Growth

CASE STUDY

Change Please

Designing an experience strategy to help a nonprofit enable its global expansion

Challenge

Change Please is a coffee company that supports individuals that are homeless by hiring and training them to become baristas. The charity provides the living wage, housing and therapy and devotes 100% of the profits to ending homelessness.​ 

The brand is already well-established in the U.K., with close to 60 coffee stores and plans on expanding into multiple markets as the number of trained and employed baristas continues to grow. Amid plans for global expansion, the charity was intent on finding the best path to uncommon growth at a pivotal moment. 

It needed help creating design assets that would drive the brand forward and an experience strategy that is unique and consistent. 

Solutions

Prophet and Change Please used co-creation workshops to brainstorm and collaborate on ways the charity could bring its unique heritage to life, using fun and informal visual story representations. 

We focused on new approaches for core journey phases for digital and offline touchpoints. This included a unique unboxing experience to help customers learn about the mission at home. We also created an iconographic narrative of the brand story using a tangible and engaging journey map to use in its cafes. 

Our holistic playbook includes 40 concepts to improve the overall brand and experience. We focused primarily on three core areas: design updates and advice, social media guidance and experience ideation.  

Results

Change Please is testing these new experiences in stores and across digital touchpoints. It is rolling out the design assets in cafes across the U.K., as well as incorporating Prophet’s concepts into global growth efforts. Most importantly, people are learning more about this ambitious organization wherever they drink their coffee.  

Through Prophet’s pro-bono program, pro-bono program Propheteers lend their expertise to a select group of nonprofits, helping them achieve remarkable results. If you or a nonprofit you know is interested in working with us, reach out today.

CASE STUDY

Financial Services Company

Putting customers at the center of an organization’s transformation

Challenge

A large, US financial services company was seeing declining growth in customer acquisition and revenue. Facing key market forces – including shifting consumer behaviors toward greater collaboration and personalization, new threats from fintech entrants and intense competition for top talent – the C-Suite and Board of Directors decided to embark on a complete transformation of the business.

Solutions

Prophet partnered with the company’s CEO, Chief Growth Officer and leadership team to design a transformation agenda that answered a series of strategic questions around:

  • Developing the organization’s purpose-based strategy
  • Prioritizing key markets and target customers
  • Aligning on key products, services and experiences to develop
  • Building the culture and capabilities required to support the transformation

Prophet then created a multi-year, enterprise-wide roadmap that detailed the initiatives necessary to transform multiple parts of the business in parallel. A Transformation Management Office (TMO) was established to enable and accelerate the company’s three-year transformation, largely through quarterly alignment and funding cycles.

While helping manage the transformation, Prophet brought multi-disciplinary teams to help execute the work across business value drivers: Brand & Marketing, People & Organization, Customer Experience, Products & Services, Sales & Distribution, Data & Analytics.  Along the way, Prophet has partnered to build new capabilities and codify processes so the organization can keep transformation momentum in the years to come.

Results

Prophet successfully launched a new brand that established the financial services provider as a leader in the industry. We helped develop a new employee value proposition to recruit top advisors and a new variable annuity product to grow its existing business. Prophet also introduced new revenue streams by helping expand its mutual funds’ presence on third-party platforms and creating a new managed account product – all while targeting and acquiring new buyer segments.

A year into the customer-centric transformation, Prophet is helping drive results such as +5% market awareness, +8% in new business revenue and a 20X increase in new leads.

Impact

5%

increase in market awareness

8%

increase in new business revenue

20x

increase in new leads

CASE STUDY

Cerner Enviza

Launching a real-world data and evidence operating unit into market

Challenge

Cerner realized through its real-world data that it had the ability to make the process of developing lifesaving medicine quicker and more cost-efficient. To further augment its capabilities, it acquired Kantar Health, the healthcare research and consulting solutions division within Kantar Group.

With the combined capabilities of data and real-world evidence expertise, Cerner aspired to enter the market with a new offering that drove collaboration between providers and the pharmaceutical industry to answer complex clinical research questions and to accelerate therapies. Cerner asked Prophet to help support the creation of this new operating unit, which would transform the way care was delivered and improve patient outcomes.

Solutions

Prophet leveraged the assets and reputation of the Cerner brand, while at the same time creating new assets and equities that spoke to its transformative business evolution.

Prophet partnered with key leaders across the organization to integrate the combined capabilities of data and research expertise. Our team worked to develop a new brand that both captured Cerner’s heritage and brand strength while folding in its new capabilities and the unique growth opportunities they presented. The team developed the name Cerner Enviza, a coined word based on ‘envision’ that conveys the remarkable clarity the new operating unit would bring to healthcare’s most important decisions.

In support of the new unit’s purpose, we created a brand identity system with a fresh logo, color palette, photography, iconography and much more. The new brand successfully struck a balance between Cerner’s heritage and its new future in accelerating the discovery and development of therapies.

Results

When Cerner publicly announced its new operating unit, Cerner Enviza, David Feinberg, M.D., President and CEO, looked to the brand’s future and stated, “With Cerner Enviza, we can arm researchers with diverse tools and datasets to help them address these challenges and help change the way we develop and deliver care for our patients.”

From the onset of its entry into the market, the organization had a strong solution for bringing transformative growth to the healthcare industry that will ultimately help achieve better patient outcomes.

“Prophet brought a wealth of information and knowledge that helped clarify the choices of how best to communicate our unique proposition, align our stakeholders and get us to a great solution.”

Dawn Riedel
Former Head of Corporate Marketing

CASE STUDY

MeUndies

Applying consumer insights to fuel the next wave of growth

Challenge

MeUndies, the subscription-based D2C underwear and loungewear company, grew from an idea to a powerhouse brand in the eight years since its launch, having sold over 12 million pairs of underwear to date. While the growing company had a passionate and loyal customer base, they were looking to strategically acquire new customers, while staying true to their brand values and mission of fueling authentic self-expression.

