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How Top Brands Get to the Hearts of Consumers

Three standout trends the top heart brands are doing to become relentlessly relevant to consumers.

It’s no secret that the brands consumers are obsessed with hit closest to our hearts–the ones that make up our identities and help express who we are. The brands we call “magic makers” make us feel true affinity and loyalty: the sneakerheads, gamers, Tesla owners and devotees get it. There is no logical explanation for this kind of love— the kind of love that has lines wrapped around the block at Gucci and people camping out to see the next Marvel movie, even amidst a global pandemic. In the 2022 Prophet Brand Relevant Index (BRI), our annual study which asks 13,500 U.S. consumers which brands are most relevant to their lives, we learned what the top-performing brands do to attract such devoted consumers. For one, they create emotional stories and connections that consumers just have to have and experience. Unlike their counterparts, brands that appeal more to our head and practical side, these brands, fill an emotional need that goes straight to our hearts.

In addition to our overall BRI ranking, we have identified the top brands that speak directly to consumers’ hearts.

Top 25 Heart brands, ranked:

So, what do the top heart brands do to be considered relentlessly relevant to consumers? We discovered three standout trends where brands appealing to consumers’ hearts are excelling.  

Bringing the Fantasy to Us

To create “magic,” brands need to do more than fill a need in our life—they must make us feel like part of something bigger and provide connection and stimulation to escape monotonous days. Gaming and platforms such as PlayStation, Nintendo and Xbox enable escape and connection, and respondents agree that they could turn to their consoles to engage in new and unexpected ways. Marvel, Disney, MLB and NFL joined our top ten for brands that “Connect with me emotionally,” making us feel part of something bigger than ourselves. The power of these “magic makers” is to transport us out of our lives and into the past, the future or another planet entirely—and recently that transport mostly happened in our homes.

Nothing gets you closer to a shared in-person experience than live sports and the NFL had an especially strong showing in its first year in the BRI. Despite a variety of controversies, the NFL had more viewers in 2021 than in the previous six years. Because the experience of watching a game depends on live viewership, advertisers could count on a present audience, a rarity in today’s TV market. Innovations in adjacent categories also helped NFL: Sports betting laws opened up and a record 45.2 million Americans are expected to bet on NFL games and wager more than $20 billion, according to CNBC.

Inspiring Authentic Expression

2021 was the year the “creator economy” exploded in full force. From Etsy and Pinterest to YouTube and TikTok, extra time at home coupled with the “Great Resignation” led to increased engagement with social platforms for both viewers and creators. There are over 50 million who consider themselves ‘creators’, according to Forbes, especially among younger generations with strong aspirations to maximize their platform as a career. Creators love these platforms because they allow them to monetize their personal brands and connect directly with their audiences in ways that were never possible before. 

Ranked 13th on “Heart” and 21st most relevant brand overall, Etsy helped connect makers with products they needed and wanted during the pandemic. Etsy reported in 2021 that they had sold an astounding $346 million dollars just in reusable face masks. These products not only fulfilled a need but also felt special and infused with the maker’s craft and love. 

Making Us Feel Special

While still stuck at home during the pandemic with nowhere to go, the 2022 Index shows that we embrace brands that make us feel alive and special, even when they are impractical to our current needs.  Some of our highest performing magic makers were luxury brands: Tesla, Gucci, Sephora and Mercedes-Benz were beloved by consumers and rounded out our top 20 for “Makes me feel inspired.” In the last year, luxury brands rebounded faster than many expected. In times of uncertainty, enduring status and quality symbols can feel reassuring.

Luxury brands have seen record levels of growth coming out of the pandemic. “Revenge shopping” or the phenomenon of those with means spending on luxury goods to fill a void left by canceled social and cultural events may explain the quick comeback of high-end brands. Luxury items aren’t just objects—they deliver a transportive experience that activates their brand. Luxury may not solve problems, but in a time when we sacrificed so much, it delivers the fulfilling indulgence that only a wildly expensive, exquisitely designed object or experience can.

What Can Heart Brands Teach Us?

To go from a commodity to relentlessly relevant, brands need to connect with our hearts. Top heart brands have found ways to connect with consumers’ emotions by:

  • Targeting micro-communities of fans who are obsessed with the same sports team or TV show. Instead of trying to appeal to everybody, narrow in on the people who are most likely to connect with the product or service offered.
  • Bringing together commerce and community. The best brands create loyal followers who look for every new product drop and turn up to every store experience: turn consumers into brand evangelists.
  • Delivering on personalization and quality, whether that’s highlighting the stories of artisans and innovators who design products or offering a customized experience through an algorithm or brand design, makes every person who walks through the doors feel special and loved. Magic.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

Want to learn more about how the most relevant brands are tapping into the head and heart of consumers? The Prophet BRI serves as a roadmap for building relevance with consumers. Contact our team to learn how to apply the insights from the 2022 Index to your organization. 

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Prophet Impact: Earth Month Recap

Embarking on Prophet’s Sustainability Journey

In 2020, Prophet embarked on a sustainability journey to assess our climate choices and identify steps we can take towards a greener future. We partnered with South Pole to understand our current environmental impacts, see how we stack up against peers and identify potential areas for improvement. Over the last year, we have gone through piles of data and reports from our enterprise-wide audit across global offices to understand Prophet’s carbon emissions and climate change risks.

SBT’s. GHG. CO2te. Net-Zero. Scopes 1-3. What does this all mean? How does a circular design affect the way we look at our economy? How do we interpret the results of our GHG emission report to guide climate actions? How do we inspire our people to act and have a tangible impact on our clients and in our communities? These are just some of the questions we’ve been asking since we began our sustainability journey and Earth Month presented an opportunity to pose these questions to our larger community at Prophet. We knew it was critical to engage Propheteers to share Prophet’s progress in our sustainability journey and be a part of the conversation.

Earth Month Recap

One day is simply not enough to immerse in conservation and celebrate this beautiful planet we call home. So, with Earth Day on April 22nd, the Prophet Impact Sustainability Team took Propheteers on a month-long sustainability journey. This April, we spotlighted Mother Earth through a variety of programming to spark learning, conversation and action around sustainability across the firm.

Our first event was an inspiring start to Earth Month and exposed Propheteers to the different actors that are working together to slow down the negative impacts of climate change. Special guest panelists, Marc O’Brien, Co-founder of Climate Designers, Rosalia Lugo, Environmental Health Activist, Austin Whitman, Founder and CEO of Climate Neutral, and our very own Tosson El Noshokaty, Founding Partner and Advisor for Good Carbon and Oceans2050, shared their perspectives on the climate crisis and how they are leading a more sustainable future across sectors.

Our second educational event was all about circular design. Propheteers learned about shifting to a circular economy and key design principles to create more sustainable products, services and solutions. Propheteers had a chance to break out into small groups and ideate around a real-life design challenge to apply these circular design principles and learn how these concepts might play into our lives and work at Prophet. We also shared some of the client stories that put sustainability at the center: from working with a nonprofit to protect biodiversity in Vietnam, to partnering with a high growth organization focused on building a sustainable and productive food system, to envisioning a fast-food brand’s future kitchen where material and energy waste is designed out.

Our final event looked internally and provided Propheteers with an overview of our sustainability journey from the South Pole team. Propheteers gained insight into key climate terms like Scope 1-2-3 emissions, carbon credits, and net-zero. In addition to sharing Prophet’s GHG footprint from 2019 and 2020, we also began to explore what actions we might take to start reducing our carbon footprint such as setting a science-based target, leveraging renewable energy, and investing in climate credits.

“We know that our own sustainability journey can always be enhanced and Prophet and our clients can continue to do better for our planet.”

Alongside these educational events, we held an Earth Day Every Day photo challenge, where Propheteers were invited to submit photos in three categories: #Act Now, #Natural Beauty and #Nature Selfie. From photos of a glacier park in Iceland to the mighty Iguazu Falls, Propheteers captured the scenic wonders of our Planet. There were also photos of trash piling up in Hawai’i and an overflowing makeshift trash can that highlighted the urgent need to take action now to build a greener future together. Propheteers across the firm also gathered with their local office teammates in person and virtually to celebrate Earth Day. There was fun to be had- from panting succulents to enjoying a plant-based meal together, to participating in a sustainability-themed trivia.

Prophet’s Next Steps

So where are going from here?

At the individual level, we hope that Earth Month inspired Propheteers around what it means to live more sustainably. Many have committed to making more sustainable choices daily and volunteering their time to participate in sustainability-focused activities during our upcoming Prophet Impact Day.

At the firm level, Prophet will be continuing to partner with South Pole to declare a greenhouse gas reduction goal (e.g., Net Zero), and subsequently develop sustainability strategies and a roadmap to reduce our carbon footprint. On the client-side, Prophet has dedicated resources to building a suite of ESG offers to help business leaders apply a systems thinking mindset that involves the planet and elevates sustainability in their organizations. ESG efforts will be critical to making sustainability more “real” across the business world.

