REPORT

Heightening Collaboration For ESG Success

Learn how your organization can work better together in service of the greater good.

Major challenges to life and the planet are mounting. Many of them, like extreme weather events, are only a precursor to far greater threats to life as we know it. Sustainability is the solution to these challenges, but time is not on our side. Progress towards the UN Sustainable Development goals (SDGs) set in 2015 – “to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity” – has been disappointingly slow – not least because the scale of collaboration it requires across government, business, the non-profit sector and the public is immense.   

Against this background, we want to know what should be done, what can be done and what action we can take now, not simply as consumers, employees and investors but as people. As we increasingly choose brands for their commitments to make a difference, business leaders are sharply focused on their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) activities to build sustainability. Shareholder returns are no longer an accurate measure of success. Now organizations must create value through their ESG efforts for all their stakeholders. 

There has been a varied landscape of responses to these challenges. Organizations in some sectors have, by their very nature, long been conscious of their mandate to operate, such as those in mining. Some organizations like Unilever have been progressive, acknowledged consumer demands and adopted the UN SDGs early, while others were built for ESG – from The Body Shop to Patagonia. However, many more are still searching for the appropriate growth journey that embraces and integrates ESG in the post-pandemic world.    

Reconciling Sustainability and Growth  

Sustainable growth is now a widely accepted mantra. However, it is far more complex to achieve, as organizations must balance the demands of diverse stakeholders with those of the environment. And automation, digital and data are accelerating the scale and pace of business transformation.  

These challenges aside, we firmly believe ESG will become an increasingly important driver of growth and transformation. How an organization defines and activates its ESG strategy within its overarching growth ambition should influence every facet of its operations. Strategy and vision are one thing. But ethics and behavior prove the intent. Culture and organizational ways of working are “the rubber” where ESG strategy “hits the road”.    

It’s a mistake to dismiss the alignment of sustainability and growth as an “internal” challenge. Given the complexity of partnerships and stakeholder engagement that ESG commitments bring, the need for organizations to build effective internal and external working relationships has never been so great. It’s a phenomenon and fundamental need we describe as “heightened collaboration.” 

“We can’t make people want to save the world – we don’t define the rules. But we can show people what we can achieve, when we work together.”

Larissa Alghisi
Chief Communications Officer, Julius Baer

In this report, we explore heightened collaboration in-depth, outlining its character and composition and how it is achieved. We will also see that without this collaboration and the action it drives, ESG strategies can flounder and fail and are easily dismissed and discredited as greenwashing.   

Prophet’s Position 

Prophet is a global consulting firm that believes in unleashing the power of people, businesses and brands to move society forward and unlock uncommon growth. Within our Organization & Culture practice, we believe that uncommon growth begins by unlocking the full potential of human-centered organizations.  

For the past four years, Prophet has conducted a major study, “Catalysts,” across the globe to examine culture and transformation – identifying the key levers within an organization’s culture system that achieve effective and sustained change. 

Unpacking the Power of Collaboration 

In “Catalysts: The Collaborative Advantage,” we looked closely at what it means to collaborate effectively. Collaboration in the workplace is a long-standing challenge. However, it is more relevant than ever, as organizations need to solve increasingly complex challenges and develop more holistic customer solutions faster.   

Our findings revealed that despite optimism amongst senior leaders, half of all organizations still struggle with effective business-wide collaboration, even in face-to-face environments. With remote and hybrid working well-established, there’s a clear need to add muscle to this organizational skill. 

“ESG will do a lot of good for a lot of businesses. But it is going to result in significant changes in how organization operate in terms of governance and processes, all of which will require a great deal of collaboration across teams”

Shari Hofer
Chief Marketing Officer and EVP, Wiley 

Heightened Collaboration and ESG  

More positively, our research underscores collaboration’s power to unlock the potential of more human-centered organizations. Working together effectively brings clarity and purpose to both the organization and its individuals. And collaboration’s power to accelerate transformation is captured in the report’s key takeaway: our Collaboration Flywheel.   

Against this backdrop and our hypothesis that heightened collaboration is essential to deliver ESG strategies and the multi-stakeholder engagement they require, we reached out to business leaders globally. We spoke with 15 senior leaders to examine the links between the Catalysts report findings and their increased relevance to the ESG agenda. They were drawn from various industries and geographies with backgrounds in sustainability, strategy, supply chain, marketing, HR and front-line operations.    

This research validated our hypotheses, uncovering some key lessons on enhancing collaboration in service of ESG. 

Emerging Research Themes  

Four key themes emerged from our exploration. All of these build on the original levers identified in our Collaboration Flywheel, but they have particular relevance to achieving heightened collaboration in service of ESG. 

Before we begin, a note on language. “Collaboration” was often used in the research to describe ways of working that are only part way, in our view, along the Collaboration Flywheel. These are more accurately “coordination” and “cooperation” rather than fully-fledged and effective collaboration. Most organizations involved are well-versed in coordination but acknowledge that bureaucracy and silos continue to challenge their ability to “give ground” for a bigger ESG cause. 

Theme One: Persuasive Passion  

Effective collaboration is often founded on a strong and inspirational leadership style. Leaders with purpose, who work towards a focused agenda and model a consistent organizational mindset, set a clear and accessible example to follow. Naturally, leading by example is only part of the equation, but commitment and energy spark true collaboration. We often respond to passion and chemistry before the process. A leader who displays pace and conviction can have a magnetic effect on their colleagues, catalyzing collaboration pervasively.   

As well as inspiring others, these leaders must persuade colleagues to get behind shared goals and develop mutually beneficial ways of working. ESG goals are cross-stakeholder and sometimes require difficult conversations to balance conflicting needs. We shouldn’t underestimate how big an issue ESG is for organizations. It’s either embedded in what they do and what they stand for– so leaders are naturally at the forefront–or it’s about a change journey with leaders stepping up to set ESG priorities, align the organization around specific goals and find shared approaches that reconcile different agendas. Either way, priorities, goals and approaches can be identified with coordination and promoted with cooperation, but they can only ever be achieved with the momentum of collaboration– the momentum that so often begins with the energy and focus of a persuasive leader.   

Client Spotlight: Polestar 

As a leader in electric vehicles, ESG has always been part of Polestar’s DNA. Sustainability is omnipresent in the organization. Polestar is truly a global company with a global R&D function that includes teams in Sweden, China and the UK. And it is this global outlook that helps it drive collaboration in very different cultural markets.  

Its CEO embodies the business’ passionate style of leadership. Polestar hires driven people with strong team skills, which the CEO channels by role modeling a very clear ‘one organization’ mindset with ESG at its heart. So, what does this style of leadership look like in practice?   

“He is so clear on the purpose of Polestar: it has to be a cohesive experience all over the world. So, he is extremely clear our brand also has to be consistent wherever we are. One Polestar Experience, One Polestar Brand. He’s constantly driving the organization to think as one brand.”

Monika Franke
Head of HR, Polestar 

From the Polestar example, we learned that when leaders visibly champion, reinforce and celebrate steps on their ESG journeys, they create a pull toward more effective collaboration.    

Leaders like this build a movement, but that’s not all. They also create safe spaces to explore and challenge ambitions that can seem daunting to many—environments where individuals feel able to explore the connections with their own belief systems. 

Theme Two: Personal Purpose 

ESG collaboration starts with and requires true commitment from each individual. ESG-related initiatives tend to resonate with people’s values and identities, even more so than other work. Whether it’s improving the environment or creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace, ESG topics intrinsically motivate people, and they often feel deeply personal about them.   

As a result, organizational cultural change around ESG is fueled by the personal belief systems of individuals. The challenge for leaders is to channel these personal beliefs to drive collaboration by ensuring individuals can see their values reflected in the ESG strategy.   

What we consider the DNA of an organization – its purpose, values, EVP and strategy—is growing in importance for employees. It influences their motivations to join, perform and stay with companies. Now organizations have the opportunity to develop ESG-focused strategies that attract like-minded talent whose personal beliefs align with their ambitions.   

  • 86% of employees prefer to support or work for companies that care about the same issues they do.
  • 38% of employees would look for a new role if they thought their organization was not doing enough on ESG Issues. 
  • 93% of employees who said their company was making a strong positive impact on the world were planning to stay in their jobs. For employees who did not agree with that statement, only 43% were planning to stay with their employer. 

Developing and implementing a comprehensive ESG strategy and embedding it in organizational DNA can be challenging, particularly for those organizations in which sustainability is not inherently linked to the value chain. However, for organizations with a resolute focus on ESG, the long-term potential for accelerated change, enhanced engagement and talent acquisition are substantial. Aligning employees’ personal values with a clear organizational commitment to ESG will build satisfaction by creating a sense of belonging to a wider collective with a shared set of values.    

Client Spotlight: Liquid I.V. 

Sustainability has been a guiding principle for Liquid I.V. from the very beginning. As an international wellness brand redefining rehydration, it has used sustainability to shape its relationship with the brand’s own talent as well as its partners. Liquid I.V. has a refreshing, non-corporate approach that emphasizes energy, transparency and personal impact with a stated aim to grow, profit and inspire positive change. The prospect of becoming independent changemakers attracts new talent, and employees are given the opportunity to leave a legacy.   