Solutions

Prophet worked with the cross-functional leadership team at MeUndies to develop a holistic profile of the consumer segments in MeUndies’ addressable market across the U.S.

Through this process, we uncovered key insights about which target segments presented the largest growth potential and the best fit to the brand’s unique DNA. Prophet also discovered important findings on how to avoid alienating the existing loyal customer base.

Once the segments and targeting strategy were identified, Prophet worked alongside MeUndies to kick off a cross-functional committee to implement the insights across the brand & marketing strategy, growth/channel strategy, retention, UX/UI, product and analytics teams. Across the organization, the target persona became a focal point in all strategic, technical and metrics-driven conversations. Simultaneously, a segment-typing algorithm was applied to tag both new and existing customers with their segment designation, which then systematically enabled targeted product testing, messaging and digital touchpoint executions.

Results

Based on the insights from the customer journey maps and segmentation, MeUndies finessed their product, marketing, and experience strategies to more effectively drive growth with target customers, resulting in a shift of the media buy budget. After implementing Prophet’s work, MeUndies’ new customer acquisition accelerated in double digits year over year.

CASE STUDY

Moneyfarm

Helping a robo-advisor expand to new markets

Challenge

Moneyfarm, one of Europe’s largest digital wealth management companies, had its sights set on entering the German market. When Allianz Global Investors bought a stake in the robo-advisor, the two companies set plans in motion to launch a new multi-asset product in the local market following demand from digitally-native savers and investors.

Prophet was enlisted to facilitate this expansion and to harvest the potential of Moneyfarm’s move into Germany and beyond.

Solutions

We set to work developing an intuitive way to communicate the benefits of this integrated partnership.

The goal was to establish an endorsed brand architecture solution that maximized positive equity transfer between the traditional financial services brand and the fintech start-up; leveraging Allianz’s solid reputation and high awareness in the German market and Moneyfarm’s strong tech and innovation credentials.

We then worked to craft and distil a value proposition and go-to-market strategy specifically tailored to the needs of German customers and the products available to them. Communicating the unique benefit of active returns at passive prices delivered by human expertise with robo-advisory efficiency and precision.

Results

Armed with a brand and strong value proposition that clearly communicates the strategic alliance, Moneyfarm is well on its way to achieving its growth plans. Just one month after its launch in Germany in June 2019, Moneyfarm saw a significant jump in client activation and investments of over one million.

Not only is Moneyfarm well on its way to achieving its growth plans in this new market, it’s also broadening the availability of digital wealth management in a cost-effective and accessible structure.

“Prophet helped us at this crucial moment in our company’s history as we looked to define and execute the right strategy to realize our growth ambitions.”

Giovanni Daprà
Co-founder and Chief Executive at Moneyfarm

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

Crate&Barrel

Driving double-digit sales growth for a home goods retailer

Challenge

After several years of disappointing performance and a lack of brand clarity, Crate&Barrel reached out to Prophet to help diagnose the issue and determine a solution to turn the business around.

We worked with the Crate&Barrel team to transform its retail branding strategy and implement it across the key aspects of the business – brand, merchandising, store experience and service offers.

Solutions

Our retail branding work began by developing a deep understanding of the market and customers. Our segmentation research uncovered the opportunity for Crate&Barrel to win by focusing on an under-penetrated high-value segment. Based on this new target, we repositioned the brand to be relevant to its needs, defining the critical product and experience elements – both unique brand assets and critical gaps to invest behind – required to win and drive growth.

Part of the formula for success meant Crate&Barrel needed to inspire and engage this target customer, while also making the stores more profitable. As part of this new retail brand strategy we identified opportunities to make the store more effective through SKU optimization, cross-merchandising and product distortion recommendations. Crate&Barrel moved quickly to bring it to life in new social media stories and marketing campaigns to capture attention and encourage the target to take another look at the brand.

At the same time, Prophet began to focus on a longer-term plan to create a more engaging, impactful and immersive store design for Crate&Barrel. It would deliver on the brand strategy and result in increased cross-shopping, dwell time and traffic. We also identified opportunities for growth through new design services offering to increase transaction size while also better serving the consumer.

Results

From insights gathering to strategy to execution, Prophet collaborated closely with Crate&Barrel leadership to diagnose the issues and develop solutions to support the in-market execution of the new retail strategy. After less than 12 months in the market, the business began to see significant improvement in sales and traffic. In fact, the brand saw double digits growth in sales.

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

General Electric (GE)

Deepening customer penetration in B2B markets

Challenge

GE Healthcare (GEHC) became a global leader in diagnostic equipment by selling best-in-class engineering to department heads at large hospitals. But the decision-maker was changing, making the sell more complex. A diversity of hospitals and clinics were entering the market, department heads were no longer the sole decision-makers and information technologies were growing in importance.

Solutions

Prophet helped GEHC seize the opportunity to tailor integrated solutions to the needs of different segments. A first-in-kind industry segmentation uncovered three high-potential hospital/clinic segments and revealed the requirements of new influencers within each. Segment “plans-to-win” were developed, including:

  1. Developing new product lines for each segment
  2. Creating new segment sub-brands
  3. Reorganizing the sales/service force
  4. Launching a new selling approach to target hospital heads
  5. Integrating diagnostics and information services to provide more complete segment solutions

Results

GE Healthcare gained the ability to penetrate a greater portion of the market and impact more decision influencers. By expanding the dialogue from engineering to needs-based solutions, GEHC is now a stronger partner to healthcare providers and has amplified its ability to develop future solutions.

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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