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4 Ways Customer Experience Drives Business Growth

New fans matter. But it’s real secret is deepening relationships with its most devoted customers.

How Customer-Led Experiences Drive Business Growth

Customer experience used to have a clear beginning, middle and end. And most customers followed a similar path. But traditional customer journeys no longer exist. Today, these experiences are non-linear, unpredictable, and shared; and only a few companies are taking advantage of this new reality. Most still view customer experience through a traditional lens: What’s wrong, and how can we fix it? But for those willing to widen the aperture and obsessively follow customers in all directions, experience-led thinking is creating new value, revenue growth and profit.

Customer experience (CX) is at a tipping point: The only brands winning love and loyalty are those taking engagement to a deeper, more complex level. In fact, digital has given companies the power to easily add new moments and touches, and remove steps, streamlining the experience. By following customers through the crisscrossing network of real-world, social and digital experiences, organizations find a deeper understanding of people, as well as opportunities to use those insights to create signature moments that drive relevance, word-of-mouth, and loyalty.

With the blending of digital and physical worlds and virtualizing of brands, customer experiences are being transformed while becoming even harder to control.  This means that authenticity has become critical.  As emotional decision-makers, customers are constantly seeking experiences that go beyond function.

Transformation requires seeing customer experience differently. Customer experience is no longer just an output or something brands create and exclusively own. It’s also an input, a valuable conduit. It is a collection of all the moments and interactions that build and shape customer expectations. It is a series of experiences that engage and inspire – strong empathy compels customers to share those experiences with others.

Non-Linear Customer Journey

While experiences may once have been linear, today they are unpredictable. People may stumble across you on their tablet at 3:00 am, dismiss you while reading reviews on their phone, only to rediscover you in an enthusiast’s blog. Customer experience is now the sum–the collection–of all those moments and it is imperative that companies engage and inspire through those moments.

Some experts describe the journey itself as broken, but we prefer to think of it as rerouted—it’s now part helix, part labyrinth, and part maze. People interact with brands across many touchpoints, and they determine their own path to purchase. And whether they are in the pre-purchase, post-purchase or ongoing-use mode, one thing is certain–they are no longer spectators or co-creators. They are in the driver’s seat.

Customers are continually talking with other people about brand experiences–those that thrill and those that disappoint. And they’re doing it publicly, and on social media. Given these shared experiences, the most important part of the experience is fast becoming not just what impacts one particular person, but all the potential customers around them.

Industries that have been the most disrupted by technology seem to understand this better. In travel, for example, airlines are increasingly recognizing that mobile technologies are everything to frazzled travelers. But brand parity has made physical comfort more important than ever—look at Delta’s renovated JFK Terminal, which includes spa services and better food (a Shake Shack, for example), more security lanes, and a lounge luxurious enough to make layovers more bearable.

“Companies that are truly customer obsessed put peoples’ needs and aspirations ahead of technology, business operations and other processes.”

Healthcare is another example. As consumers, providers, hospitals, and insurers have become increasingly disenchanted with the status quo, smart companies are pioneering powerful experiences via patient portals, telemedicine and even virtual doctors.

Four Essentials to Grow the Customer Experience

What successful companies have in common is that they’ve adopted an experience-led mindset that allows customers to lead the way. Reaching this higher level of thinking requires following four principles:

1. Customer obsession

Customer experience efforts are routinely based on insights, but the most successful companies are those that gather intelligence at a ferocious pace, and constantly put customers at the center. They are tireless in their quest to understand and think like their customers. They invest time–lots of time–listening, watching, and interacting with people to plumb their “absolute truths” and build insights.

Sephora, the beauty retailer allows consumers to build in-depth profiles of their skin tones and favorite products – yielding a wealth of intelligence but also allowing them to deliver a seamless transition between online and store.