Signature employee experiences include:   

  • Placing sustainability at the center of their work so that each day starts with a focus on purpose. This allows Liquid I.V. to create a powerful ripple effect through its efforts and successes in transparency, sustainability and giving back.   
  • An ambition to convince others that the impossible is possible and that there is an urgency in this work   
  • Monthly Net Positive conversations to confirm the “why” and explore the ‘how” together as a collective  
  • A focus on ‘making it work’ – to prove that a company can inspire positive change and demonstrate that sustainability is ‘the new way” 

“[Sustainability/ESG] is the one area that I believe you do not pull back and hide information. It must be shared because it is a responsibility of every brand and every person.”

Sean Lavin
Vice President, Impact – Innovation, Global Sustainability and Giveback,  Liquid I.V.

A focus on sustainability results in a collective of inspired individuals collaborating towards shared ESG goals to become a culture of changemakers. Liquid I.V.’s example shows that purpose-driven organizations with clear ESG goals can create inherently collaborative environments by channeling each individual’s commitment to sustainability. Its strong ESG stance and shared drive enable it to attract and retain talent. And not just any talent, but individuals who tend to be ESG-minded and are naturally collaborative. 

Theme Three: Shared Success   

As we’ve seen, leadership behaviors and the connection with the individual belief system are critical to effective collaboration in service of ESG. However, while these catalyze effective collaboration, scaling and sustaining to achieve heightened collaboration requires more.   

With any collaborative effort, individuals are occasionally required to “give away their LEGOs”: sacrificing their own ambitions to serve a greater good. Interestingly, this becomes more pronounced with ESG. Sustainability activities don’t always have easy-to-quantify commercial returns, but teams and individuals must make room for ESG efforts in their own agendas to advance the organization. In particular, ESG-related metrics must be embedded into incentive structures for ESG initiatives to succeed.  

The strength of these goals and incentives varies between organizations according to their ESG credentials. Some companies, like Liquid I.V., have embedded ESG efforts into their business models. However, in other mature businesses, a passion for ESG may be present organically or within pockets of the organization, but it is not integrated into the culture. This prevents truly collaborative efforts. Such organizations must provide stronger incentives—a rewarding collaboration between teams and within them – to realize all the potential of these initiatives. 

Client Spotlight: DSM  

Successive CEOs have helped ensure that purpose has long been established at DSM. A global leader in health and nutrition, the business has a history of projects that support its ambition to “create brighter lives for all.” For example, since 2007, DSM has partnered with the World Food Programme to use micronutrients to enhance nutrition for pregnant mothers and their children. The program, which has a proven impact on the long-term healthy development of both mother and child, is so deeply embedded in the culture of DSM that it – and others like it – is often why employees join and stay with the organization.   

To ensure its commitment to ESG has real meaning for its 20,000+ employee organization, DSM has embedded ESG and sustainability metrics within its incentive program for the pasts 10 years. Even at the highest levels of the organization, these metrics shape 50% of employee remuneration. And the organization continues to look for ways it can do even more. In 2021, it completed a full review of its remuneration policy to maximize its impact and prioritize sustainability within DSM. 

“We make sure [sustainability] is embedded in the way that we reward people, to continue to bring the organization forward and contribute to more than just making money. It helps us attract and retain really good talent – people come to us because of who we are and what we’re trying to do.”  

Cristina Monteiro
Chief Human Resources Officer, DSM

Transparency and openness are key to effective cross-organization collaboration in the service of ESG. Employees who do not have direct influence over shaping the ESG agenda may feel that sustainability is a large, vague and insurmountable challenge. Without clarity and openness, they may be less motivated to do their part, as they are unsure of what that looks like for them.  

The first step in effective ESG collaboration is to dedicate time and effort to educating employees on the organization’s ESG-related goals, how they will get together and their role in that journey. Employees will be empowered to work more closely together with a clearer sense of the “why” and a greater understanding of their individual contributions to the overall goal. At the same time, clear ESG-related incentives will encourage the creation of new priorities, enabling heightened collaboration for sustainability across the organization. 

Theme Four: Expansive Collaboration 

In previous sections, we have seen how pivotal the presence of strong leadership, committed individuals and aligned incentives are to unlocking effective collaboration for ESG. Another catalyzing force is the ability to collaborate across ESG’s expansive stakeholder ecosystem, particularly its external stakeholders. In our research, we found that breaking down silos is especially important because the success of ESG’s goals and initiatives hinges on the engagement of external parties and partners, including the supply chain, partners and even competitors.   

“[ESG] strategy cannot be a standalone effort within a business, because if it is, it will always be a siloed function. You have to truly integrate it in the business. For instance, together with our Chief Finance Officer, we share ESG targets that are tied to our overall compensation, and we are continuously looking for ways in which we can incorporate sustainability metrics into our investment decisions.” 

Ezgi Barcenas
Chief Sustainability Officer, AB InBev

Change Fitness and Collaboration  

Working within this ecosystem to meet ESG goals demands innovation and a high degree of what Prophet calls maturity in “change fitness”. We describe the more mature levels of change fitness as a state of “flow” or even “play.” This is when leaders recognize and are comfortable with the idea that they don’t have all the answers seeking out and embracing other contributors, including competitors. Organizations and teams exhibiting Change Fitness will embrace more experimental working styles to support continuous and disruptive innovation. Meanwhile, individuals will be better equipped to move fluidly between roles and teams to improve personal and business outcomes.  

It’s worth noting that achieving change fitness isn’t always comfortable for leaders. It’s a “human-first” approach focusing on diverse contributions and devolved decision-making. This often conflicts with how leaders have been recognized for achievement in their working lives to date. 

One example of a company that has a high maturity in change fitness is AB InBev, the world’s leading brewer. It pinpoints collaboration as the foundation of its respective ESG success, especially as it relates to its supply chain. 

“External partnerships are a part of sustainability and have to sit at the heart of what you’re doing. You’re not tackling the problem for yourself; you’re tackling shared challenges and creating shared value.”

Ezgi Barcenas
Chief Sustainability Officer, AB InBev 

AB InBev also recognizes the unique opportunity to work with others in the private sector, because advancing work in ESG is better for the business as well as the world. This list of partnerships includes NGOs, the UN, peers, the broader food and beverage industry, local authorities and governments and suppliers. 

“These [sustainability] initiatives will help you solve a business challenge, but also help you tackle a societal problem as well…. Collaboration is required, and external partnerships are required, even if the project is internally focused.”

Ezgi Barcenas
Chief Sustainability Officer, AB InBev

Increased collaboration not only makes it possible to achieve your ESG goals but also fuels innovation and improves internal efficiency.   

Conclusion 

The increased focus on ESG in recent years has helped drive massive shifts in organizational priorities and mindsets. Businesses have started to move from catering to shareholders to caring for stakeholders; from risk mitigation to sustainable growth realization; and perhaps most importantly of all, from “me” to “we.”

“You are always looking for the spark to ignite and you particularly need it when collaborating on behalf of the planet.”

Rahul Malhotra
Head of Group Brand Strategy & Stewardship, Shell 

Perhaps unlike any other type of work, ESG creates win/win possibilities for the business, its employees, its customers,and the planet. But to realize these possibilities for all demands the collaboration of all. 

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FINAL THOUGHTS

There is no doubt that achieving true collaboration in any type of work, let alone a burgeoning frontier like ESG, has its challenges—especially in today’s hybrid working world. But through our research, we discovered that organizations can achieve heightened collaboration in service of ESG when they: 

  • Direct efforts through clear and passionate leadership
  • Connect deeply to the belief systems of individuals  
  • Align shared goals and incentives across the organization 
  • Push the boundaries of collaboration beyond teams, business units and, critically, the company itself 
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Brand and Demand: A New Love Language 

Amid economic uncertainties, successful CMOs say they are developing three new types of marketing fluency.

Whether the economy is heading toward a recession (or already in one), chief marketing officers know their budgets are under intense scrutiny. Our work with CMOs around the world reveals that the most successful marketing execs aren’t just defending budgets. They’re also meeting this moment with new ways of making marketing more effective, translating their efforts into terms and metrics better understood throughout the organization. They’re integrating marketing into more functions. And they’re adapting new languages to drive uncommon growth and business impact through the economic fog. 

In recent conversations with CMOs, we found some common threads on how they are having conversations with their executive teams and driving impact for their organizations. Here are three trends we expect to see more of, especially as the prospect of economic uncertainty means more scrutiny on every marketing investment.  

CMO’s Are Learning One Another’s Love Language 

Okay, it’s not the love languages from those internet quizzes. There are no acts of service, quality time or physical touch. But marketers are finding ways to balance their demand and brand marketing efforts while applying it to business outcomes. The most successful marketing organizations have turned brand and demand, often an antagonistic relationship, into the ultimate power couple.  

Prophet’s recent report shows how they’ve overcome residual antagonism. They are building novel bridges between brand, to drive awareness and build equity and demand or performance marketing, to drive immediate conversion. And in doing so, they’re tapping new growth opportunities. 

Our research finds that the most successful marketers map their brand and demand marketing objectives against shared business outcomes. They integrate planning cycles and share capabilities across brand and demand to maximize marketing budgets over the entire customer journey. They don’t pick between brand or demand. They ensure the two approaches work in concert to deliver shared outcomes. 