Finally, at the global level, we will continue to spotlight and drive action for more sustainable practices, both within our firm, to our clients and to our networks. We know that our own sustainability journey can always be enhanced and Prophet and our clients can continue to do better for our planet.

FINAL THOUGHTS

While Earth Month at Prophet may have ended, the conversations around climate and sustainability continue. We know it will take a coordinated effort between governments, institutions, businesses and people all over the world to build a more sustainable future. At Prophet, we are proud to be taking steps in our own sustainability journey.

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Four Critical Shifts for Tech Brands Today

Technological advancement has long been a driving force moving society forward. From underlying network advancements to ongoing software and hardware innovations, many of today’s biggest companies have achieved success by being at the forefront of technology.

But when considering what matters to consumers, what does it really take to become a technology leader in this modern era?

In this year’s Prophet Brand Relevance Index®, we once again saw technology’s rising impact in building brands that are relentlessly relevant in consumers’ lives. Major tech companies like Apple, Spotify, Bose and Android have continued to dominate the top five and fast-rising tech brands also captured people’s heads and hearts in an unprecedented way.

While the fundamental principles that define a leading brand stay true, our findings emphasize that the way in which these principles are delivered needs to evolve in order for brands to stay at the technology forefront.

1. Ruthlessly Pragmatic: From Economics and Efficiency to Consistency and Dependability

For many, pre-pandemic living demanded efficiency, productivity and outcomes – and technologies enable that. Tech leaders compete on superior specs, technical ability and cost-effectiveness, especially in Asia. But, one of the likely lasting trends resulting from the pandemic is a shift towards a slower, simpler life. With consumers looking for quality over speed, superior performance is now increasingly defined by a dependable, reliable and consistent experience.

Dyson believes in the value of engineering perfection in daily chores, as opposed to “get it done quickly.” Its strong emphasis on prototyping and refinement to achieve the art of precision is evident across product categories. Consumers trust Dyson for how consistently dependable their products are – no matter if it’s a vacuum or a hairdryer. They can rely on Dyson to accomplish their tasks, without dreading any mishaps when using.

The shift: As we emerge from the pandemic the definition of pragmatism is no longer surface-level results. Brands must use technology in a way that delivers long-term, dependable performance.

2. Pervasively Innovative: From Bigger and Better to Designing with Care

Great technological leaps have been made in the past few decades. Tech brands have focused their innovation story on “bigger, thinner, faster, stronger” to claim leadership. But with a renewed focus on what really matters in life, consumers are more interested in how technology can enable and empower – rather than disrupt – their lives. Innovation is less about “best in the world”, and more about human-centered design that delivers incremental but consequential progress.

Samsung has always been a leader in the TV category. It used to focus on innovations such as OLED and its curve feature but its latest flagship, The Serif, presents a shift – it isn’t the most innovative choice when it comes to the specs (size, thinness, etc.) but it is able to chime into the ambiance of users’ life and become an integral part of their lifestyle.

“Many of today’s biggest companies have achieved success by being at the forefront of technology.”

Peloton also rises fast in the post-pandemic era. It focuses less on hardware advancement but on content creation, offering curated and fresh home exercising experiences that give the brand a unique edge as a user-centric innovator.

The shift: As technology is increasingly democratized, technology leadership can no longer be defined by groundbreaking patents as the only tickets to entry. Instead, innovation can be achieved by zeroing in on customer pain points and leveraging technology in meaningful ways to solve them.

3. Customer Obsessed: From Connected Devices to a Connected World

IoT and smart living aim to create a more seamless life but not all ecosystems today have consumers at their center – some were developed to expand portfolios and create switch barriers. As consumers mature and the future of Web 3.0 fundamentally changes how people connect, the role of technology also needs to move from connecting devices for an easier life to enabling human feelings and interactions, with people’s inner selves, their surroundings and the world at large.

As DJI expands its portfolio, its marriage with Hasselblad wasn’t only about building an ecosystem but also about helping creators experience it differently. Fusing Hasselblad technology onto the consumer drones allows creators to capture extraordinary color and granularity, heighten their senses and strengthen their connection with the world.

The shift: Technology is no longer an end in itself; true customer obsession means using technology as a means to enable and empower meaningful human connections.

4. Distinctively Inspired: From What I Like to What I Believe

The “early adopters” are critical for technology companies and therefore many brands focused on building “newness, imagination or adventure” to mirror their attitudes. But true advocates for a technology leader are people that follow the brand through generations of innovations and upgrades. More than ever, consumers are demanding brands that align with their core beliefs and values and connect them with like-minded individuals.

Where brands normally compete against each other on technicality and performance to win the hearts of consumers, Tesla leads with a core belief to accelerate a sustainable future. It has inspired a like-minded group to follow the brand since its inception. Their unwavering advocacy has become a major driver of Tesla’s exponential growth around the world.

Grab, Southeast Asia’s dominant player, originally in transportation and delivery services, has the mission of driving the region forward by creating economic empowerment for everyone. This belief guides the brand whenever it expands its business horizons. For example, its latest financial products include micro-loans and microinsurance to serve historically underbanked populations.

The shift: Technology is progressive and pervasive. Brands need to go beyond mirroring attitudes and personality expression and must instead lead with core beliefs and shared values that move people and society forward.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

To be a leader in technology today means delivering consistent experiences, improving lives through purposeful innovations, enabling meaningful connections and driving societal progress.

As we emerge from the pandemic, we are reentering a world where technology has – and will – continue to play a dominant role in shaping our lives and our collective future. A shift to Web 3.0 will demand brands to pay more attention than ever to how they stay relevant as underlying technologies and consumer expectations continue to evolve.

Download the 2022 Brand Relevance Index® today for more insights on how companies can establish technology leadership to build a more relentlessly relevant brand.

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Meet the Prophet Board 

Learn about the esteemed behind-the-scenes advisors who play an active role in shaping Prophet’s business.

We are lucky to have a diverse set of leaders at Prophet who bring unparalleled expertise and experience to their roles – advancing our firm’s transformation and grooming rising stars in our community, all while showing up as thought partners and allies to clients and peers. Day in and day out we see them lead by example and help propel Prophet’s growth.  

There is also a set of esteemed behind-the-scenes advisors that play an active role in Prophet’s business trajectory, providing nuanced POVs to help us make big strategic decisions.  

Introducing… Prophet’s Board of Directors 

We asked members of the board about their experience working with the firm – and some of their favorite stories from having a seat at the board table.  

If I was a fly on the wall during a Prophet board meeting, what would I see and hear? 

David Aaker: “It should first be known that when you have a well-run and well-managed company at the top like Prophet, it says a lot about what the board will do and what their role is. It’s painful to be on a board that lacks good leadership. It’s a joy to be on a board of a company with a strong CEO and staff. Given we have that, the composition of the board is exceptional. Many have been on the board for a long time, with our newest members now having been on for a couple of years now. During Prophet board meetings you hear experts with relevant backgrounds that are reinforcing and providing input into the strategies that are leading the company in the right direction. The meetings are supportive and encouraging, using their experience and expertise to guide, lead and provide suggestions to the strategies that are being pursued or influencing new strategies to try. They are also encouraged to be critical, as its an open and respectful environment.”

Niels Nielsen: “It’s very similar to what you see and hear on client teams in the company: Sincere and sometimes heated discussions with a commitment to substantive outcomes. More questions and suggestions than statements. A tonality of no mercy, no malice. Some bantering and teasing. Lots of laughter and good humor.” 

Chan Suh: “If I were to take the question literally, I’d say a bunch of people crammed into a room – or sometimes Zoom – and, as the hours go by, you will see people wilt a little bit over time. The table gets messier and there’s usually plenty of sugar and calories. There’s always seriousness to the questions we are asking, but not about ourselves. There’s good humor, which is remarkable and makes the time together light-hearted and fun. While we spend a lot of time as a core board, we also spend plenty of hours talking and exchanging information with different leaders and peers. Any given board meeting there could be five to seven different teams of people coming in and out and participating in the discussion.” 

William Dean Donovan: “I always thought that the best consultants are experts at the art of supportive confrontation.  You would find a fair amount of that at one of our board meetings.  The Prophet team works hard to put high-quality ideas in front of the board and asks us to challenge their thinking to help make the best decision and create understanding among everyone on the team.” 

Michelle Bottomley: “You would see a great deal of camaraderie and genuine appreciation for the vision/strategy/work and strong results being delivered by the operating team with an appreciation for the respective strengths and perspectives around the table. You would hear a good combination of laughing and lightheartedness with robust discussion/debate on key strategic topics. Our board has a healthy blend of outside and insight board directors with diverse perspectives and professional experiences that complement each other and brings strength to the Prophet strategy.” 

What is one thing you’ve learned since serving on the Prophet board? What is one thing you’ve taught other members?  