And Starwood Hotels & Resorts, with intense analysis of its weary business travelers, uses its obsession to create experiences customers didn’t even know they wanted, such as Keyless Entry to streamline getting to the hotel and entering the room

Creating a breakthrough experience starts with the customer. Companies that are truly customer-obsessed put peoples’ needs and aspirations ahead of technology, business operations and other processes. This is not about just conducting customer research­­–it’s about allowing people to co-create and join in the development cycle. Customers are the independent variable that comes first. Everything else comes later.  As obvious a point as it may seem, customer experience is about customers and if you do not understand customers deeply it is hard to achieve successful growth.

2. Ruthless pragmatism

Companies need to stay focused on essential objectives, prioritizing investments that add the most value. It’s important to understand what part of the experience truly matters to customers and then align that to feasibility and operational efficiencies.

“Some experts describe the journey itself as broken, but we prefer to think of it as rerouted.”

This also means adopting a test-and-learn mentality that allows piloting the most promising ideas, as well as metrics to kill initiatives that aren’t working. Google conducts thousands of tests every year, but on very small groups of users. Relatively few go on for additional testing. This hard-nosed thinking is critical to determine where to focus investments: Which areas matter most, and have the greatest impact?

3. On-brand authenticity

Fueled by customer insights, it’s important to shape experiences that are consistent with a brand’s core equities, translating them into signature touches. What are the brand attributes that need to be reflected in every aspect of the experience? Patagonia excels at authenticity, making high-quality, multifunctional clothes that “last a long, long time.” It delivers on its purpose in inspiring ways, from the “Better than New” truck that repairs items, the “Worn Wear” campaign that celebrates the stories “we wear” and by featuring interestingly sourced materials (such as recycled plastic soda bottles) in its products.

Tesla is another, with customer advocacy that extends beyond its interactive, educational showrooms into its hassle-free servicing. With a vow to never have service as a profit center, most repairs are completed remotely through “over the air upgrades.” And when a car does need dealer attention, Tesla provides a loaner, delivered directly to the owners’ doors.

4. A Connected Mindset

This is often the most difficult and involves working across silos, bringing people together around a shared goal in effective cross-functional teams. Aligning incentives and processes allow people to think outside of their functional groups and business units, because to consumers, that’s all irrelevant. Tech companies often have an inherent advantage, simply because they’re newer and less entrenched in their respective silos. From PayPal to Facebook to Amazon, they’re known for pulling together for bold moves.

But any company can learn to work this way. GE Healthcare, a Prophet client, traditionally led from its own engineering prowess. But by working across departments, it switched its focus to the crushing dilemmas of large hospitals. To streamline purchasing and maximize machine use to improve care and lower costs, it allowed its customers to lead it to a new selling focus, one that elevated it from a vendor to a true partner.

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To win in today’s competitive marketplace companies must adopt experience-led thinking to drive growth. At Prophet, we’re working with clients every day to make such leaps, and with our ability to leverage brand as a key asset for the company, we are pushing past the basics of customer experience to develop signature moments and enhancing experiences at every possible touchpoint. Customers can lead the way to this expanded mindset if brands are willing to follow them.

If you know you need to focus on customer experience but don’t know where to begin, speak to Prophet who can help you to move your organization forward.

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How General Mills Gained Brand Relevance

Food companies are using different strategies to enter the organic and better food universe.

A sizable and growing customer segment is looking for organic and natural products, and as a result, packaged food companies are facing a brand relevance problem. One company that has done well in this difficult and changing environment is General Mills.

The General Mills Acquisition Strategy

There is a lot to like about their acquisition strategy. Take major General Mills acquisition, Annie’s, bought in 2014 for just under one billion dollars: Annie’s makes Mac & Cheese, snacks, dressings and frozen food all under the organic and natural labels. The brand is fast-growing, authentic and high quality with an expanding product footprint. The purchase provides General Mills with another growth platform in the healthy eating arena. And there were important acquisitions even before the purchase of Annie’s.

“These acquisitions provided not only new growth platforms but an injection of knowledge and passion around organic and natural.”