Integrating brand campaigns more tightly into the demand function is a good way for marketers to have their cake and eat it too. Aligning brand with demand allows marketers to demonstrate ROI to the C-Suite while also delivering against both functions. 

For those from the brand side, a different vocabulary is required, as marketing is increasingly seen as a revenue driver–not a cost center. Successful marketers are learning the language of the boardroom. They’ve got to replace words like funnels, impressions or brand value with the language of ROI. And it means using proof of impact that meets the C-suite acid test for business impact: Did it increase revenue or not? 

Saying “No” Will Become More Powerful in the Next Planning Cycle 

The current inflationary pressure means marketers have to say “no” more often.  

But rather than feeling discouraged by having to do so, many say they are learning to enjoy that little word more than they expected. It’s empowering them to mothball tactics without proven ROI. And it’s giving them more authority to demand results from their teams and channel partners. By turning thumbs down on the many small investments brands typically make just to “have a presence” or “keep an oar in,” they tell us they’re focusing on the most proven channels. They’re not abandoning the small strategic bets needed to keep their test-and-learn culture thriving, but they are becoming more disciplined about how they are funded. 

CMO’s Are Becoming Integrators Across Many Functional Areas 

Just as they are coming together to integrate their brand and demand functions to unite around a unified business objective, CMOs are emerging as integrators across different functions. That could mean working closely with human resources and developing an employee value proposition for recruiting or it means recognizing that marketing can–and should–take a leadership role in integrations to build organizational culture. 

Breaking down silos is hard work and requires an integrated marketer to lead the charge. The individual filling this role should be a more seasoned marketing professional with the ability to work cross-functionally. And they must be willing to roll up their sleeves and get into the nooks and crannies of the business, immersing themselves in the customer journey in new and different ways. Marketing leaders should be looking to build proactive connections with their colleagues across human resources, product, sales and IT to deliver cross-functional business impact. This integrator mindset will allow them to not only work in lockstep with other business units but if done well, help to uncover untapped pockets of demand.  

Integrating multiple brands and teams requires a cross-functional marketing technology stack, of course. But genuine integration requires a deeper commitment. Many companies have charged people throughout the marketing organization with specific responsibilities to make sure plans are holistic and well-integrated. Others rely on integrative processes, constantly organizing new pods and tiger teams to solve challenges. 

Putting Your New Love Language Into Practice 

For many, the annual planning season is either underway or right around the corner. This is a great reminder to be mindful and refine the language you are using as a marketing leader.  In a recent blog, we wrote about how to modernize the marketing planning cycle. Some questions to consider as you reimagine your approach to your annual marketing plans:   

  • What are the business objectives for your next planning cycle?  
  • Is it clear how marketing directly contributes to those objectives?  
  • Does your organization have an aligned taxonomy around objectives and activities?  
  • How are you measuring success for brand and marketing initiatives investments?  
  • Are those metrics understood across brand and demand teams? Or are those metrics creating siloes between them?  
  • Are those metrics enabling marketing to have a “seat at the table”? Or are those metrics creating distance with other executives/board? 

Download this worksheet to begin mapping your plan to business outcomes. 

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FINAL THOUGHTS

To navigate economic challenges, CMOs are using their voices differently. They’re learning to speak a common marketing language. They are saying `no’ more often, with profound growth implications. And they are focusing on a new kind of organizational fluency, integrating marketing throughout multiple functions. Doing so allows them to play a proactive role in figuring out new audiences, leading to rich areas of growth. 

Ready to put your new love language into practice? Contact our team today.

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Why Companies Need to Act on ESG Issues with Authenticity 

Learn how your organization can work better together in service of the greater good.

In an era marked by the convergence of business and activism, many believe that “silence speaks louder than words.” While silence on environmental, social and governance issues may draw the attention of stakeholders looking for statements, empty words and promises may pose greater risks.  

The pandemic, wildfires, controversial Supreme Court rulings, water shortages, mass shootings and global conflict have shone a bright light on the role of business in society, underscoring the need to integrate ESG into business strategy as stakeholders gravitate towards companies that align with their values.  

As a result, business leaders are dedicating more time to responding to these environmental and social issues – both internally and externally. In fact, 66% of American consumers say their social values shape their shopping choices and 86% of employees prefer to work or support companies that care about the same issues they do. 

See Something, Say Something or Say Nothing? 

Taking a stand (or not taking a stand) will invite attention — both negative and positive. In this piece, we will share our framework on when and how businesses should act on ESG issues with authenticity to avoid risks of being perceived as opportunistic or greenwashing.  

Purpose-led companies with ironclad ESG response strategies have the necessary foundation for success. Those that are investing in environmental issues or social issues as part of their core strategy will have more credibility in proactively engaging in topics in addition to responding to events. For example, Patagonia’s self-imposed Earth tax gives credibility to its proactive and reactive environmental activism, and Ben & Jerry’s ongoing commitment to racial justice supports public stances on social movements. While there is no perfect strategy that will please all stakeholders, keep these principles in mind when thinking about how to engage on issues. 

We understand this is difficult work because we are still figuring it out ourselves. Developing these guidelines has encouraged us to shine a brighter light on our own ESG response strategy. While we are far from perfect and still have a long way to go in our own ESG journey, we have identified five essentials for how to respond and engage authentically.  

1. Know Your Company’s Purpose and Build the ESG Response Strategy 

The foundation of a successful ESG response strategy is dependent on an unwavering brand purpose. Purpose acts as a North Star, guiding a business as it makes difficult decisions. If issue engagement is treated as a temporary initiative rolled out for the sake of promoting goodwill, stakeholders will perceive a company as opportunistic. 

Brand purpose does not have to be one and the same with ESG strategy. However, connecting your ESG response strategy to your purpose and values demonstrates genuine commitment and gives the company credibility to play in the ESG arena.    

For example, Patagonia is a “purpose native” company that has an ESG strategy entwined with its purpose. As a company that sells apparel for exploring the outdoors, it has spearheaded several initiatives to protect and preserve the environment.  

2. Identify Issues Your Stakeholders Care About and That You Can Authentically Engage on 

“The goal is to reinforce existing brand identities on issues that matter to customers and employees. If they’re authentic in what they stand for and they reinforce it consistently, then it’s credible.”

Marisa Mulvihill, partner at Prophet, in the ‘Wall Street Journal’ 

With a new set of issues dominating the news cycle every week, businesses may feel pressure to react to every topic, which could potentially result in missteps if there isn’t a concrete ESG response plan in place. By demonstrating authentic action through a robust ESG response strategy, businesses can build their credibility to make their voices heard on a multitude of issues. 

Conducting a materiality assessment will determine what issues are the most important to your stakeholders, ensuring that your company can focus efforts on the most relevant and authentic ESG issues. To stay attuned to evolving customer behaviors, consistently undertaking market research on customer attitudes can propel companies forward by allowing them to proactively strategize where they can meet the needs of their customers. 

Nike has already successfully leaned into contentious conversations. With its bold advertisement featuring Colin Kaepernick, the company fueled the fire of a subset of customers uncomfortable with the company’s embrace of the athlete. However, its younger, diverse consumers immediately rallied behind the cause, showing that the company had done its research on its core customer group by making a strategic, calculated move to solidify its relationship with them. 

In 2020, Prophet was overwhelmed, in the best way possible, with the discussions within the firm to do more and better in the face of systemic racism, particularly as it impacts the Black community in the U.S. As part of our commitments to promote racial and social equity both within our firm and broader communities, we pledged $4M of pro-bono hours to organizations supporting racial justice. As we continue to work towards achieving this commitment, Prophet’s pro-bono program enables teams to connect their passions and share their expertise to support organizations and movements on the ground. We know that racial justice and equity will never be achieved by one leader or one group alone, but we are using our core competencies and influence to do our part in advancing the cause. 

3. Execute With Commitment to Action and Transparency 

Authenticity is key. How your company executes can make or break a response, even if the issue it is addressing is material to stakeholders. While purpose provides the foundation, concrete action on a promise is crucial for an ESG response strategy that leaves an impact.  

Before taking a stand, ask yourself: Is your company contributing value by engaging? Are you shining a light on the core issue and supporting a solution, or are you detracting from the issue or potentially causing harm? 

There are times in which showing up might be perceived as performative, especially if a company’s past actions paint a conflicting picture, or if the response is perceived as reactionary and disingenuous. Purpose washing — touting shallow commitments for marketing purposes without driving tangible change — is a real risk that can discredit a company’s ESG response strategy. While 73% of consumers say companies must act now for the good of society and the planet, 71% don’t believe companies will deliver on their promises. 

For example, financial services firm State Street was behind the infamous “Fearless Girl” statue on Wall Street, highlighting the need to combat gender inequality. However, further digging unveiled that the company’s gender diversity fund did not always vote in favor of gender diversity or pay equity proposals for the companies it invests in. 

Engaging in issues will pose a risk if there is a gap between what a company says and what it does. However, if a company is ready to show up on issues it hasn’t performed well on, it will need to do so with transparency and commitment to action. 