Chiaki Nishino: “As a Board member who is also an operating executive at Prophet, managing the day-to-day of our business, it’s been valuable to deliberately put on an external shareholder lens on top of the client and employee lens I always have on. It helps me take a step back to evaluate Prophet from a long-term value creation perspective on a quarterly basis. Our board members come from very different backgrounds, so the questions asked in the board room are just as valuable as the discussions we have.” 

Niels Nielsen: “Out of the more than 35 boards, on which I serve/have served, Prophet is one of the few that have excelled in the sense that building a company is much more than growing its business. It makes me proud to be part of a company that is a consistently successful business, but which is successful because it is a company that grows its people; grows through its people, and consistently strives to do right.” 

David Aaker: “As a Board member who is also still putting out thought leadership into the market, I periodically I bring my books and IP to the meetings. Both to maximize reach and get thoughts and opinions on it. During the meetings, I share my expertise on the strategies we are discussing. In general, it’s a joy and fun to be around such interesting and capable people.”

Gian Fulgoni: “I’ve learned that the Prophet team is second to none in addressing the wide range of business issues that Prophet solves for its clients around the world. I’m confident in saying that because I’ve been able to experience first-hand as a board member and also on the client side.”   

Michael Dunn: “Management teams can sometimes see the board in an adversarial way, spending more time “packaging” information for board consumption than digging into the real issues the company is facing. But I really view it as a space for enrichment and exploration. That mindset has allowed us to really guide and steward the firm into a much more authentic place. We are so lucky to have such a strong group of collaborators with diverse experiences and expertise. I’ve learned that the more open and transparent the key questions we are wrestling with, the more we gain from our time together. If we are vulnerable about our challenges and shortcomings, we are able to get into the rigorous discussions that lead to better thinking and an increased probability that our solutions will be successful.”  

Chan Suh: “I’ve learned the different decision-making and execution. The board alternates: So sometimes the board sets direction and other times the board absorbs the direction that the firm has taken and helps to advance it. I’ve been on different boards for nonprofits and I’ve led my own board for an enterprise before. But as a board member at Prophet, I’ve learned more about how to balance the two. In terms of teaching, I’ve brought energy around trying and starting new things – and bringing them to either success or failure quickly. That’s always been a part of my DNA and I’ve certainly shared it with the board.” 

What excites you the most about Prophet’s transformation and growth trajectory?  

Gian Fulgoni: “It’s always exciting to be associated with a successful and fast-growing transformation of a business – I’ve been fortunate to see it happen both inside Prophet itself and on the client side. It’s also exciting to realize that digital transformations today not only mean transforming companies that weren’t digital but also transforming companies that were already digital, but which hadn’t kept up with the pace of change.”     

William Dean Donovan: “Prophet is at the intersection of analytics, design, brand and marketing strategy.  Those are threads that can create an enormous impact if woven together properly.  Prophet’s interdisciplinary approach stitches the pieces in a unique way.  That creates unique thinking and big impact.”   

Michelle Bottomley: “Prophet has built upon our strong foundation in research, insights and branding as a platform for business transformation to deliver practical solutions using modern tools to generate demand, brand engagement and brand delivery by employees. This combination of strong insights-based strategy with the ability to implement programs that drive differentiation and growth is something I wish I tapped into while a CMO myself. Secondly, I am enormously impressed with the talented leadership team — who are world-class pioneers in their respective areas – and our leader’s ability to stand up new practices that help clients succeed where they need Prophet to extend the brand most.” 

Chan Suh: “Transformation and growth is the ultimate destination of a marketing, brand, organizational, experience consulting. Externally, the world needs this in a way that we have now been able to formulate. I really feel like we’ve hit the nail on the head in terms of relevance and need. Internally, what excites me most is that it’s a big tent. And as long as we keep it a big tent, we will be able to welcome a lot of skill sets that we don’t yet have and we will be able to grow the expertise and stay ahead of the competition.” 

David Aaker: “It’s amazing that we’ve come this far as a firm and have worked with the caliber of clients we are and have driven the impact we have for our impressive roster of clients. The problem, of course, is to get credit for it in the market and to be known for it. We do so much beyond brand that the world doesn’t yet know. For now, we are our client’s biggest, best-kept secret and I see that changing soon.”

What Prophet value resonates with you the most?  

Chiaki Nishino: “Share Joy – we constantly discuss at the board how we partner not only with our clients but with each other as team members in a way that’s incredibly unique and authentic. We don’t take ourselves too seriously and take the time to connect as teammates and people. I strongly believe that our success comes from not only the capabilities we bring to bear for our clients, but the way in which our people team and relate with each other.”

Chan Suh: “Give and Grow is a value that we exercise, demonstrate and live every day. It is visible in how we work and how we operate the business. We are constantly trying to create one team by investing in the personal and professional growth of our people and our clients. We do so by being a coach, a sounding board or a cheering section. And while we all have unique needs and goals, we all have a shared understanding that we’re in this together—and by offering our time, empathy and brainpower to support the collective potential of our teams, clients and communities, we flourish together. We may work in different areas and have different skillsets or expertise, but we believe in something central that is greater than the sum of its little subgroups.”

Michael Dunn: “It’s a toss-up between Create with Courage & Open Minds. Our Create with Courage value focuses on the entrepreneurial spirit that is foundational to Prophet. When something could be better, we don’t settle—we lean in and create. We help clients push boundaries when they are tackling their biggest challenges in order to drive growth and impact. When we put our heart into our work while applying intellect, creativity and rigor to execute, we can push boundaries. I am quite fond of Open Minds because Propheteers are unmistakable—we’re upfront about who we are. We’re united, but different, which allows us and our clients to achieve more together. It’s in our nature to seek diverse voices and embrace all backgrounds and lived experiences. We feel that by showing up honestly and openly with each other and clients, we discover new paths for connection and creativity. It’s a culture we’ve built that we are incredibly proud of.”

To learn more or be connected with one of Prophet’s leaders, reach out today.  

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FINAL THOUGHTS

We are grateful for the tremendous support from this all-star group of leaders – individuals who have led powerful careers and are committed to paying it forward. As our firm continues to grow, we thank the Board of Directors for pushing the direction of our firm and advising us throughout our transformation.  

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Elevating Wellbeing Can Inspire Change in Healthcare Organizations

Since the onset of the pandemic, mental health and burnout have become more common topics of conversation in the healthcare space and within the broader culture. The use of #MentalHealthAwareness in more than four million Tweets in 2021 alone, for example, shows just how common conversations about mental health have become.

Increased consciousness of behavioral health and wellbeing was one of the driving forces behind the Great Reshuffle, which significantly hit the healthcare industry. It’s estimated that almost 20 percent of healthcare workers quit during the pandemic. And because behavioral health is very much on the minds of workers, it’s an urgent topic for employers too, in healthcare and nearly every other industry.

Forward-looking organizations are leaning into the critical issue by seeking ways to facilitate more productive conversations and provide additional behavioral health support.

Why Employers Should Support the Health of Healthcare Workers

Today, wellbeing in the workplace has evolved to become more holistic, including both physical and behavioral health. As we highlight in our POV on employee wellbeing, Prophet believes a balance of flexibility and connection is key to promoting wellbeing among employees across industries; empathetic leadership and emotional support also play important roles. This can help workers feel free to bring their authentic selves to the workplace and have candid conversations about sensitive topics, including mental health.

“Employers can enable a sense of belonging, where workers see how their own values align with the organization.”

By talking about the health of healthcare workers and creating space for conversations on wellbeing broadly, organizations send the message that their people are not alone in navigating stress, anxiety and fatigue. In proactively helping healthcare workers live their best lives both on the job and outside of work, employers can enable a sense of belonging, where workers see how their own values align with the organization.

How to Prioritize and Boost Wellbeing Across Healthcare Organizations

Prophet’s Human-Centered Transformation Model focuses on four elements key to organizational health and success: DNA, Mind, Body, and Soul. By changing the way wellbeing is talked about in the workplace, each element contributes to a healthier workday and more effective employee retention.

The ‘DNA’ is the Heart of Wellbeing

Wellbeing can – and should – be a part of an organization’s purpose and employee value proposition. Whether an organization has long provided behavioral health benefits or is just now considering doing so, supporting ongoing conversations around wellbeing can provide deep and authentic connections. This is especially important at a time when healthcare workers are prioritizing wellbeing in their workday and are more likely to move on if those expectations are not met.

The ‘Mind’ is How to Enable Wellbeing

Drive change across the healthcare workforce by actively promoting greater wellbeing. The organizational mind can be shaped by educating workers on the importance of behavioral health, providing useful resources, and building awareness of these offerings. Across industries, many companies are offering subscriptions to mental health platforms and meditation apps (e.g., Calm Business and Headspace for Work), which offer exercises and tips to stay focused and mindful throughout the day.