Back in 1999, General Mills acquired Small Planet Foods, owners of Cascadian, which is a maker of organic frozen fruits and vegetables and Muir Glenn, the maker of canned organic tomato products. In 2008, Larabar, a fruit and nut-based energy bar that has become a player in the healthy end of a growth segment, was purchased. And in 2012, General Mills bought the “Food Should Taste Good” line of snacks, also marketed as organic and natural. These acquisitions provided not only new growth platforms but an injection of knowledge and passion around organic and natural.

How General Mills’ Acquisitions Power Relevance

Brand relevance is a measure of how integral a brand is to people’s lives— the more relevant the brand, the more equity, presence, and importance the brand has. General Mills took a unique approach to boosting relevance by recognizing new customer demands— in this case, the demand for healthy foods— and acquiring other brands that offer innovative, healthy products across different areas of customers’ lives.

Annie’s in particular is credited with providing leadership in product innovation and distribution. Several of the long-held General Mills brands joined the effort. Fiber One had been a leader in the fiber race for years – first in cereals, then in snacks – and is currently on a growth surge. If fiber is your concern, Fiber One will be preferred.

Nature Valley connects to the core health segment not only through its products but also because of its support of the national parks. The Nature Valley Trail View provides 360-degree views of 400 miles of national park trails across the country. Yoplait Greek 100 also has a lot of healthy characteristics and is one of GM’s current winners.

General Mills has also made product changes that have been responsive to the healthy eating trend as well. In 2004, it changed its cereal line to whole grains and reduced sugar levels sharply in kid’s cereals. Yoplait also reduced the amount of sugar in its products.

In 2011, General Mills begin to source eggs from cage-free sources. It was an early leader in gluten-free products, long before gluten-free became trendy. By adding gluten-free options to top-selling brands such as Cheerios, General Mills now has 600 products that are gluten-free. And of course, they have Betty Crocker to lend her credibility to their effort to improve food choices.

A Different Route: Kellogg’s Approach with Kashi

In contrast to General Mills, Kellogg’s, only a bit smaller in sales than General Mills, has gone a different route. Kellogg’s bought Kashi in 2000, its “healthy” entrée into the market, but it’s performing badly because it lacks the organic and natural focus of the brands that are competing for the knowable, health-conscious segment.

Rather, Kashi emphasizes whole grains, high protein and fiber, which is not enough today. It has experienced difficulty in connecting with the target segment, as exemplified by their response to a grocer who posted to social media accounts that Kashi uses genetically modified organisms (GMOs) despite their claim to be natural. Kashi replied that the FDA does not regulate the use of the word “natural.” And while this may be true, most people imply that natural means that processed food has no artificial ingredients, pesticides or GMOs. In part because of the decline of Kashi sales, Kellogg saw its earnings per share in 2014 decline sharply. In contrast, the earnings per share at General Mills continued a healthy increase year by year that it has enjoyed for the last five years.

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General Mills was able to gain relevance in this important growth segment for one reason: They saw a relevance challenge early and responded with acquisitions, investments in products and programs, and a sense of direction powered by their mission and values. The value of real commitment shows.

Learn more about achieving brand relevance in innovative ways.

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The Uniqlo and MoMA: A Partnership That Wins

The sponsorship adds to the retailer’s reputation for smart design and enhances its commitment to the arts.

On May 3, 2013, Uniqlo became the exclusive, multi-year sponsor of the New York Museum of Modern Art’s Friday night program, which offers free admission in the evenings. Almost a year later in March of 2014, Uniqlo launched SPRZ NY (Surprise New York) in partnership with MoMA.

Under SPRZ NY, Uniqlo puts artwork inspired by top contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Keith Haring on some 200 items that will sell from $6 to $50. Some of the artists, including Ryan McGinness, will personally design clothing items based on their works hanging in the museum. It’s “the place where art and clothing meet.” The sponsorship is designed to showcase the huge signature 5th Avenue Uniqlo store that is located around the corner from MoMA.