4. Thoughtfully Balance the Needs of Multiple Stakeholders 

The actions of a company ripple across the full system of stakeholders. When developing a response strategy, it’s crucial to understand the diverse needs of customers, employees, local communities, suppliers and more. If companies decide to act, they will need to evaluate whether to act internally to address the topic with their employees, or also externally to engage with customers and the community.   

Thorny issues often pull in multiple stakeholders at once, with each group having different levels of impact and involvement. When companies were deciding on how their responses to the invasion of Ukraine might impact customers in Russia and across the world, they also needed to consider how to support their employees, especially those who had to leave Ukraine and care for their families. Suspending business in Russia may put pressure on the country, but it also affects civilians trapped in the conflict. 

5. Continually Monitor and Evolve 

Taking a stand doesn’t stop after making an announcement. Action must be continually monitored to understand the impact of your ESG response strategy on stakeholders. Metrics can help you understand how to improve and iterate on your strategy: Did your company’s response support the issue in a way that resonated with the stakeholders who were the most impacted in the issue? How did stakeholders view your company’s response to the issue? Did the response address your stakeholders’ needs? 

Additionally, a company’s response strategy shouldn’t be set in stone. With a relentless influx of issues pulling companies in, the strategy should be dynamic and leverage the expertise of multiple departments within a company to adapt to whatever new challenges arise. In a multi-stakeholder environment, determine who within your company should own the response strategy, whether that be HR, consumer marketing, internal communications or another expertise group. 

Lastly, continue to revisit the approach and assess where you can evolve to meet the changing needs of stakeholders. 

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FINAL THOUGHTS

Taking a stand isn’t a fad. As the role of business in society continues to evolve, companies need a robust ESG response strategy and processes that evaluate when and where they have the credibility to drive change. 

Ready to get started? 

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How to Use Storytelling to Bring Your ESG Strategy to Life 

Here, we offer five essentials for organizations to consider in order to tell a more compelling ESG story.

Let’s face it: In the past year, “ESG” has started to feel like a corporate buzzword. 

Pressure from external stakeholders to show measurable progress on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) initiatives has spurred brands to make bold commitments and activate ESG strategies. Likewise, ESG reporting (a report of ESG activities and data required for financial disclosures) gained traction with 92% of the S&P 500 publishing Sustainability Reports in 2020 and the EU introducing the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), a policy requiring companies to “disclose information on the way they manage social and environmental challenges.” 

So, yes, given this collective shift to outline ambitions, draft agendas and share the latest company data, it’s easy for a concept like ESG to feel overused, overwhelming or even inconsequential. But at its core, brands acting for the causes they believe in are anything but.  

A solid ESG strategy is comprised of an ESG ambition (where we want to go) and an ESG agenda (how we will get there). Together they inform the ESG narrative. The ESG narrative is a powerful story or series of stories, that should drive understanding and inspire action, ultimately making your ESG journey real, relevant and resonant to your stakeholders.  

Which is why after establishing a sound strategy, brands must ask themselves: What’s the narrative? How can we contribute to a larger conversation? How can our efforts connect with and inspire people?  

Here, we offer five essentials for organizations to consider in order to tell a more compelling ESG story.  

Go Deeper and Get Specific 

Your organization’s ESG strategy will likely cover a broad spectrum of topics, and consequently, the narrative will speak to a variety of initiatives. But just because the broader story encompasses so much, doesn’t mean you have to hit on it all in every single communication. Tetris-ing mentions of all your ESG initiatives at random and throughout every written piece can confuse your audiences and may even minimize the perceived gravity of what you’re working towards. Instead, use individual storytelling touchpoints as opportunities to go deeper on one or two intersecting topics at a time to uncover the human element. You can reference your ESG materiality assessment to help you identify and prioritize the relevant topics your business has committed to. 

Giving a specific topic or initiative adequate space and airtime will help you be more intentional with storytelling around key components of your ESG strategy — elevating your ambitions into something tangible rather than just scratching the surface of all your efforts at once.  

With that in mind, look for the moments where your ESG initiatives and the issues they address naturally intersect with each other. Those may be the most compelling storytelling opportunities. Take HydroFlask, the brand puts ESG storytelling front and center on its website via its Parks For All program. It spotlights grant recipients across the country, sharing details about what the nonprofits are doing to ensure nature is accessible to all and contextualizes why the company believes everyone should have access to the benefits of nature: “the benefits of nature are mental, physical and social.” 

Sincere, emotive messaging helps bring its grant initiative to life by getting to the heart of why what it’s doing matters on a human level — potentially inspiring audiences to get support or apply for a grant themselves. 

Know What Your Audiences Want and Expect 

Just like any other form of communication, you should modulate your storytelling approach to meet the needs — or expectations — of different audiences. But to do so, you need to understand them. For instance, regulators and investors may be more stimulated by facts and figures, whereas employees, consumers and the broader market will likely connect with stories that demonstrate how your initiatives may show up in their routines, communities, experiences and relationships. Understanding the emotional drivers of these audiences allows you to ground your stories in accessible, human experiences, making your ESG efforts feel real and relatable. 

Direct-to-consumer brand Humankind’s messaging consistently emphasizes how people can easily reduce single-use plastic waste simply by using its products in their daily routines. It claims that “you can fight this flow of plastic waste, just by getting ready in the morning,” helping consumers envision its product within the context of their lives. The brand even extends this notion into its nomenclature, naming some of its product offerings the “Dental Routine Bundle” and the “Shower Routine Bundle.”  

Oat beverage company Oatly already broke the mold of the milk-alternative (and milk) industry by embodying a challenging, self-aware and even playful voice, but that’s not the only way it stands out among competitors and remains relevant to its audiences. Oatly Stories provides a series of updates about “the work [it’s] doing and the issues [the brand] cares about.” Stories range from deep-dive investigations about whether oat milk truly does taste horrible in tea to interviews with various company founders whose visions for a sustainable and more equitable future align with Oatly’s.  

Make it Measurable 

Your ESG story is only as powerful as the hard facts that underpin it — audiences crave real, tangible measures to go hand-in-hand with a strong narrative. What steps are you taking toward the causes you believe in? How has that journey progressed over time? And how can you strive to be better?  

Here, transparency and humility play surprisingly important roles. Rather than overstate the scope and impact of your ESG efforts, it pays to be candid about the work that has yet to be done and the problems that remain to be solved. Doing so can manage against your brand being charged with “greenwashing” and “virtue signaling.” 

People are drawn to authenticity — and they relate to companies that can deliver on their promises, no matter how far out that delivery may appear. As Gen Z consumers enter the market, they are actively seeking out more opportunities for meaningful brand stories. A vulnerable nod to what remains to be done adds a compelling layer to the stories you tell. And it leaves room for a dynamic journey that they can follow along with. 

Consider Walmart’s approach to ESG reporting, which strives to create an accessible, transparent way to measure impact and stay accountable. Communications accompanying the report share the findings for any stakeholder to consult, in a way that’s easily digestible. And, on top of that, it clearly lays out the spaces that remain open to improvement in candid terms.   

“Substantial improvements in outcomes may be years in the making,” Kathleen McLaughlin, Walmart’s chief sustainability officer, admitted in a July blog post in regard to equity initiatives at the company. “Yet we are encouraged by signs of progress.”  

Use Bold Language to Express Your Bold Moves 

If you’re making measurable, authentic operational changes or business decisions to deliver your ESG strategy, don’t shy away from language that will excite, inspire and rally people around those efforts. 

While it may be easy to lean towards a safer territory with storytelling that doesn’t risk polarizing your audiences, the greatest test of sincerity often lies in how we address personally and emotionally charged issues. Don’t mask your progress or stance in equivocal language that can be interpreted anyway — this is an especially important point for Gen Z employees, who seek out employers who are willing to clearly and confidently advocate for causes they believe in and actively support. 

The risk that some of your intended audience won’t agree with your delivery will always be there. But the most powerful brands acknowledge the risk inherent in their activism, and their subsequent storytelling. Even if they know sharing their stance and efforts may not always be a profitable decision, they do so with assurance and aspiration, and then keep on charging ahead.  

Patagonia took this to the extreme when it confidently declared: “Earth is now our only shareholder.” Since this courageous business decision, the company will now use the wealth it creates and invest it into fighting the environmental crisis. The action itself is honorable, but the word choice and storytelling are what helped amplify the impact and make it feel real to stakeholders. As Yvon Chouinard, the company’s founder powerfully put it in the announcement: “Instead of ‘going public,’ you could say we’re ‘going purpose.’” 

Brands don’t have to communicate their stance blindly. They can and should refer to their materiality assessments to get a sense of the causes that resonate saliently to them and to their stakeholders to make informed choices around how they share their progress tactfully.  

Keep it Going 

A powerful ESG story doesn’t stop with a single campaign, blog post or annual report. It’s not a forced divergence from your brand’s more important objectives. Instead, it’s a living, breathing element of your core identity as a brand. It’s consistent with everything you are and every cause you stand for. And it needs to remain that way over time.  

Your story must evolve with the world around it. As new current events and social causes come to light, brands need to look for opportunities to authentically tie them back to their story and keep their narratives relevant.    

Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign has been supporting diverse representations of beauty since 2004 — and it has served as an example of how staying true to your core values will never fall out of trend.  
 