The ‘Body’ is How to Act on Change

To help healthcare workers feel equipped in prioritizing their wellbeing, organizations can change their operating model by putting in place processes and systems that support greater behavioral health and continuously measure their effectiveness. While workers navigate implementing wellbeing tools, organizations can encourage workers to share what is and is not working so that the types of resources being provided can simultaneously evolve.

The ‘Soul’ is How to Ignite Belief

These are the mindsets, behaviors, and rituals that continually demonstrate that wellbeing is an organizational priority. For instance, when leaders in the healthcare space open up and share their own stories on behavioral health and wellbeing, people get the message that it’s an important consideration. By furthering the dialogue on behavioral health and creating a sense of belonging, organizations will have happier, healthier workers.

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While healthcare organizations are limited in their ability to provide the flexibility (e.g., remote working) that some workers want, there is an opportunity in the healthcare space for organizations to support their employees’ behavioral health deeply and authentically.

As talk about behavioral health becomes the norm in the workplace, companies are seeking to build more genuine connections with their employees. Removing the stigma of talking about mental health is a great first step to creating lasting change. Robust behavioral health programs will become standard features of benefits for those organizations that want to stand out as “employers of choice.”

Get in touch with our Healthcare specialists and our Organization & Culture experts if you would like to learn more.

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PODCAST

Healthcare Changemakers Podcast

Summary

Hosted by Jeff Gourdji and Priya Aneja, Prophet’s Healthcare Changemakers podcast is where healthcare leaders who are driving change in their organizations, as well as today’s healthcare experience, share their stories. In this podcast, you’ll hear from industry-leading healthcare professionals about their personal transformation journeys and what organizations can do to create the next wave of growth today and in the future.

Episodes

18. What We’ve Learned About Changemakers 

Jeff, Lindsey, Priya and senior editor Anna Kuno look back at 2022 and look ahead at what’s next, including a new name for the podcast. The hosts reflect on topics that have stood out, lessons they have learned, and things that have surprised them, as well as why the show is now called Healthcare Changemakers. 

17. Thomas Cornwell MD of Village Medical at Home 

Dr. Thomas Cornwell, National Medical Director of Village Medical at Home, has made more than 34,000 house calls. That’s astounding considering that home-based visits haven’t traditionally been considered to be a profitable service line. Nothing has been shown to reduce hospitalizations on the sickest patients in society as much as home-based primary care, but the economics haven’t added up until players like Village Medical have found a place for it in their value-based care models. Take a detailed look at the economic engine behind “doing the right thing” and how aligning incentives has transformed the state of home-based care. 

16. Dan Liljenquist of Intermountain Healthcare 

Dan Liljenquist, Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer for Intermountain Healthcare, discusses physician shortages, the economics of drug development and distribution, and his career path with and before Intermountain Healthcare. Value-based care isn’t a destination; it’s an evolution. Learn where Dan sees that evolution going next and how it has led to the creation of the nonprofit generic drug manufacturing company Civica Rx. 

15. A. J. Loiacono of Capital Rx 

A. J. Loiacono, CEO of Capital Rx, believes in unlocking the power of the pharmacist in the healthcare value equation. If we can stop fighting over drug pricing and just let buyers and sellers freely communicate, it would free up pharmacists to be more innovative. Learn how Capital Rx is challenging the traditional PBM (pharmacy benefit manager) space and transforming drug pricing once and for all. 

14. Jamey Edwards of StartUp Health 

Jamey Edwards, Chief Platform Officer at StartUp Health, sees transformation through the eyes of hundreds of entrepreneurs that he supports. Their collective efforts are making progress in key areas such as improving access, reducing bias, and addressing health equity. Learn how StartUp Health’s portfolio companies are gaining traction and overcoming blockers of innovation that have limited the industry’s progress until now. 

13. Snezana Mahon, Transcarent  

Snezana Mahon, Chief Operating Officer at Transcarent, shares how transparency, care, and empowerment are vital components of a transformation. An empowered healthcare consumer understands the choices that they need to make and has the right information at their fingertips to make those choices. Learn how Transcarent is focusing on the longitudinal experience of care in oncology, behavioral health, and more. 

12. Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider, End Well 

Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider, founder and president of End Well, shares how the practice of medicine is changing to better serve end-of-life needs. Without the proper training and education, it can be challenging for healthcare professionals to know where palliative care fits in their patients’ treatment. Learn how End Well is working to transform the dialogue about end-of-life care and honor the needs of patients and their loves ones. 

11. Tony Ambrozie, Baptist Health South Florida 

Tony Ambrozie, Senior Vice President and Chief Digital and Information Officer at Baptist Health South Florida, shares how he represents consumers’ digital needs in their personal health journeys. Clinicians are heroes for the most important part of a patient’s journey – providing their care – but it isn’t the only part of the journey. Learn how Tony employs lessons he learned from his time at The Walt Disney Company, why communications preferences are considered table stakes, and how empathy for the operations team goes a long way. 

10. Joneigh Klaldun, CVS Health 

Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, Vice President and Chief Health Equity Officer at CVS Health, shares the impact when organizations move beyond buzzwords and embark on a health equity transformation. Disparities aren’t inevitable, and there’s no gene that says that you should have a lower quality of life because of the color of your skin. Learn how to recognize the existence of implicit bias, collect data at scale, and use that data to address disparities in care. 

9. Alistair Erskine MD of Mass General Brigham 

Dr. Alistair Erskine, Chief Digital Health Officer at Mass General Brigham, breaks down what’s coming next as major medical institutions embrace the next phase of their digital transformation. While data is currency in managing patient care, it hasn’t been fully unlocked at scale yet. Learn how Mass General Brigham is aligning key digital components of their business model, operations, clinical workforce, and more, to provide a more satisfying patient experience. 

8. Tamara Ward of Oscar Health 

Tamara Ward, SVP of Insurance Business Operations at Oscar Health, shares what happens when you put empathy at the center of the transformation equation. Sometimes starting and failing at transformation is still better than never trying it at all because of what you learn along the way. Learn how Tam has learned to align transformation with the core competencies of the business and not get distracted by the hot topics of the moment. 

7. Michelle Lockyer 

Michelle Lockyer knows that the pace of transformation can affect the ultimate result in large, established organizations. The longer that a transformation continues, the more challenging it can become for leaders to keep up the momentum and for team members to stay engaged. Learn the myths and realities of transformation in the biotech space, including the three steps on Michelle’s 90-day checklist, her tips for constructing a strong purpose statement, and the attributes she looks for in leaders to drive long-term change. 

6. Myoung Cha of Carbon Health

Myoung Cha, President of Omnichannel Care & Chief Strategy Officer at Carbon Health, knows that behavior change takes more than just sharing information. Human beings are wired to act on short-term outcomes rather than longer-term habits where behavior problems often occur. Learn how Carbon Health is creating a new kind of primary care by filling care gaps, creating tighter feedback loops, and leaning into ambiguity.

5. Nick Patel of Prisma Health

Dr. Nick Patel, chief digital officer at Prisma Health, shares what the 2025 version of a holistic experience strategy looks like, and what he’s working on today to get there. Shifting from fragmented care to connected ecosystems requires governance and alignment so that IT, informatics and medical groups can all look in the same direction. Learn the types of personas and data sources that Dr. Patel’s team uses to complete the patient picture and help physicians to provide more personalized, effective care.

4. Stella Sanchez of Teladoc Health

Stella Sanchez, VP of consumer marketing at Teladoc Health, shares how building loyalty with consumers makes it easier to drive behavior change. Transformation requires inspiration, and that inspiration needs to come from a clear vision. Learn how Stella’s team uses a B2B2C marketing model to clearly articulate their vision not just for their client partners, but for the consumers whom they serve.

3. Matt Gove of Summit Health

Matt Gove, chief marketing officer at Summit Health, discusses what health system leaders can learn from the transformation story of merging brands and growing relentlessly during the pandemic. Matt shares lessons about providing access to all the right care, developing the right type of relationships with consumers and the need to bring operations into patient experience work much earlier in the process. Learn more about Summit Health’s ongoing transformation work that has continued since their merger with CityMD, the leading urgent care provider in New York.

2. Mary Varghese Presti of Dragon Medical

Mary Varghese Presti, SVP & GM of Dragon Medical, shares her experience setting the pace and direction for innovation at the same time. She explains the need for having not just a vision and inspiration for transformation, but also the execution and sweat equity to drive it to the destination.

1. Nishi Rawat MD of Bamboo Health

Nishi Rawat MD, chief clinical officer of Bamboo Health, shares her experience in addressing whole-person health by attacking the twin epidemics of opioid abuse and mental health. There is an expectation for transformation in healthcare to happen quickly, but Nishi sees it happening incrementally, and it’s almost unnoticeable at times. Learn more about the work that their team at Bamboo Health is doing to make a difference.

More episodes will be added as the season progresses.

Are you a healthcare leader hoping to join the discussion? Reach out to Jeff, Lindsey or Priya today.