“The place where art and clothing meet.”

The store redesigned the second floor so it looks and feels like a museum, with framed pieces of art-stimulated clothing on the wall. A Starbucks was added that provided more destination appeal and energy. A one-year anniversary of the launch saw a month of special events such as an Art of Discovery scavenger hunt in the museum, a design your own t-shirt program for kids, and a special New York art tour featuring secret locations.

The partnership works for four reasons:

It provides a brand image lift. The association and the programs provide a lift to the Uniqlo image of representing quality, innovation and contemporary fashion that works in everyday living. The art provides self-expressive benefits to some and a sense of being contemporary and fashionable without being trendy to others. It gives energy to the brand, the store and the store experience. Just think of having unique designs attached to interesting and visible artists. The MoMA connection is not possible to duplicate; it’s the ultimate characteristic of an exclusive sponsorship.

It energizes the flagship store. It provides a spotlight on the flagship store and by extension the Uniqlo effort in US major cities, which also offer many of the MoMA-inspired clothing items. It gives the Uniqlo 5th Avenue store a burst of energy and differentiation. Both are highly sought after and hard to attain for retailers, especially prime competitors like Zara and H&M. The fact that the store is around the corner from the MoMA cements the relationship.

It’s dynamic. The sponsorship was not simply an association based on paying more money than others, but it was alive, active and anything but static. Each year, Uniqlo not only sticks with the sponsorship but leverages it in new and creative ways. And all along, Uniqlo stuck to the core features of the MoMA and the SPRZ concept of creating surprising experiences.

It links back tightly to the Uniqlo brand. Free Fridays are labeled as Uniqlo Free Friday Nights. SPRZ NY clothing is featured in the Uniqlo 5th Avenue store and is available elsewhere. Except for the MoMA store, the only place that clothing appears is within Uniqlo. It fits Uniqlo, a brand with an emphasis on contemporary fashion for everyday living, on innovation and on having a distinctive in-store experience.

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The Uniqlo/MoMa partnership works in so many dimensions. It adds value to the brand and its offering by creating energy and interest in Uniqlo clothing designs, a very basic brand value. It allows the flagship store to be more visible in its role in showcasing the brand. The store has become a destination attraction, the ultimate achievement for a retailer. It adds energy to the brand in multiple ways, from the experience in the 5th Avenue store to designs that people talk about, to the involvement with the MoMA, and more. And it all ties tightly to the brand. It is a wonderful role model.

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Brand Personalities Are Like Snowflakes

The better you know your brand’s personality, the more you can use it as a communication tool.

Who wants to spend time with someone who is so boring that he’s described as having no personality? Maybe it’s better to be a jerk because at least you’ll be interesting. Having a personality is equally helpful to brands, especially in the digital age.

Not all brands have, or even should have a strong, distinctive personality, but those brands that do have a significant advantage in terms of standing out from the crowd, having an on-brand message, and supporting a relationship with customers. Personality is an important dimension of brand equity because, like the human personality, it is both differentiating and enduring.

Enhancing Self-Expression Benefits

People express their own or idealized selves in part by the brands that they buy and use, especially when the brands are socially visible and have a personality. Such a brand is a badge that tells others what you value and how you live, and, more importantly, reaffirms to yourself what is important in your life.

Using an Apple computer expresses for some a non-corporate, creative self, based in part on the perception that the Apple brand’s personality is irreverent, creative and young, and challenges convention. The use of Betty Crocker expresses the home/mother/nurturing side of some of its users because “Betty Crocker-as-person” is a mother figure: a traditional, small-town, all-American person who cares about cooking and about her family. Wearing the Nike brand reflects “Nike-as-person”: someone who is exciting, provocative, spirited, cool, innovative and aggressive, and into health and fitness. Being a Patagonia fan expresses a passion for the environment and for sustainability. Being a Dove user reaffirms a belief in real inner beauty.