Over the years, the campaign has found many different iterations of two key themes: female empowerment and the fight against stereotypes. And this past June, Dove took a powerful stance opposing the overturning of Roe V. Wade, publicly taking to social media to declare: “It’s her body. It should be her choice.”  

It’s a powerful message from Dove, precisely because of the messages Dove has put forth over the years around women’s empowerment. With this stand, the brand has shown consistent loyalty to its principles, even in the face of a potentially polarizing topic.  

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FINAL THOUGHTS

While ESG rightfully continues to gain momentum, it takes more than broad strokes and light touches to make your ESG intentions feel serious and bold.  

By investing in the right storytelling strategies, you will not only connect to your audiences’ hearts and minds — you’ll make your important ESG efforts feel committed, real and lasting.    

Contact us to learn more about building and communicating an authentic ESG strategy for your organization.

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Marrying Brand and Demand Marketing to Drive Sustainable Growth in China 

To break through the crowded and cutthroat landscape of consumer brands in China, marketers must not only drive brand growth but also build lasting brand love.

According to an alarming statistic from market research firm Kantar, 74% of consumer goods startups in China were eliminated after their first three years of operation. Brands are struggling with how to sustain growth in the face of increasingly sophisticated yet “disloyal” consumers while growing competition is being exacerbated by an expansion of channels and consumer data. Meanwhile, a higher level of accountability is expected of marketers. Therefore, marketers today are under intense pressure to make every dollar count, prove returns and drive impact.  

In Prophet’s latest report, “Brand and Demand Marketing: A Love Story,” we examined how marketers can use both brand and demand marketing to achieve their short and long-term objectives and maximize marketing ROI. Below, we share our learnings from across the globe as well as important nuances for Chinese marketers, unveiling the key to building sustainable brands through balancing brand and demand marketing efforts. 

Brand and Demand Opportunities Throughout the Customer Journey 

Brand marketing typically describes efforts to drive awareness of and preference for a company, product or service, while demand marketing seeks to compel audiences to act immediately (e.g., purchase, click on an offer, sign up for a newsletter). Many marketing organizations experience significant tension between brand building and demand generation – a tension we believe undercuts growth and harms performance.  

Prophet introduces the brand and demand maturity model. It lays out an actionable roadmap for how different stages of a customer journey may lean more on brand or demand. But the opportunity is to always show collective value for each moment. 

Hungry for Growth but Missing Out on CLV 

When asked about their prioritized business objectives, Chinese marketers demonstrate remarkably expansionary mindsets, especially when compared with other regions. They pursue new segments, new business, increased shares and are full of ambitions to expand their reach. However, they tend to focus less on levers that drive CLV (Customer Lifetime Value), such as increasing sizes of orders and repurchase rates. 

Top Priorities in the Past 12 Months

Q: Which of the following business objectives, if any, were the top three priorities for your company in the past 12 months? (Rank 1 results) 

This mentality is likely driven by the fact that marketing teams in Chinese companies tend to shoulder more growth-driven accountability than the average global marketers, with twice the amount of involvement in near-term P&L management, revenue growth and operations. 

This propensity is also evident in the top KPIs Chinese marketers focus on when measuring the success of their marketing campaigns. They are significantly more likely than their global peers to track return on advertising spend (ROAS) and revenue generated, while less likely to consider brand awareness, brand preference and CLV among their top three metrics.  

Top Performance Metrics for Marketing Campaigns 

Q: Which of the following are the top five metrics your company tracks performance of marketing campaigns against? (Rank 1, 2 and 3 results) 

In keeping with the whole customer decision journey, we believe that they place a narrow focus on the left side of the model – persuading customers to choose and buy – while ignoring the enormous potential of the entire CLV contained on the right side of the model – the ownership journey.  

For many of China’s fastest-growing new consumer brands, for example, repurchases, referrals and brand communities are largely being driven by transactional benefits (e.g., free gifts, cash back or steep discounts), instead of brand understanding and advocacy. This is fundamentally still a demand-led approach that is unsustainable in the long term.  

As a next step, in addition to the buying experience and short-term conversion, Chinese marketers should extend CX excellence to the ownership journey to maximize CLV. Meanwhile, a more holistic set of metrics should be used to assess impact and success across all activities and tactics.  

Taking Brand Marketing to the Next Level 

Chinese marketers are particularly skilled at demand generation and have created a variety of effective tactics (private traffic activation, KOL/KOC matrix, etc.) to attract customers. Most new consumer brands succeed by leveraging short-term demand generation tools (e.g., low prices, viral products).  

On the other hand, the explore and advocacy stages, where brand marketing initiatives should take the lead, tend to be undervalued. Brands rarely give consumers the opportunity to actively engage and resonate with the brand’s point of view, story and value proposition. Thus, the customer retention rate fueled by recognition and loyalty is unable to increase due to a lack of brand pull.  

Despite the difficult nature of balancing brand and demand efforts, we’ve highlighted a few examples below of consumer brands in China that are standing out in a highly competitive market by excelling in explore and advocacy. 

PMPM: Attracting New Customers Through an Inspirational Brand Story

(Image source)  

While the beauty industry has long relied on hero products, startup skincare brand PMPM is built on a distinct emotional foundation that speaks to consumer truths. Through a clearly defined value proposition, “spirit of exploration,” PMPM focuses on creating high-quality products with natural ingredients sourced from around the world. The brand’s latest promotional video spotlights its founding team of accredited skincare researchers and beauty experts, telling an inspirational story of the brand’s determination to create a Chinese-born, world-class skincare brand in the next decade. 

Manner: Engaging a Loyal Customer Base Through Shared Values 

(Image source: social media) 

Manner initially won over customers by offering inexpensive but quality coffee to increasingly caffeine-addicted Chinese urbanites and office workers. As the first Chinese coffee brand to introduce the idea of “BYO reusable cup for a 5 RMB discount,” Manner solidified its economic and eco-conscious positioning. Through quality products and a seamless CX that includes mobile order-ahead, repurchase rates increased steadily, and a strong base of loyal customers followed.  

Manner’s additional sustainability and customer engagement efforts, such as giving away branded reusable canvas bags for its 6-year anniversary, have turned customers into eager brand advocates. Compared with other brands in the category that are still trapped in creating complicated pricing schemes to acquire new customers, Manner has moved away from reaping price advantages by connecting with consumers’ values and lifestyles, thus creating a higher and more sustainable CLV. 

Key Takeaways for Marketers in China 

With customer journeys becoming increasingly complex, non-linear and hyper-personalized, the real challenge today is not acquiring new customers, but keeping them.

To wrap up, these are our takeaways for building an evergreen Chinese brand by balancing brand and demand: 

  • Think beyond short-term growth to adopt a broadened and balanced lens for execution and measurement. 
  • CX is not limited to the buying journey. Carefully consider how to optimize the ownership journey as well to fully activate CLV. 
  • Dynamically balance demand and brand across the entire customer decision journey while further increasing branding efforts – particularly in brand exploration and advocacy – to cultivate lasting brand love.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

To break through the crowded and cutthroat landscape of consumer brands in China, marketers must not only drive brand growth but also build lasting brand love. Brand and demand marketing have distinct roles throughout the customer journey, but combined, their effect is amplified.

For more insights on how to unleash their power, check out Prophet’s latest report, Brand and Demand Marketing: A Love Story.

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5 Elements Required to Secure Your 2023 Marketing Budget

During times of uncertainty, it’s important your marketing strategies and spend are aligned with business outcomes.

During recessionary times, marketing is often one of the first disciplines needing to evolve and adjust spending. As you enter 2023 planning, you should be prepared to have to make a case for the budget you will need to drive key business outcomes.  

For savvy marketers, this doesn’t mean shutting off in-flight brand and marketing strategies in service of demand generation. Instead, it means strategically aligning marketing activity to business outcomes and articulating the value in terms that resonate with non-marketing leaders—including the board of directors.   

To help you get started, we’re sharing our five critical elements needed to make a case for your 2023 marketing budget.  

Know Your Baseline  

Performance dashboards are often a wise first point of entry for data-minded marketing leaders looking to show real-time insights and build transparency across business verticals and disciplines. At their most robust, such dashboards can bring value across the business by providing a single view of the customer across sales, product and marketing.   

As a starting place, you should have a consolidated understanding of topline metrics that can empower and facilitate discussion around performance and the next best action, which should connect the marketing activity with business outcomes. A data baseline builds accountability and can relieve concerns regarding marketing efficacy. While it may seem obvious in theory, this level of reporting is rarer than one might think.  

When you align marketing activity with business performance, you empower your partners and teams by efficiently attributing c-suite level metrics. Holding companies and traditional media agencies may not be equipped to discuss the possibility of recessionary budget cuts – primarily because many agencies do not align brand spend with business outcomes. At Prophet, we do things a bit differently. As a growth-minded consultancy, we help our clients connect the dots between business objectives and marketing planning, customer metrics and in-flight marketing results.  

Make the Business Case  

From our recent global research, “Brand and Demand Marketing: A Love Story,” we learned that marketers in the most successful businesses are more likely to cite “customer lifetime value” as a key marketing objective. Whereas, within lower-performing businesses, marketers are more likely to focus on tactic-level measurements, such as “enhancing digital marketing support” and “coordination with channel partners.” While the latter are critical operational goals, they are less growth-oriented and trickier to connect to customer relevancy and business outcomes.  