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A Six Step Guide to Digital Product Creation

Launching successful digital products is extremely difficult. In fact, 95% of products that are introduced each year fail. The digital product landscape has become much more complex and specialized – from grocery delivery apps to customer service chatbots – digital products shape the way we live, connect and do business.

However, it takes more than a killer novel idea to make it rich and successful. The process of bringing the digital product to life, from an idea on paper to practical reality, with development, testing and refinement is daunting and where many fail. While you can never guarantee success (who knows when a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic will dramatically change the world and markets), you can greatly reduce the risk of product failure by taking a methodical and intentional approach to how you build digital products.

While each product is different, successful digital product creation requires an intentional chain of steps to validate. Through our tried, tested and validated iterative approach, we collaborate with clients across industries and verticals to define, launch and scale successful digital products in-market at pace. A digital product is not simply a mobile application or a website. We think of a digital product as having these four components:

(1) A clear user value proposition, that is (2) delivered through a value-generating business model and is (3) supported by an operational model that optimizes consistent delivery of services, which (4) customers and/or employees interact with through digital interface(s).

As you can see there is a lot necessary to get right in building digital products. So, where do you start?

The Six Stages of Digital Product Creation

At Prophet, we take an agile, insights-driven approach to helping our clients develop valuable and successful new products. As quickly as possible we move from assumptions to concrete knowledge fueled by market evidence around every element of the potential product. Our approach breaks the process into six specific stages:

  1. Opportunity Definition
  2. Rapid Experience Design
  3. Alpha
  4. Beta
  5. Core
  6. Retirement

Let’s dig into how these phases work in sequence to reduce risk and increase chances of success.

Stage One: Opportunity Definition

The opportunity stage is one of the most critical phases of digital product creation. Before even beginning to sketch a design or write a line of code, it all starts with defining a valuable opportunity asking, ‘what is the problem that needs to be solved, is it worth solving and does it match the strategic goals for the company?’  Often, businesses think they already understand the problem, and this is precisely why many new products fail.

Prophet’s Experience and Innovation experts bring a human-centered design approach to the process of defining and designing these opportunities. It will often start by uncovering and designing a compelling experience strategy for how a company can distinguish and deliver value for its customers in desirable ways across the entire customer journey. This perspective, along with our deep expertise in service design and business design, defines initial concepts and objectives that formalize compelling product opportunities aligned to our client’s business strategies.

Questions we focus on answering in this phase are: 

  • Can we find valuable opportunities that match the strategic goals?
  • Who is the target audience, and do they have a large enough problem in line with the client’s aspirations?

Stage Two: Rapid Experience Design

The goal of this next stage is to iteratively validate and refine the opportunity and assumptions with target customers to gain essential evidence, deep dive into their unmet needs and embed decisive learnings. This level of fast-paced evidence-driven learning can be eye-opening for clients used to longer bureaucratic cycles of decision making and analysis paralysis.

Through this rapid process, we quickly arrive at a minimum viable concept (MVC). There are many steps to get to a fully finessed product, but we need to start with a concept from which we can get quick iterative end-user feedback so that we can best understand the opportunity and a possible solution. In this way, the MVC lets us quickly and cheaply test while we are iteratively improving our understanding of the opportunity.

Questions we focus on answering in this phase are: 

  • Can we design a solution for the target audience’s needs?
  • Does our evidence indicate the solution can deliver on the target audience’s unmet or underserved needs?
  • Can we define the functional capabilities necessary to deliver the solution?

Stage Three: Alpha

Armed with the best probable solution to the problem, the alpha phase is focused on the design, build and testing of the components of the product offering. Technical functionality, customer support, business models, content and data requirements enabled by strategic organizational coordination all become the levers we nimbly adjust to build the product offering. This requires frequent and consistent testing with target customers to refine every element of the product offering. Ultimately, the goal of this phase is to deliver the minimum functionality necessary to achieve product/market fit.

Questions we focus on answering in this phase are: 

  • Is this a sustainable product people will consistently reuse and/or pay for?
  • Does the evidence indicate that this solution would deliver differentiation and is there a viable business model?
  • Is there the will/skill/bandwidth to deliver this minimal viable product (MVP)?
  • Have the necessary people/process/data/capabilities been identified to deliver this solution at scale?

Stage Four: Beta

At the beta stage, the mythical product/market fit has been reached and now it’s about proving active customers would use the product consistently through a valuable business model. Groups that may have lightly engaged previously across marketing, sales, corporate development, legal, compliance, operations and others, now become fundamental to the success of the product and its go-to-market strategy. This is when we actively pursue approaches to grow the audience, reduce operational and customer acquisition costs and build new functionality to attract new customers without losing existing customers. It is an artful dance requiring sizeable bets to be placed on people, process, data and technology all while taking a measurable outcome-based focus on how to grow the business.

Questions we focus on answering in this phase are: 

  • Can we build scalable and profitable business value?
  • Does our evidence identify a scalable business model with a route to profitability?
  • What is the go-to-market strategy for scaled commercialization?

Stage Five: Core

This fifth phase is the promised land, where all the work has paid off and we have a validated product in the market, delivering customer and business value.  At this stage, we no longer need proxy metrics for product success but can move to standard business accounting and processes to support sustained growth in the enterprise – the scaling phase.

Despite the effort that has been expended up until this point, this is still a very common point of failure for products as they transition from incubating a new product to delivering through existing business metrics and accounting. This is part of why it is important to bring the company along on this incubation process to avoid organ rejection and yet keep enough distance to give novel and innovative ideas the space to grow. This product can be sustained either through an existing business unit within the company or by creating a wholly new business unit.  Either direction will require the product team to adopt a new set of goals, focus and investment to scale in a competitive market while consistently delivering value for customers.

Questions we focus on answering in this phase are: 

  • How do we structure the functional and operational capabilities within the company to scale this product successfully?
  • Which capabilities require partnership with outside companies, where might new capabilities need to be built or companies acquired to fuel growth?

Stage Six: Retirement

All products and services companies deliver will, at some point, outlive their value to the business and/or their customers. The ability to objectively evaluate which products and business lines to employ focus and resources is critical to the longevity and stability of the company.  In this way, we need to understand not only when it has outlived its use, but how impactful it will be to sunset the product line to the brand, the bottom line, the current customers and the larger market.  Through these lenses, we can begin to understand whether we will need to plan a migration of customers to another product offering, spinoff or sell this product to remove it from the brand and company responsibility, or simply turn off the lights.

It is very difficult to deprecate something that has been such a part of your company’s history, but being a resilient business requires tough choices about capital and resource allocation for sustained growth.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

No digital product development will be identical. However, by planning for each of these six stages you can set your product up for success. As a growth and transformation consultancy, it is central to our ways of operating to help our clients navigate all stages of the product lifecycle, particularly as they look to embed new capabilities, grow their audiences and differentiate themselves in volatile and competitive marketplaces.

From proposition to product, Prophet’s Experience & Innovation experts can uncover valuable insights, validate innovative ideas and design intuitive and engaging digital products and services to help your business achieve and maintain a competitive advantage.

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Nine Brand Building Lessons for Marketing in Web3

Blockchains and the tokenization of assets allow marketers to unlock new forms of community development and value exchange with consumers. In this article, we outline how marketers will need to re-evaluate brand building in Web3 based on nine observations. To do this, we’re drawing perspectives from the recent launch of Moonbirds, a non-fungible token (NFT) developed by PROOF Holdings.

While many likely don’t know Moonbirds as a brand, we’re using it as a case because we admire the brand-building mechanics this project is demonstrating within new Web3 possibilities. Moonbirds is an Ethereum-based collection of 10,000 unique Profile Pictures (PFPs). Each token doubles as membership of sorts, granting owners access to an exclusive Discord (a server where owners chat and hang out) along with unique in-real-life (IRL) events and digital membership benefits. The brand mirrors and further builds on proven tactics leveraged by NFTs like Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) from Yuga Labs.

For context, Moonbirds launched on April 16, 2022, raising $66 Million in a matter of hours. In just 48 hours from its launch, it became the top traded NFT by volume, created more than $210 million in additional secondary sales and had a floor price of $62,000 (the cheapest bird available for purchase). Additionally, Moonbirds is already pushing into popular culture. Celebrities like Jimmy Fallon have even changed their verified NFT profile pictures on Twitter.

Though it’s the early days of brand building in Web3 with Budweiser, Taco Bell, Campbell’s, Adidas, Twitter, Gucci and countless others having launched NFTs, we can see why many of these big brands have been comparatively less successful in adopting some of the new rules of brand building.

Let’s use Moonbirds to illustrate nine brand-building lessons for Web3.

People are at the Heart of a Brand’s Reason to Believe (RTB)

Moonbirds was built out of PROOF Holdings which had already successfully launched PROOF Collective, a proven NFT community. The belief in the team – Kevin Rose (Revision3, Digg), Ryan Carson (founder of Treehouse), and Justin Mezzell, an experienced artist, illustrator, and product designer – is the core of why there is a demand for this project. At Prophet, we talk a lot about human-centered transformation. So, much of a brand’s success in Web3 will be built around having strong people committed to building the brand in addition to driving demand, engagement and the overall experience.

