

Electrolux leaders partnered with Prophet to drive demand among targeted consumers through offer innovation, improvements to the shopping experience, new digital marketing tools and post-purchase experience upgrades. Working across business sectors and geographies, growth teams started clarifying the growth agenda and uncovering insights into the key drivers of consumer demand for offers and experiences. Global and sector teams developed multi-year, step-by-step roadmaps for innovation, digital marketing, consumer shopping experiences, post-purchase experiences and internal talent development. Individual sectors are now implementing several of these programs, piloting initiatives in new capability areas and rolling out focused new product launch programs.

The transformation includes building internal capabilities as well as launching programs in-market. Prophet worked with Electrolux’s CMO, CEO and sector business leaders to deliver a unique growth leadership development program for the top 350 brand, experience and product innovators across the company. They have become ambassadors for the transformation of Electrolux to a consumer-driven company.

Results

In the quarter after activation, the company delivered its ninth consecutive period of organic growth. The organization has produced a step-change in the number of products and experience innovations that exceed new, aggressive standards for meeting consumers’ needs; resulting in North America sales growth of 1.1%, and margin increases of 4.3%.

Impact

9

consecutive quarters of growth

1.1%

North America sales growth

4.3%

increase in margins

CASE STUDY

Salt

A new name and brand for Orange Switzerland

Challenge

Fresh from success in the UK in the early 1990s, Orange entered the Swiss mobile market in 1999. Setting up as the third operator in the country, they grew to a 20% share, despite the market being renowned for extreme customer loyalty.

In 2012, Orange Switzerland (now Salt) was sold to private equity firm Apax providing the perfect opportunity to create a new brand aimed specifically at their Swiss customers and free from the constraints of the parent company.

Solutions

We started working with Orange in 2013 to create the new brand. Through research and sessions with the executive team at Orange, we discovered three key tenants that the new brand was built upon:

  1. Sole focus on the customer, not itself, and communicated with attitude in order to stand out. Want the new iPhone? No problem.
  2. An understanding of the network’s predominantly young and urban customers. They are accustomed to great food in restaurants without stuffiness, the best coffee served in an understated and swift fashion and new digital services that measure success in as few user interactions as possible. Less is definitely more.
  3. The brand should communicate a sense of new Swissness. An alternative to the clichéd mountain top imagery.

This formed the basis of the brand personality. Instead of promising to save the world or make your day, this is a network that is there when you need them and not when you don’t. A network that doesn’t over promise and under deliver, that doesn’t distract and pitch upgrades but one that accepts and embraces their role as an essential ingredient in the lives of their customers. From this personality, we created the name — Salt. Short, but big on attitude and a world away from their rival networks.

Results

To bring the new brand to life, we worked simultaneously on advertising, digital experience, retail design, point of sale and employee engagement. We designed approaches for everything from above the line to point of sale, website and accompanying smartphone apps and retail design principles.

In January 2015 Apax Partners sold the company to Xavier Niel, the owner of French mobile phone company Iliad, for €2.3bn — an €800 million profit on their 2012 purchase. In April 2015 the new brand launched across all 200 retail outlets in Switzerland and online at Salt.ch. Click the image below to see a slideshow of our design work.

CASE STUDY

T Mobile

Addressing telecom customer frustrations

Challenge

T-Mobile wanted to clearly differentiate itself from its wireless competitors and from tried and tired industry practices. Company executives were contemplating a radical new approach to address customer frustration and challenge industry norms.

Solution

T-Mobile tapped Prophet’s deep expertise in brand strategy and analytics to supplement its own efforts aimed at addressing customer frustration with the unnecessary cost and complexity of the wireless industry. Prophet helped T-Mobile conduct extensive market research that identified ways in which the brand could inspire, influence and compel consumers to act.

Prophet’s research and counsel helped T-Mobile confirm a core tenet of its “Un-carrier strategy” – there was a distinct opportunity for a wireless carrier who didn’t act like one. Research showed consumers were generally fed up with what they saw as wireless carrier apathy toward their needs. The resulting T-Mobile brand strategy differentiated the company from its competitors by emphasizing simplicity, fairness and value. Prophet also helped T-Mobile carry its Un-carrier efforts forward through an activation plan that included customer experience design and a development and measurement system to track progress and inform performance targets.

Results

Since the Un-carrier launch in March, T-Mobile has steadily brought this strategy to life at every brand touchpoint. The comprehensive brand program extends from positioning, messaging and communications to customer experience and employee engagement.

The company has gained 1.1 million customers in the quarter following the announcement of its new Un-carrier strategy, the largest customer growth in four years, and Fast Company named T-Mobile as one of 2014’s Most Innovative Companies.

Impact

1

fastest-growing wireless company in the U.S.

17

quarters of customer and revenue growth

5B

dollars in annualized revenue growth

CASE STUDY

Electrolux

Refreshing a global icon and modernizing the brand

Challenge

Electrolux is on a journey to become a world-class consumer marketing company – but the brand’s visual identity felt out of date and undifferentiated. Electrolux worked with Prophet to create a visual platform that modernizes the brand and stands out in the market.

Solutions

Equipped with a deep understanding of Electrolux’s consumers, resulting from a long-standing partnership, Prophet worked with Electrolux’s team to build a brand identity that would appeal to consumers on an emotional level. A key insight led to the idea; consumers want to see the benefit of a product not just the features – a beautifully poached egg, a pile of soft, fluffy towels or a perfectly crisp white shirt.

Each aspect of the identity was modernized. The logo was stripped of superfluous shapes and the tagline, maximizing its visibility and impact. The font was updated to a custom, modern sans serif, echoing the shapes in their iconic brand symbol. The symbol was given a new lease on life, creating stopping power wherever it is encountered. The letters in the logo were extended into a custom brand typeface, creating a look that is distinctive in appearance on anything from billboards to product stickers. Their core color blue was darkened to have a more premium and modern appeal supported by a palette of bold, vivid colors that will stand out in busy retail environments.

Results

The new visual identity has been embraced by all corners of the organization and will change the way customers interact with Electrolux – in-store, online, on packaging and through mobile devices.

Read more about Electrolux’s redesign in Design Week, Creative Blog and Little Black Book. In the period after activation, Electrolux saw sales in North America grow by 2.2%, and margins increase by 3.9%.

CASE STUDY

Friesland Campina

Doubling revenues for a beverage company across international markets

Challenge

Royal Friesland Campina was looking to profitably double revenues from its dairy-based beverage division by 2020 and become the world’s leading naturally healthy beverage company. The company faced tough competition due to increasing commoditization across the industry and needed an effective brand-led strategy to break through the category and command higher margins.

Solutions

We conducted a comprehensive market assessment across seven Southeast Asian, MENA and African markets, including Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Dubai/UAE, Nigeria, and developed a segmentation based on consumer needs, product consumption habits, and brand perceptions. Based on executive interviews and beverage category consumption data, Prophet provided strategic recommendations to realign RFC’s brand portfolio and rationalized it to focus on fewer, stronger, core brands.

In addition, based on consumer need states research and beverage consumption data, Prophet identified several growth opportunities for RFC’s Dairy Based Beverages business. Twenty opportunities were distilled down to eleven highly attractive ones. These prioritized innovation platforms were brought to life by defining the opportunity’s points of consumption.

Results

The client accepted and applauded both the portfolio and dairy-based beverages growth strategy recommendations. Prophet was selected to lead a global multi-city road show to gain internal stakeholder buy-in for the implementation of both recommended strategies.

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