When making a case for your 2023 marketing budget, ensuring your objectives and the funding needed to execute quantifies the impact on the business will lead to a more successful outcome.  

Developing a marketing budget that delivers a measurable ROI requires a holistic understanding of the business and your customers. Once you have accomplished this, you can map your spending to in-market marketing tactics.  

As you develop a proactive business case for your customer-centric marketing budget, there are three primary areas you should focus on:   

  1. Budget Benchmarking: Your c-suite will not always understand the importance of investing in brand and demand marketing, especially during a recession. To help you justify your budget, you should leverage competitor research to build your budget benchmarks.
  2. Agile Strategic Planning: Building a marketing budget requires investment in off-cycle marketing strategy and planning. Marketers will benefit from correlating their strategies with revised strategic business goals, especially as operating climates and customer needs evolve.
  3. Aligning Marketing and Business Goals: You should ensure your KPIs roll up to topline corporate metrics. We believe this means aligning budgets toward a closer marriage of brand and marketing spend, or what we lovely call at Prophet “performance branding.”  

Benchmarks for Everyone  

You must translate marketing performance into a simple language centered on business outcomes so your C-suite colleagues can understand the impact you can make with the right budget. Benchmarks provide the necessary context on what key metrics mean regarding marketing efficiency and effectiveness and opportunity.   

Finance leaders will want to know how the return on marketing spend compares against peers through the campaign, channel and partner analysis. Sales leaders are concerned with how marketing-owned activities have contributed to revenue generation and how those efforts stack up against industry competitors. Colleagues of all functional areas are interested in marketing insights that identify competency and performance and product gaps and how marketing addresses those opportunity areas.   

A thoughtful spectrum of benchmarks focused on industry and out-of-category leaders and laggards can highlight specific improvement areas where business contributions may be trailing average and high performers.    

Optimize for Agility  

As businesses pivot to accommodate changing economic trajectories, so should marketing function. Marketing teams that are organized to perform against an agile strategic plan are best poised to keep up with evolving customer needs. To build an agile strategic plan, you need to map marketing activities to growth objectives. We recommend leveraging a simple taxonomy to ensure marketing teams are in sync with other departments such as finance, sales and leadership.   

For organizations experiencing more fundamental market shifts or disruption, optimization might require a more robust re-evaluation of investment priorities across operating and execution budgets to support the opportunities that will likely make the most business impact. As customer expectations evolve and go-to-market strategies are upended, marketing planning and overarching program spending must adapt accordingly.   

Embrace a Performance Branding Mentality  

Last is the need to marry the art of marketing with the science of topline fiscal reporting. There is a relatively clear correlation between CFO-level metrics and marketing conversion KPIs for late funnel metrics. However, top-of-funnel, traditional marketing-centric tactics and measurement approaches are rarely understood by non-practitioners.   

What do we mean by that? CFOs are unlikely to understand metrics such as impressions or clicks, especially in a constrained or contracting revenue environment. Downturns are not the time to attempt a profound education on the value of these metrics. Instead, we believe it is critical to put marketing success in terms that the CFO (and other C-suites) can understand.  

Taking a performance branding mentality to your budget can collapse the funnel between brand and performance – and maximize efficacy. Traditional approaches to brand marketing allocate limited rigor in managing upper-funnel digital tactics and media.  

In an inflationary environment where every dollar is being counted, you must deploy a clear understanding of your customer behaviors and preferences earlier in the funnel to apply greater precision to brand spend.  

But it’s important to not over-index on metrics like ROI. Instead, you should evaluate leading indicators for revenue that demonstrate marketing’s influence on growth, such as nurture or account-based progression.   

Prophet has an established baseline framework for evaluating marketing spend. This framework helps translate marketing KPIs to business performance metrics, seeking to integrate brand and demand and create clarity of impact across the organization.

While this can vary slightly by industry, rethinking traditional marketing insights to business-level measurements is the first step in substantiating future marketing budgets. The more you can show a linear impact on business growth, the easier it should be to substantiate marketing spend in support of customer outcomes.  

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During times of uncertainty, marketers need to align their budgets to business outcomes and effectively communicate the value in terms that resonate with executive leadership teams. To do so, ensure your budget is customer-centric and includes the performance dashboards, benchmarks and agile plans to make the business case.   

Connect with Prophet today to learn how to build a customer-centric 2023 marketing budget that is aligned with your business objectives.

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Winning the Innovation Game in Banking

How incumbent banks can build resiliency by transforming their innovation engines to drive growth. 

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Banks that go on offense and remain committed to innovation will have the competitive edge as the economy returns to growth cycles.

Based on ongoing market research and interviews with industry experts and executives, “Winning the Innovation Game in Banking,” provides insights for senior banking leaders seeking to re-energize their organization’s innovation engines. Specifically, this report:

  • Provides pragmatic actions for avoiding costly mistakes and translating innovation investments into market impact and improvements on the top line
  • Defines leading practices and proven frameworks that accelerate efforts to operationalize and scale innovation programs
  • Identifies the most promising market territories for innovation aligned to the growth agendas of incumbent banks

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Prophet Healthcare: Champions for Change

Find out how we help partners across the healthcare ecosystem transform care experiences, create new enterprises and build empathy-driven sustainable ways of working.

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At Prophet, we believe the organizations that thrive in healthcare are those that dare to change the game – striving to improve human health, create better experiences, and make the best of care an enduring and sustainable reality for all.

Find out how we help partners across the healthcare ecosystem transform care experiences, create new enterprises and build empathy-driven sustainable ways of working. See our healthcare services.

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From URL to IRL: Four Pillars of Experiential Design for the Future of Offline Retail 

As consumers begin returning to in-person shopping, it’s time for retailers to revisit the role of physical retail stores.  

The last few years saw a boom in e-commerce, with innovations such as shoppable live streams, virtual try-ons and AI-powered recommendations enhancing the online retail experience. Today, as consumers re-enter physical stores, retailers can seize the opportunity to reimagine what in-person shopping looks like in the future of retail.  

Consumers’ shopping behaviors have changed. Physical stores are no longer simply places of transaction. Instead, they can serve as storytelling centers that bring brands to life. Offline retail can help customers learn about products, provide an experience value and create stronger relationships. Customers like to view stores as places to experience something unique, memorable and human. 

Also, brands must be clear on their story and audience when designing spaces and their content to create an in-store experience. Once the retail strategy is clear, it’s all about execution. To create a distinct offline experience, brands must think critically about what experiences are only possible in person and how technology can be leveraged to deliver them.  

Below are four areas for brands to consider when developing an experiential design for the future of offline retail: 

1. Beyond POS: Cultivating Community at the Storefront 

It’s time to think beyond transactions. Having a physical footprint in today’s world can be so much more for a brand than simply a point-of-sale. Stores can become multi-purpose spaces dedicated to activities and brand activations that create a sense of community. Customers can come to a store to discover and learn about a brand and touch and feel its products.  

(Image source) 

IKEA has long been known for its one-of-a-kind in-store experience, with its winding paths, tiny model homes and world-famous meatballs. Its new store in Vienna takes it one step further. Rather than the giant blue warehouse that customers are used to, this 7-story structure of stacked glass pods and covered in greenery was designed to resemble the brand’s minimalist shelving units. Inside, the building offers a public rooftop terrace in addition to a hostel and café. Shoppers can shop, scan and pay directly from the IKEA mobile app and have larger items delivered to their homes via emission-free electric vehicles. IKEA plans for this new store to be more than a shopping center; instead, it’s meant to serve as an urban hub for people to gather in the heart of the city center.  

2. In-Store Analytics: Connecting the Data Dots 

Retail stores are also untapped data mines for brands. By leveraging technology that can track customer behavior in stores, brands can improve the offline journey for their consumers and even create personalized shopping experiences. This behind-the-scenes investment can give brands valuable data about how their customers shop as well as help better predict future trends. 

(Image source) 

Emart, Korea’s largest retailer, partnered with Seoul Robotics to install patented sensor technology in one of its busiest hypermarkets in the country. In doing so, Emart is able to capture data on customers’ shopping behaviors, such as their typical path around the store and where they spend the most time. Seoul Robotics’ technology also addresses concerns around consumer privacy. By using sensor technology that anonymizes customers rather than cameras that collect their images, no biometric data or personally identifiable information is recorded. This anonymized data is still hugely useful to Emart, though. Through a comprehensive customer data strategy, the information can be used to better manage inventory and product assortment as well as offer customers a highly personalized shopping experience, such as specific coupons based on aisles browsed.   

3. Omnichannel 2.0: Bringing Seamlessness Offline 

The ubiquity of e-commerce has elevated customers’ all-around expectations of a brand. Consumers have the same demands for ease and convenience when shopping in-store as they do online. Brands should view brick-and-mortar stores as opportunities to weave in technology, create more seamless touchpoints between them and their consumers and offer a true omnichannel experience. 