Leaders that Drive Brand Content Development and Community Engagement

Content and community for Moonbirds have been largely driven by its founders. Kevin is an avid podcaster (Proof, Modern Finance) and Ryan is one of the more prolific people on Discord and Twitter. Ahead of the launch, they’ve been on a roadshow translating the brand’s vision and building demand and understanding of the project. Web3 brand building will require a greater emphasis on leaders’ ability to be the marketers building demand for their brands vs. the legacy approach of the most junior or outsourced teams managing customer relationships, content creation and communications.

Evolved Monetization Strategies Pushing Perpetual Brand Building

Moonbirds is committed to reinvesting all raised funds in delivering for the community. This means that token holders are delivered value ahead of the brand capturing it. Over time, Moonbirds allows PROOF Holdings to build valuable infrastructure like new technologies, a strong team, community and much more which can be monetized in the future. Tokenizing these assets broadly contradicts the “create demand and sell” model of traditional commerce in favor of developing an always-on, brand-demand flywheel – one that creates ongoing value for a community of token holders. Web3 will push business model design to create sustained demand that engages communities gated by tokens. This will allow brands to collect perpetual royalties in a brand-demand flywheel.

Influencers Become a Rising Channel for Brand Building

Moonbirds unlocked a host of ecosystem partners beyond PROOF’s 1,000-member community to grow the brand. This includes some of the most influential bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, social posters and other Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) in the space. As media is becoming increasingly decentralized, brands will need to partner and engage KOLs to play a very important role through longer-form audio, video and visual content.

Community Shares in Brand Marketing and Brand IP Ownership

Moonbirds (and other Web3 projects) violate a long-held brand-building belief on Intellectual Property (IP) rights being sacred to the brand. Every owl in the Moonbirds collection is owned by the community member that buys it. These owners have unique rights that unlock new possibilities; from making it their digital identity to designing clothing, to creating a gin brand featuring their unique owl. Some creators go as far as putting brand-built IP for owners into full creative commons (CC0).

“Prophet sees the next wave of brand building in Web3 where marketers rethink IP ownership and its value exchange with their communities.”

While this won’t happen in all industries, Prophet sees the next wave of brand building in Web3 where marketers rethink IP ownership and its value exchange with their communities. These communities will play a powerful role in the brand’s marketing army, sharing in the monetary reward, and helping the brand unlock uncommon growth.

Disruptive Design and Brand Visual Identity Systems

On the surface, Moonbirds design is basic pixelated art. That choice was deliberate so the art itself can live fully on the blockchain. What’s innovative about each bird is a design system that stretches the visual identity of the Moonbirds parent brand into unique community expressions of the owl for each community member. This flexible design system allows for many permutations. The process for building these also involves greater inclusion using a panel of diverse team members to inform design decisions. While not all Web3 brand building will result in individual NFTs, the design will stretch brands into more flexible, disruptive, inclusive, and adaptive visual systems that allow the brand to be more self-expressive, community-minded, and unique.

Continuous Brand Feedback Loops

Moonbirds leverages the 1,000 members of PROOF Holding’s PROOF Collective community to build the brand. These members became an idea engine and feedback loop that drove continued innovation for the Moonbirds launch. Decisions large and small were sourced to make the project more exciting and successful. We see a future of brand building in Web3 that doesn’t purely rely on smart product teams and strategists building brands, but also on open-sourced innovation and rapid, continuous feedback loops from brand communities that shape a number of brand-based decisions and capabilities.

Brand Roadmaps with an Ongoing Sequence of Innovative Activations

Moonbirds’ day-one announcement included a set of innovative experiences and activations they had planned for the communities. These included community meetups along with other IRL events, exclusive merchandise and access to a new version of the Metaverse called Project Highrise. Many legacy brands that have launched NFTs have fallen short by not thinking through such ongoing engagement and gamification or play with their communities. The best brand building in Web3 will solve the Brand-Demand equation by using a series of unique, ongoing and inspiring activations that will propel the brand and communities forward.

Moats Build From a Brand’s Unique Capabilities

Well-known personalities such as Alexis Ohanian (co-founder of Reddit), Tim Ferriss (best-selling author), Gary Vaynerchuk (entrepreneur), along with artists like Snowfro (also ArtBlocks founder), Xcopy, Larva Labs and Justin Aversano make up a partial list of the powerful network built by the founders of Moonbirds. This network allows the team to drive unique relationships and brand activations that can’t be achieved by others. One such signal for Moonbirds was the development of birds with unique space helmets, possibly getting special private tours of the SpaceX facility. We believe the future of brand building will rely on connecting tokenized goods like an NFT into gated access passes to both digital and physical products and experiences that only your brand can uniquely provide. These sources of value will be the true moats for brand building in Web3.

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NFTs provide a clear long-term value proposition for consumers that is hard to ignore: verifiable ownership, sharing in a brand’s value and near-frictionless sale and transfer of unique digital goods. This technology will inevitably disrupt nearly every industry (e.g., ticketing, membership, deeds for physical property, all forms of media, etc.).

With NFTs, it is fair to acknowledge some speculation around profile pictures (PFPs) and other art being created as a Ponzi scheme or a way to “get rich quick.” However, adoption continues at an exponential rate and what we see emerging early on, is that these types of NFTs are serving a fundamental physiological function that mirrors luxury goods in terms of belonging and self-esteem. That, coupled with strong communities and different practical use cases (meetups, physical spaces, exclusive access to events) are still being developed.

As brands continue to enter the proverbial build a presence in Web3, much will evolve and marketers should continue to watch the space and learn from projects like Moonbirds.

Want to learn more about partnering with Prophet on driving growth? Contact us today.

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How We Connect in a Hybrid and Remote Work Environment

Working in a hybrid environment for the past two years has shifted our approach to how we build and sustain our culture at Prophet. With 14 global offices and 600+ Propheteers, finding opportunities to connect and create a stronger community is important to the health and vitality of our firm. Our culture has always been a distinct reason people join and stay at Prophet and after two-plus years of being virtual, we knew we needed to reinvigorate how we connect and build relationships with each other.

In addition, we also wanted to recognize our talent and show them our appreciation for all the ways they contribute to Prophet’s success. How do we achieve this? Our answer – Prophet Connects. Focusing on our three key pillars of what makes a strong culture–connection, inspiration and appreciation–our Culture & Engagement Team created curated moments throughout the month of March to bring our employees together and create more personal and meaningful connections with Propheteers globally.

Inspired by the amazing talent within Prophet, we aimed to create a space that allowed us to learn more about each other and understand the different journeys and experiences of our teammates, to bring in outside inspiration and external speakers to share their stories, and to show our appreciation for our teams, leaders, and out people.

Week One: Connection

To respect the diverse time zones of our global team, we used a regional approach for week one. With 30 minutes on the calendars, Propheteers in each region were invited to join a call with very limited information about the event. Would these calls be exciting? Nerve-racking? Thrilling? The answer was yes to all of the above!

Small groups of Propheteers were placed in breakout rooms and tasked with two items. The first task was to answer the question: “What’s your connection?” Each group had several minutes to figure out what they had in common. Many found they all love camping, others discovered that everyone in their group enjoys the beach and some had travel dreams of visiting Paris. Once groups found their connection, they were then asked to create or find a meme and/or GIF that captured the spirit of their commonality. And boy did they deliver!

Propheteers who participated in this first event had two opportunities to walk away winners. However, just by showing up to the activity, they had the opportunity to win a truly special prize–connecting with their peers. This first event proved to be a great success. Not only did we make personal connections within the breakout teams, but we also provided an escape from the reality of everyday work, a moment to laugh together and simply an opportunity to have fun with one another while connecting with our people.

Week Two: Inspiration

Building culture and connections in a hybrid/remote world is hard. We miss the days of being in the office, sharing lunch or a cup of coffee together and catching up on each other’s lives. Our people wanted the opportunity to have smaller, more intimate connections on topics outside of current projects and work-related tasks. Inspired by TED talks, Prophet Talks emerged. Prophet Talks was all about inspiring our teammates. Over the course of three days, we had a line-up of 21 speakers on diverse topics. Space was limited in each talk as we wanted to keep the groups small for a more personal experience.

“Not only did we make personal connections within the breakout teams, but we also provided an escape from the reality of everyday work.”

Day one focused on finding purpose. We had regional, external speakers, like Culture and Innovative Curator Andy Stefanovich, share stories of how they found a sense of purpose in their work and personal lives. Prophet alums, Blums Pineda, MD and global head of internet and tech investment at banking for Standard Chartered Bank, and Wisdom Mak, a strategist for Chanel’s regional fashion team, shared their experiences of being leaders in a virtual environment, what it takes to keep your team engaged in a hybrid environment, and how you can be a strong thought leader in your career.