Providing the Basis for a Relationship

A brand personality can help build an understanding among the brand’s company and can communicate internally, about a brand-customer relationship that can suggest programs and be the basis of brand loyalty.

For example, consider the following relationship metaphors: A well-liked and respected family member—a warm, sentimental, family-oriented, traditional personality—would match brands like Hallmark, Hershey’s, John Deere and Campbell’s. A person whom you respect as a teacher, minister or business leader—someone who is accomplished, talented and competent—is like IBM or The Wall Street Journal. A companion for an outdoor adventure—an athletic, rugged and outdoorsy personality—is like Nike or The North Face.

A stimulating companion—an interesting personality with incredible stories—is like the Dos Equis beer spokesman, “the most interesting man in the world.” A “brand-as-person” who has a passion for healthy, organic foods is reflected by the Whole Foods Market personality.

Representing a Functional Benefit

A brand personality also can be a vehicle for representing and cueing functional benefits and brand attributes. It can be easier to create a personality that implies a functional benefit than to communicate that functional benefit directly. Further, it’s harder to attack a personality than a functional benefit.

The Harley personality is a rugged, macho, America-loving, freedom-seeking person who is willing to break out from confining society norms of dress and behavior, which suggests that Harley motorcycles are powerful and have substance. Meanwhile, MetLife has used the Peanuts characters to create a personality of being warm, approachable and humorous, a highly desired but hard-to-achieve personality for an insurance company.

“People express their own or idealized selves in part by the brands that they buy and use.”

The Energizer rabbit is an energetic, upbeat, indefatigable personality who never runs out of energy—just as the battery runs longer than others. Wells Fargo, as represented by the stagecoach, reflects an independent, cowboy type who delivers reliably. Although competitors may actually deliver superior reliability and safety of assets, because of the stagecoach, Wells wins the battle of perception.

Guiding Brand-Building Programs

Tactically, the brand personality concept and vocabulary communicate to those who must implement the brand-building effort. As a practical matter, decisions need to be made about the communications package, including advertising, packaging, promotions, events, customer touchpoints, digital programs and more. If the brand is specified only in terms of attribute associations, little guidance is provided.

To say that TaylorMade golf equipment is of high quality with an innovative design does not give much direction. However, to say that “TaylorMade-as-person” is a demanding professional conveys much more. A brand personality statement provides depth and texture, making it more feasible to keep the communication and other brand-building efforts on strategy.

One retail chain created a mythical “brand-as-person” with a home setting, a family, interests, opinions and activities. The company gave that person a name. Let’s call her Sue. Then whenever a product, communication or operation initiative was proposed, the criterion was: Would Sue do it? The concept led to easier and better decisions.

Helping to Understand the Customer

The brand personality metaphor can help a manager gain an in-depth understanding of consumer perceptions of the brand. Instead of asking about attribute perceptions, which can be both boring and intrusive, asking people to describe a brand personality often is involving and can result in more accurate and richer insights into feelings and relationships. The arrogant and powerful personality ascribed to Microsoft, for example, provides a deeper understanding of the nature of the relationship between Microsoft and its customers. Or the personality construct might be a better entry into understanding the calm emotion associated with Celestial Seasonings tea than a discussion of attributes.

A variant is to ask what a “brand-as-person” might say to you. In a credit card study, one segment who perceived the brand as being dignified, sophisticated, educated, a world traveler and confident believed that the card would say things like, “My job is to help you get accepted,” and, “You have good taste.”

A second intimidated segment perceived the card to be sophisticated and classy but snobbish, aloof and condescending, and believed that the card would make comments like, “I am so well-known and established that I can do what I want,” and, “If I were going to dinner, I would not include you.” The perceived attitude of the brand toward the customer was a big insight into where an important customer segment was coming from.

Providing Energy

When developing a brand vision, there frequently comes a point at which someone asks: Does the brand contain any energy? And if not, how is it going to communicate and succeed or even be relevant in today’s environment? A brand personality often is a good way to introduce energy into a vision.