(Image source) 

Amazon recently opened its first Amazon Style store, expanding on its offline retail presence portfolio. Amazon Style is the company’s latest foray into fashion and seeks to make in-store shopping as easy and seamless as the online experience. Customers can use the Amazon Shopping app to scan an item’s QR code in-store, which will show them product sizing, colors, ratings and deals. They can then choose to send the item to a fitting room and use touchscreens to request different sizes or colors while also browsing AI-powered recommendations for similar items. Checkout is also a breeze via Amazon One palm scanners: with a wave of the hand, shoppers can purchase their items and be on their way.  

But technology alone won’t be enough. Earlier this year, Amazon closed all its Amazon Books and Amazon 4-star retail locations. To fully convince shoppers, Amazon must find a way to create customer-centric experiences that combine the convenience and accessibility of online shopping with the in-store magic that only an IRL experience can deliver.  

4. Retail’s Ultimate Edge: Engaging All the Senses 

Ultimately, offline retail can win by creating experiences that are simply irreplicable online. Embracing stores as multi-sensorial touchpoints can allow brands to create innovative, memorable and highly engaging customer experiences. Brands that can do this successfully will have no trouble compelling shoppers to move off-screen and in-store. 

Scent, one of our strongest senses, has a direct linkage to the part of the brain that controls emotions and memories. When used strategically, scent technology can create a memorable and vivid in-store experience and create desired shopping behaviors. Bloomingdale’s, for example, uses different scents for different sections throughout the store, such as coconut in swimwear and baby powder in infant clothing. Kyobo Book Centre, Korea’s largest bookstore chain, uses a signature scent inspired by trees and wind, meant to relax customers while creating a unified experience across its stores. 

(Image source) 

Sound plays to another one of our senses and can have a surprising impact on customer behavior, such as increasing brand recall and dwell time by creating a purposeful auditory experience. Genesis, Hyundai’s luxury sub-brand, uses a unique audio identity throughout its entire brand experience, from inside its vehicles to within its showrooms. This auditory expression of its motto, “Quietly Iconic,” is gentle yet distinct, a reflection of the brand’s positioning of modern luxury. 

(Image source) 

Hyundai recently opened Genesis House in New York, which serves as a brand experience center rather than a traditional showroom, incorporating this meticulously designed sound experience throughout its restaurant, library and event spaces. 

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While the pandemic posed its fair share of challenges to retailers everywhere, those that have powered through have the opportunity to rethink and redefine their retail experience strategy. Customers are hungry for in-person interactions, and memorable, seamless, multi-sensorial experiences that connect them to the brand – and each other.  

Connect with Prophet today to see how we can help reimagine the future of retail for your brand. 

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Is There a New Love Story Between Brand and Demand Marketing in Southeast Asia? 

SEA’s exploding e-commerce scene brings to the forefront the balancing act of brand building and demand generation. 

During my recent keynote at DigiBranCon in Kuala Lumpur, I spoke to a congregation of leading marketers on the dichotomy of brand building versus demand marketing. In the post-Covid-19 era, where digital adoption and acceleration changed everything, should you invest more on brand building or demand marketing?  

The Context: Southeast Asia’s Rising Digital Adoption 

Southeast Asia’s massive e-commerce sector is advancing at a rate that is exceeding expectations. There are over 350 million internet users today and close to 10 million more coming online each year. In SEA, the time spent online has already surpassed the time spent watching TV and the online time spent in China and Japan. 

Brands hoping to engage with SEA consumers must keep in mind the mobile-first nature of the market, with high levels of social media usage and influence. Successful brands are already using social as an e-commerce sales channel, catering to a young population with strong consumer ambitions. Established unicorns such as Grab, Lazada, Shopee, InMobi and Tokopedia are investing heavily in digital commerce and beginning to compete with newer, emerging players in the space. 

The digital acceleration that took place during the pandemic invariably led to more brands shifting sales online. While there is a myriad of factors that lead to success or failure, one key consideration is the tension of brand building versus demand marketing.  

Having a brand that stands out in the sea of competition is especially important online. In e-commerce, becoming a preferred brand is even harder yet critical – how do marketers build brand affinity and grow demand? Given most brands in SEA are small to medium-sized enterprises, this can be difficult given the time and financial investment required. As a result, many brands focus on near-term goals, relying on demand marketing for short-term sales and promotions. While this may convince consumers to make impulse purchases or trials, it doesn’t accomplish the longer-term goal of building true brand loyalty. 

Should You Invest in Brand or Demand Marketing? 

If no one knows your brand, your demand generation isn’t going to be as successful as it could be. You need brand awareness for demand generation to work and vice versa. Your brand establishes your legitimacy, creates loyal customer relationships and helps efficiently drive demand. Demand marketing is more about “Why buy one now?” It involves education and highlighting pain points with urgency. Branding is more about “Why buy from us?” It entails building your reputation so that people choose your product to solve that problem – even though there are likely other options.

As marketers, we know brand strategies don’t always directly connect to a sales pipeline, and demand doesn’t always lead to increased awareness in the market. But when the efforts from both sides are designed to complement each other, we’re able to reach a new, unprecedented level of cohesion across the entire marketing program –creating a powerful growth engine that helps us achieve the goals of: 

  • Building preference for your brand and products  
  • Reducing price sensitivity  
  • Nurturing loyal and repeat customers 
  • Saving costs with improved operational efficiencies 
  • Creating a sustainable revenue stream
  • Higher effectiveness and ROI with our marketing investment  

Prophet’s approach to brand and demand marketing is grounded in recognizing that there is a better way to engage with modern audiences, which is especially meaningful in SEA. It is a sustained, integrated approach that continuously engages with audiences inside and outside the marketing funnel in a value exchange that drives growth for both the audience and the brand.  

How to Strike the Right Balance?  

Is there a magical ratio between brand to demand? The conventional 60/40 brand/demand investment split is helpful but increasingly outdated and doesn’t accurately reflect what any medium or touchpoint can do. It also depends on the market situation and your business goals – the ratio will and should change at any given time to adapt to competitive environments.  

To be good, we need to do both. But to be great, we need a more intentional, unifying strategy. The ideal state is to develop a long-term strategy across the customer journey to build preference, which helps to achieve faster, short-term quick wins during moments when buyers are more receptive to “demand” campaigns.  

There are four golden rules that we identified in our recent, global research: 
 

  1. Build a marketing organization that has the skills and capabilities for both brand and demand, with teams working together against a shared purpose
  2. Design your marketing approaches in an integrated fashion starting with annual planning.
  3. Experimentation leads to success. Build a learning agenda and provide an investment budget.
  4. Track performance and progress with an integrated brand and demand view and laddering up to business goals. 

Through expertise and excellent marketing campaigns, you’ll build relationships that showcase how your product really is better than your competitors, and you’ll have a whole audience of loyal fans to back you up on that. The key lies in regularly fine-tuning your brand-to-demand ratios based on the goals of your brand, the product/campaign and audience response.  

A good example is the regional fashion e-commerce brand, Zalora. When it was still a lesser-known brand, it focused investments on building its brand through traditional and social media marketing across Facebook and search engines. Today, as the brand matures, Zalora invests more heavily in demand marketing through strategic brand partnerships and social commerce, while still investing in data-driven Google ad campaigns.  

Brand and Demand Marketing is the Ideal Couple and Content is a Compelling Aphrodisiac 

As we seek out tactics that will lead us to achieve a proper ratio, there has been a trusted hero of the brand-and-demand approach: Content. If brand and demand are the ideal couple to engage audiences, then content marketing is how we amplify the love story of the couple successfully.  

Experienced marketers know that one asset or social post does not result in a subscriber, let alone generate a lead. Trust takes time to develop, and the consistent cadence and drumbeat of a long-term content effort can help to build and nurture real relationships with audiences.  

Like those addictive Korean drama series, if you can produce a steady stream of engaging and compelling content throughout the customer journey, your audience will be more engaged, and your brand messaging and communication will become more appealing. When this consistent drumbeat aligns with memorable brand campaigns, you build brand recognition and earn loyalty across the marketing funnel. 

Through a strategic storyline approach, brands can extend their master narrative and create meaningful audience interactions throughout the entire funnel, ultimately nurturing prospects to conversion, recommendation and ultimately, loyalty. 

Take the Indonesia-based e-commerce platform, Tokopedia, for example. The brand has embedded K-pop in its marketing content to better target its younger and female segments across Indonesia since 2021. Not only did Tokopedia present K-pop groups BTS and BLACKPINK as the face of the brand, but it also created a long-term content strategy to feature Korean artists in its programs, campaigns and events to drive customer acquisition, engagement and sales. This creates a consistent customer experience, delivering key benefits to the target audience along every step of its customer journey, thereby building brand loyalty. 

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FINAL THOUGHTS

During the mobile-first digital age, the new marketing benchmark requires an integrated strategy involving both brand building and demand marketing, calibrated to deliver impact based on the maturity of your brand. A balanced mix of both short- and long-term tactics is key to achieving uncommon growth.

At Prophet, we believe content is where brand meets demand – the sweet spot that fosters brand loyalists and fuels consistent ROI that compounds over time. Brand and demand marketing requires delivering a well-thought-out content strategy and cohesive customer experience. Download our global research report, Brand and Demand Marketing: A Love Story, to learn more.

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BOOK

The Future of Purpose-Driven Branding 

BY DAVID AAKER

Learn how to guide, inspire and enable effective communication of a purpose-driven branding program.