“Don’t stop me now” was the theme for day two of Prophet Talks. We highlighted Propheteers from all types of roles and areas of expertise and had them share their stories of success. Chiaki Nishino shared her journey from engagement manager to senior partner and president of North America. While another Prophet leader, Jeff Abbott, shared his process of writing over 20 novels in the last 20 years.

Day three’s theme was “all about the why”. Why is creativity at Prophet so awesome? Why is Dave Aaker so important? Why do we offer design services at Prophet? Digital? Healthcare? Social impact? Those were just some of the topics that were covered by our own Prophet experts. For example, London office Creative Director and Partner Gregg Finlay shared and inspired us with his passion for design and creativity. Also, from our Berlin office, Partner Layla Keramat explored the world of X&I and motivated us to think from different perspectives.

Week Three: Appreciation

Our people are what matter and what makes Prophet such a great organization to be a part of. We took this opportunity to recognize our people for the amazing work they do every day. From a slow reveal poem highlighting each class-to-class playlist to internal kudos and shout-outs, our team introduced something new each day to our fellow Propheteers. The finale of our three-week event was a class assignment where we asked each Prophet class what makes them the best. Teams were tasked to create 60-second videos answering the question, putting their creative minds and humor to the test. The activity wrapped up with a viewing of all the videos and participants voting on a favorite.

We won’t tell you the winner, but they have bragging rights and some pretty cool swage headed their way.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Why We Loved Prophet Connects

Those who participated in Prophet Connects felt more connected, inspired and appreciated by this experience. We set out three primary goals for this event. One–to help build stronger connections across regions. Two–to bring smaller, intimate groups together to bond over shared interests and passions. Three–to show our appreciation and gratitude to our people through sincerity and fun interactions.

We achieved all our goals and more. We made new friends, learned about each other and had a ton of fun along the way. Our event provided Propheteers the jolt of connecting energy they needed to kickstart the year. What we loved most about Prophet Connects? It sparked ideas across the firm and at a local level, inspiring Propheteers to make their own journey, bringing people together and building those important relationships. Looking to the future, we are excited to find new ways to connect, inspire and appreciate each other. Stay tuned…

Interested in learning more about Prophet culture? Visit our Life at Prophet page.

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Growing Sustainable Fashion: Inspiring Brand Moves for DTC Companies

Although the fashion industry traditionally follows seasonal trends, sustainability is proving to be a year-round wardrobe staple among DTC brands and their customers. Recycled materials, circular fashion and ethical supply chains are capturing headlines as brands depart from a legacy of wasteful production processes and find new ways to revolutionize the fashion industry’s carbon footprint.

Despite the ongoing buzz and urgency, among both customers and brands, to address such issues, the sustainable fashion market remains a fraction of overall fashion sales. Additionally, consumers’ intentions do not yet match their purchase habits. As documented by ecological certification company Oeko-Tex, 69% of millennials report an interest in purchasing sustainable fashion, however only 37% purchase sustainable fashion. This points to a meaningful opportunity to convert that interest into a purchase.

As DTC fashion companies look to expand the ethical and sustainable share of the overall fashion market, they must consider the factors that are hindering consumers from purchasing more sustainable garments. The high price point of sustainable clothing, low awareness of the environmental impact and lack of trust in sustainability claims have been clear limiting factors.

Brand loyalty stands out as a key strategic move that DTC companies can immediately pursue to increase their share of the sustainable fashion market and help grow the industry overall. Brand loyalty can help DTC companies increase their relevance amongst consumers and break down some of their hesitations about sustainable fashion.

To increase brand loyalty in fashion sustainability, successful DTC brands often focus on one, or both, of the following:

  1. Brand message
  2. Brand inspiration

These levers are powerful ways to shape consumer perceptions and drive enduring loyalty.

1. Building Loyalty Through Pervasively Innovative Brand Messaging

DTC fashion brands that are truly pushing sustainability forward and not resorting to greenwashing are building lasting brand relevance and loyalty. Some consumers are wary of brands that talk about sustainability without the innovations in the supply chain, or a business model to back up the claims. DTC fashion brands that create innovative messaging on sustainability have a chance to win in the market.

The LA-based sustainable clothing brand Reformation offers a powerful example of a profitable DTC fashion retailer that has managed to combine growth with genuine innovation in sustainability. Reformation has made understanding sustainability more accessible for consumers, by publishing environmental impact data and content for each individual item on its website. Its sustainability report from 2020 also highlights how it works with supply chain partners to utilize clean chemicals and ensure that 75% of its fibers meet its two highest standards for sustainability.

Reformation has also been a pioneer in making sustainability content feel approachable through clever taglines like “Carbon is canceled” and “Being naked is the #1 most sustainable option, we’re #2.” All in all, its commitment to building a community of loyal and environmentally conscious customers through DTC brand practices has shown great success.

2. Building Loyalty Through Distinctive Brand Identity

While important, innovation in sustainability messaging isn’t the only tactic necessary to drive DTC brand loyalty. DTC fashion companies must have distinctive, inspired products and a brand identity to match. The Business of Fashion’s profile of the divergent paths of DTC brands Vuori and Entireworld offers a cautionary tale of what happens when companies are not distinctly inspired. Vuori is a clothing brand that sells activewear and athletic clothing, while Entireworld was a leisurewear brand.

In October, Vuori secured hundreds of millions in investment to expand its activewear brand, while Entireworld shuttered. In addition to profitability, much of Entireworld’s failure was due to its undifferentiated product. Vuori launched new segments like men’s activewear and surf apparel, whereas Entireworld struggled to compete solely on its sweatsuits. Without new inspired apparel pieces and adjacent products, Entireworld failed to stand out in the marketplace.

“The high price point of sustainable clothing, low awareness of the environmental impact and lack of trust in sustainability claims have been clear limiting factors.”

Distinct inspiration has also allowed emerging fashion brands like Ahluwalia to gain an obsessive customer following. Ahluwalia’s designer Priya Ahluwalia has built her collection around repurposed vintage pieces. This signature look is gaining attention for breaking the mold and Priya has received industry-wide recognition winning the prestigious 2020 LVMH award amongst others. Ahluwalia’s pieces stand far outside the fashion norms that retailers like Zara and H&M adhere to, and this has built a small but loyal following for the brand.

However, the pressure doesn’t stop with consumer demand and creative competition, recent legislative pushes, like the Fashion Act in New York state, could require companies to “map at least 50% of their supply chains and disclose impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions, water footprint and chemical use.” This development indicates that the mandate for a more sustainable fashion industry will not diminish anytime soon.

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Reformation, Vuori and Ahluwalia demonstrate that on the path towards sustainability, DTC fashion brands are far from uniform. However, at their core, these brands share a drive to grow through innovation and inspiration that sets them apart from competitors. Most importantly, sustainability is at the heart of their brand story.

Prophet’s Vice Chairman, David Aaker says “The concept of a signature story – an intriguing, authentic, involving narrative – applies the power of stories to strategic messaging.”

Learning to create and leverage signature stories has truly become a “must-have” management competence. Companies that focus on brand loyalty through innovative brand storytelling and an inspired identity have an opportunity to grow market share now and in the future in the sustainable fashion market.

Prophet is working with leading DTC companies in fashion and across industries on brand strategy, growth strategy and performance marketing. Interested in finding out more? Contact us today. 

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Three Examples of Successful Business Model Innovation

A business model is the backbone of how a company creates, delivers and captures value. When a company innovates on just the customer experience without considering the underlying business model, it not only reduces the value that can be delivered to customers but also fails to realize the full value that can be captured by the business. Over time, that reduces the business’s ability to invest in creating experiences that will power the business of tomorrow. As Ben Thompson wrote in his analysis of Facebook, “succeeding on the Internet didn’t simply mean making a digital product, but also finding a business model that was native as well.”  

Business model innovation is the creation of outsized value – in the form of market share, margin and defensibility, by reconfiguring multiple elements of the business model. Here are three examples of business model innovation that created more value for customers while also increasing the amount of value available to be captured by the business: 

Amazon’s Subscription Model Grows Customer Lifetime Value

Customers can automate the replenishment of household items through Amazon’s Subscribe and Save program. Many parents struggle to equitably distribute the management and execution of tasks in their household, with the greater share often defaulting to women. 

For instance, before buying detergent, someone must remember that it needs to be bought and what type to buy in the first place. This idea leads to friction that forces customers to outsource tasks in order to better distribute the load. The Subscribe and Save program makes it easy to personalize recurring deliveries and gives members the benefit of saving more as they spend more. For the business, it creates a recurring revenue stream while decreasing customer motivation to shop around and price compare each month. And finally, sending multiple items in one box each month lowers the marginal cost of fulfillment. 

Airbnb’s Value Chain Grows the Total Addressable Market

Airbnb modularized the supply of short-term rentals available, making it easy for travelers to compare options, read reviews and book. By integrating the supply of rooms onto its platform and completely owning the customer relationship, it created the conditions necessary for guests and hosts to trust one another, even without Airbnb owning a single room. In digital businesses, the winner is often the company that can reconfigure the value chain to modularize supply and own demand because it makes it difficult for suppliers to squeeze margins and it creates a virtuous cycle of new demand driving new supply. Airbnb is an example of disruptive innovation because it began in the underserved, low-end part of the travel market by offering inexpensive room rentals outside of tourist districts. After building a great reputation based on customer experience and trust, the platform was able to move upstream to mid-tier, business and luxury segments of the market. 

Microsoft’s App Store Pushes the Industry Towards Open Marketplaces

During its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft announced a set of open app store principles, just months after Epic Games accused Apple of anti-competitive practices in the iOS app ecosystem. Microsoft’s leadership is seeking to create a “universal store” in direct contrast to Apple because it believes that outside developers must thrive in its ecosystem to deliver the best experience to customers, even if this means forgoing near term profits that could be gained by showing preference to its own apps, requiring its payment systems be used or acting as a gatekeeper between developers and customers.  

An NFX assessment recently found that 70% of value in tech is driven by network effects. By creating an open app store, Microsoft is betting that network effects will grow the overall value of the gaming industry enough to make up for leaving some value on the table in the near term. By focusing on overall value creation rather than just profit maximization, business model innovation prioritizes models that will create the most sustainable value for all stakeholders in the ecosystem.  

And When it Goes Wrong – Clubhouse’s Fatal Flaw

The goal of business model innovation is to configure business model components in a way that maximizes the total amount of value available to be created, delivered and captured. An offering that fails to solve a real customer problem will never gain traction in the market and a desirable value proposition without a mechanism to capture value for the business won’t last long.  

For example, Clubhouse quickly attracted a sizeable user base by solving a unique problem presented by Covid 19 – the newfound difficulty of getting together. The audio-only, originally invite-only social media app allowed newly homebound people to gather for live conversations around common interests. Rather than commercializing components of the value proposition, such as through subscriptions, advertising or commission fees, the founders focused only on user growth.  

“Business model innovation is the creation of outsized value – in the form of market share, margin and defensibility.”

However, the problem was that Clubhouse’s value proposition was easy for tech giants to replicate. Twitter quickly rolled out Spaces, which solves the same user problem without requiring users to join a new platform. Additionally, due to network effects, these features are more valuable on a platform with a larger user base. Twitter also already had a mechanism in place to allow hosts to monetize, making it a more attractive platform for content creators, while also offering the capability of capturing value with commission fees, as well as growing a new offering that will be valuable for advertisers in the future. 

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Because business model innovation is about exploring what could be rather than what has been, there is no standardized answer—but we do have a standardized approach based on human-centered design methodology. The process begins with a thorough economic analysis of the existing and adjacent markets, consumer behaviors and new technology to model many configurations of value exchanges.  

A successful business model innovation will solve new problems for customers and create entirely new use cases – such as employees using Airbnb to work from anywhere during the pandemic. Business model innovation requires multidisciplinary teams of strategists, designers, and technologists to think divergently about what could be, model the highest value opportunities and rapidly test and iterate in-market. At Prophet, we are uniquely equipped to do this because we always start with the customer and the problems they are trying to solve, so we create business models that are in harmony with getting the experience right.  

Interested in learning more about how business model innovation can enable and sustain both incremental improvements and disruptive paradigm shifts in your market? Get in touch.  

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Organizing Brand-Demand Marketing Teams for Success

In the fifth and final installment from our Brand-Demand Love series, informed by our conversations with marketing leaders across industries, we’ve outlined the steps to integrating brand and demand marketing capabilities to win in a complex and dynamic landscape.

If we think of marketing organizations as households, they are often not very harmonious, thanks to the common tension between brand and demand generation teams. Our blog series has described why these two marketing disciplines struggle to work together to achieve mutual success. To attain productive and peaceful integration, brand and demand teams must define the best ways to organize people and teams, collaborate productively and deploy the right capabilities and tech.

Overcoming Fragmentation 

In our discussions with marketing leaders, the brand-demand split in organizational structures was a common challenge. “One of the big barriers for marketing in our industry is how we’re structured,” a technology CMO told us. “There’s the performance marketing team on one side and then there’s everyone else, including brand people, on the other.”  

In many businesses, brand and demand are viewed as unrelated capabilities, run by disparate teams with little to no insight into each other’s activities or results. Other common symptoms of unhealthy brand-demand organizational structures include:  

  • Separate planning cycles and budgeting exercises 
  • Distinct KPIs that often do not align with broader business objectives
  • Lack of knowledge sharing
  • Talent deployed to standalone channels or capabilities, with little cross-functional collaboration or rotational assignments  

When marketing teams are organized this way, it’s impossible for brand and demand teams to communicate openly, share data freely, or collaborate productively – much less fall in love again. 

A manufacturing vice president of marketing told us that fragmentation is largely down to leadership:

“If your teams are fractured and chaotic, that’s because your leadership is fractured and chaotic.”

This speaks to the importance of leadership in ensuring different functions work together toward shared, big-picture goals. 

Rethinking the Marketing Organization Chart  

There’s no single ideal structure for a marketing organization, but certainly, brand and demand should not be managed as separate entities. Some top performers organize their teams around customer type, while others use product line, channel or functional discipline. Again, there’s no definitive best practice. A B2B manufacturer that restructured its marketing operation around how customers buy, rather than product lines, became more responsive to business needs.  

Marketing at 7-Eleven is organized by discipline, according to CMO Marissa Jarratt, but with a recognition that no one works in isolation. For instance, the company established a customer analytics and insights team to inform business decisions. “Then came the responsibility to socialize those learnings across the organization in a thoughtful way,” she said. “You can have really smart people, but it has to be a team sport.”  

Fostering Collaboration 

No matter the organizational model companies choose, collaboration is key. Collaboration can take many forms:  

  • Joint strategic planning sessions 
  • Monthly knowledge-sharing sessions 
  • Flexible campaign planning exercises and roles, including metrics definition and budget allocation  
  • Integrated campaign performance readouts 

All of these activities can – and should – include external agencies, consultancies and other third-party providers, as well as in-house agency capabilities where relevant. “We need holistic collaboration from our partners to help us work through our evolution,” said Shelley Haus, CMO of Ulta Beauty. Indeed, several marketing leaders who we interviewed considered external partners to be part of the marketing organization and capable of helping bridge the brand-demand divide. 

Collaboration can also help solve tactical issues. For instance, brand and demand teams both want efficient and effective content marketing capabilities, which require coordination and asset sharing. “We need atomized content approvals and integrated digital asset management flows so content and images can be reused quickly and easily by many teams,” said a senior marketer at a large financial services firm. “Otherwise, teams can’t streamline timing or use a ‘test-and-learn’ approach based on integrated results from everywhere.” 

Boosting Brand-Demand Integration Through Capabilities, Talent and Tech 

Several marketing leaders we interviewed talked about the pressing need for new talent. Everyone is looking for data scientists, business analysts and digital strategists; thus, brand and demand teams should look to share in-demand specialist resources.  

More than one marketing leader described the need for more communication and training across disciplines to promote better understanding. Job shadowing and rotational assignments can help in these areas. Another challenge involves varying experience and backgrounds: “Brand marketers run the show and they all went to the same business school, while performance marketers all come from DTC brands,” said Ashley LaPorte, ex-CMO at Seventh Generation. Organizational design and cultures that emphasize collaboration and shared goals can help overcome these barriers.  

Compensation models and incentives are other effective levers for driving integration between brand and demand. Defining joint performance goals tied to overall business performance may facilitate the shift away from time and expense cost models to more incentive-based pay models, which would encourage brand and demand marketing teams to collaborate more frequently.  

Technology has a role to play as well. A strong MarTech stack can successfully integrate data across disparate sources and promote connectivity among different functional areas. Adopting content personalization at scale requires integration across brand and demand teams – and their corresponding tech stacks. Performance marketing functionality can also be embedded directly into tech platforms to give brand teams more access to relevant insights and tools.   

The new research report, “Brand and Demand: A Love Story” is here! Learn how today’s Brand and Demand Generation leaders are bringing their functions together to drive greater impact.
Download today!

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We believe the most successful and productive relationships – in business and in life – involve shared goals and commitments. Achieving these goals requires collaboration, communication and an effective division of labor. For brand and demand teams to deliver optimal performance in line with their shared goals, they must organize their “home” in ways that reflect and support these principles. Because brand and demand must live together, we’d recommend they aim to do so with utmost harmony and respect for each other’s unique genius and power. That’s how they can reignite the love in their relationship.  

Do you need help breaking down the silos separating your brand and demand marketing teams? Our Marketing & Sales practice can integrate your teams to achieve mutual success. Get in touch. 

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