Read the First Chapter

In his book, “The Future of Purpose-Driven Branding,” branding expert, David Aaker, shows a pathway to business and social program leadership and offers five branding “must dos” to guide, inspire and enable effective communication of the program. The book includes:  

  • A thorough case for why social programs are the secret weapon to helping business leaders build stronger brands and more connected work cultures, while supporting important social causes 
  • Powerful case studies from organizations leading with exemplary social programs
  • Tools and insights for integrating social programs into the organization and business 
  • Five branding “must dos” when building signature social brands 

Download the first chapter today.  

Loved the first chapter? Order the book on Amazon.

About the Author 

David Aaker is the author of more than one hundred articles and 18 books on marketing, business strategy, and branding that have sold over one million copies. A recognized global authority on branding, he has developed concepts and methods on brand building that are used by organizations around the world. 

Connect 

Want to interview David Aaker or feature him on your next podcast? Please connect with us or David directly. 

Reach out to learn how David Aaker and Prophet can help your business create signature social programs that capture the hearts of leadership, customers, employees and brand followers.  

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3 Ways to Out-Innovate the Downturn 

Prioritizing innovation is key to unlocking sustainable growth – particularly in turbulent times – and enabling this requires a new level of collaboration. 

Collaboration inspires innovation. It fuels growth and accelerates transformation. Yet with so many eyes focused on the turbulent economy, companies are losing sight of innovation’s value. As fear infuses corporate conversations, many are already using the uncertainty to justify putting innovation efforts on hold. They shift from finding new sources of growth to focusing on ways to shrink–what projects to mothball? Which budgets to cut? Which workers to eliminate? 

That short-sightedness is a mistake. History has shown us, again and again, that companies that move into head-down defensiveness miss out on the rich opportunities that downturns create. Competitors change course. Customer behavior shifts. Old needs fade, and new ones arise.  

Unless companies actively seek ways to boost innovation, collaborating throughout the organization to enrich new and better experiences, they’re missing out on transformative possibilities. Past recessions have given us innovative new companies and operating models, from the sharing economy to the crypto craze. And companies that look for new ways to grow, expand and transform consistently outperform the batten-down-the-hatches crowd. 

It takes collaborative muscle. Our recent research shows that companies can systematically build that strength. And those that do are more productive, finding relevant solutions that aren’t just novel but also high-impact and potentially transformative. 

Three places to begin right now are: 

1. Prioritize Customer Journeys, Not Functions or Departments 

Getting teams to work well beyond their silos isn’t a new problem. But it’s taken on outsized urgency as companies see themselves constantly out–flanked by category disruptors. Departmental boundaries serve a role but also thwart flexibility, speed and innovative potential. They slow transformation. And the bad news is that our research shows hybrid workplaces are even worse at collaborative efforts. 

In most companies, people are still primarily evaluated and compensated on functional and departmental key performance indicators. Their work is often not even in alignment with organizational goals. Because there’s no formal or systematic recognition for interdepartmental teams, efforts fizzle out. In addition, customers continue to face disjointed products and services. They feel like they’re dealing with one brand in customer service or marketing but a completely different one in operations or sales. 

Solving this problem doesn’t necessarily require sweeping organizational changes. Companies can move toward this type of change starting with small pods, giving them a clear focus and the agency to test and prove new collaborative models.  

The more touchpoints and complexity a product or service contains, the more critical this step becomes. Prophet recently worked with a large purpose-driven financial services company, which wanted to provide better tools, programs and support for its financial advisors. It also wanted to ensure that each new offer and channel conveyed its purpose, whether it was a young family looking for a first insurance policy or older consumers focused on estate planning. Using a “pods and squads” model, we helped the company build small cross-functional teams focused on core customer needs. Viewing that work within the context of the company helped create a model that it could scale throughout the organization and overcome internal friction by finding a more seamless approach for advisors and end customers. 

Where to Start:  

Think small, with concrete and specific projects. While the ultimate goal might be to organize cross-functional teams for each segment of the company’s audience, individual pilots are more practical than ripping out all the plumbing. Create goals and objectives, restructuring KPIs around jobs to be done. This works by creating small wins, fueling the collaborative mindset. 

2. Maximize Principles, Minimize Process 

Truly collaborative organizations–not surprisingly, the most innovative–are powered by principles. It’s not that they don’t have rules and decision matrices to govern how work is done–they do. It’s just that they have overriding principles and values that are more important. These principles provide clarity and direction in ways process guidelines can’t. 

Google’s 20% Project is one of the most famous examples and has led the company to such innovations as Gmail and Google Maps. Others have turned similar side-project principles into ventures like Slack and Twitter.  

When principles guide companies, they become social norms–more potent than rule-based ways to make decisions. But there’s an art to settling on the correct principles. Too often, they’re vague, benign and become something tacked up on the office wall, like “Be nice” or “Listen to others.” 

Fluffy platitudes aren’t enough – principles must provide enough depth and structure to feel relevant and contextual. They should inform people as they consider, “What’s right for this company? This brand? In this moment?” And they further a company’s purpose, emphasizing simplicity, adaptability and sustainability. 

When there are rules, people cooperate. When there are principles, they collaborate–but they must find common ground between themselves, their colleagues and the company. Prophet’s Collaboration Flywheel Model™️ helps leaders and organizations move toward an environment that is sustainable and delivers more impactful outcomes faster over time 

For example, our recent work with CVS Kidney Care focused on translating its “culture of courage” into innovations to help millions of people suffering from kidney disease. We established principles for how the group wanted to work as a team, how to communicate, and how to share information.  

Our teams supported CVS Kidney Care in translating those goals into principles required to completely disrupt the kidney-care universe. Using two-week agile sprints to break down silos, we helped it focus on patient, caregiver and provider priorities. The result? A truly transformed experience for kidney patients, delivering personalized, seamless care with less time away from home and work–and improved health outcomes. 

Where to Start:  

Focus on team autonomy and team charters. Positioning these as the first steps in building team dynamics often makes a natural step to developing or redefining the Employee Value Proposition. The EVP can –and should –distill these ideas, connecting principles to brand promise. This kind of collaboration leads to EVPs that intersect beautifully with an organization’s overall purpose and each part of the company, from experience and innovation teams to brand and culture specialists. 

3. Play with Prototypes, Not Presentations 

If pictures are worth a thousand words, prototypes are worth a thousand user stories. People learn best by doing, so involving people throughout the organization in play sessions that let them roll up their sleeves will lead to more innovative and effective solutions than yet another 90-page PowerPoint. Embedding a maker mentality stimulates constructive conversation about new ideas, which are often hard to share and explain. 

Put simply, doing uncovers more wisdom than thinking. 

And yes, we get that it’s challenging to convince a C-suite focused on cutbacks and retrenching to step up their commitment to play. But it’s a crucial ingredient. Play opens people’s minds, facilitating new ways of thinking and doing. We often use Lego’s Serious Play in workshops to help people better connect their brains’ right and left sides. This co-creation opens collaborators’ minds, giving them a better sense of what is and isn’t possible. 

Iteratively building–testing and playing in this way–gets organizations to more efficient learning and definition. 

Adults aren’t good at it. The famous Spaghetti Marshmallow Tower is one of our favorite examples. When given a marshmallow, some dry spaghetti, tape and the instructions to build the tallest tower in 18 minutes, those with MBAs perform miserably. They assume there is a single best approach. They over-analyze. They jockey for power. As they run out of time, they realize their towers can’t support a marshmallow. 

Those that do best? Kindergartners. Their sturdy towers are taller and more varied–precisely because they prototype every step of the way.  

This playfulness solves another problem: Not all people in organizations perceive collaboration in the same way. Enthusiasm, and the perception of effectiveness and value of collaboration, vary by department and across regions. Why not make it more enjoyable? 

We recently did a project for a healthcare company that wanted to extend its reach among small and mid-sized medical practices. These providers offer excellent care but often lack the marketing resources of large practices. 

Before we started building things, we developed a series of interactive prototypes. Many people from departments as diverse as risk, compliance, finance and operations had the chance to play with the different options. They poked and prodded, turning solutions upside down. 

When a roomful of people hears remarks like, “This approach is more engaging, but it would mean we’d have to change X or Y to implement it,” there’s less friction between departments–everyone can see why collaboration is better. It highlights what is most valuable to the end user and why. 

Where to Start:  

Rapid prototyping doesn’t have to be elaborate. It should begin with sketching on paper. It should be dirty, ugly and fun. Exercises like mash-up innovation, how-now-wow and bad-idea brainstorms can be light exercises to generate initial concepts. Service storyboards and mood boards help and so does writing a make-believe press release for a hypothetical launch. Anything that involves the team in different ways to communicate ideas is helpful. 

Check out our most recent research – Building Business Resilience Through Innovation

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FINAL THOUGHTS

Effective collaboration is essential in order to increase the pace and quality of innovation efforts across the organization. It is also one of the most meaningful aspects of employee engagement and personal growth. And that personal growth – learning new skills, extending networks and increased productivity – translates to the entire organization, helping enterprise goals to be achieved more quickly. In down markets, prioritizing collaboration gives companies an innovative advantage and delivers new and different sources of growth.

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