A strong brand personality, such as those surrounding Mercedes, Muji or American Express, can provide energy by adding interest and involvement. It effectively amplifies brand perception and experiences. All airlines seem very similar until the energy created by the personality profiles of brands like Singapore, Southwest and Virgin are considered. Think of the energy surrounding the personality of the AXE brand, which is obsessed with being successful with attractive women.

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A brand personality can be a vehicle to express a person’s self, represent relationships, communicate attributes, guide brand-building, help understand the customer, and contribute energy. In doing so, a personality can be a point of differentiation that is sustainable because it is very difficult, and usually ineffective, to copy.

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Framing Your Subcategory: Lessons from a Linguist

We choose language to fit our worldview. That’s why “climate change” is different than “global warming.” 

“Don’t Think of an Elephant!,” by UC Berkeley linguist Goerge Lakoff, is important to every brand strategist. One of its most powerful points is that it explains how, within a political setting, Republicans so often win policy arguments. The answer is in the framing. Republicans are just very good at it.

Lakoff’s insights directly apply to branding. Framing dictates the discussion and the decision. It affects how we see the world, how we process information, whether that information is distorted, how we interpret it, what behavior occurs, and whether attitude and behavior change is even possible.

It matters whether the frame is tax relief (taxes are an affliction and heroes remove them), paying your share (just as you pay dues at a club, you should pay for education, libraries, roads etc.), or investing for the future (building infrastructure or educating will help future generations).

It matters if the frame is pro-abortion or even partial-birth abortion (who is for abortion?) vs pro-choice (who wouldn’t want choice?). It matters if you think of climate change (climate has a nice connotation, so what if weather changes?) vs global warming (which suggests a real danger).

It matters if you think of patient protection or affordable care (both of which are widely supported) or Obamacare (which suggests Obama and the government are overreaching).

Framing is about choosing language that fits your worldview. Some implications for brand strategists: Pay attention to framing subcategories rather than brands. Notice what people are buying and why. Move from positioning the brand and engaging in “my brand is better than your brand” marketing to framing the subcategory (or category) and thereby changing the way people perceive, discuss and feel about your brand.

Importantly, this changes which brands are relevant. So instead of how a brand is perceived, we consider how a person looks at brands and decisions regarding subcategories like compact hybrids, rental cars, organic milk, online banking or urgent care centers. Be disciplined and persistent in using the language and symbols that represent your frame. Some people are locked into a frame, but many are susceptible to alternative frames and will gravitate to the one that is simply used the most.

When opponents or competitors start using your frame, the battle is over. When Democrats start using terms like tax relief, abortion rights, climate change and Obamacare they have lost the fight. Frustratingly, even an attempt to negate a frame actually strengthens it.

When people are told to not think of an elephant, they can’t get the image out of their minds. When Richard Nixon said he was “not a crook” what emerged was a reaffirmation that he was a crook. So it is necessary to be disciplined to consistently use the language of your frame and never accept the alternative. Know that facts don’t really matter.

“It is a myth that people are rational and that some well-presented facts will change their frame-anchored view.”

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It is a myth that people are rational and that some well-presented facts will change their frame-anchored view. Facts are difficult to process, hard to remember and are rarely capable of changing attitudes or behavior. Frames dominate facts, particularly when there are multiple facts in a complex system.

A systematic effort to explain that the affordable care act has increased the number of insured Americans, slowed rising costs, eliminated prior condition screens and more simply does not get through to those that have accepted the Republican frame that Obamacare is a disaster. A phrase that captures the frame is helpful, just as it is for a brand. However, that label cannot be an empty slogan but needs to be supported by an idea that has logic and substance behind it. So the framing phrase has to mean something substantial that makes sense.

And a frame can exist without a phrase to label it. In that case, the label might be the brand that became the exemplar of the subcategory. That is the case for Prius, Tesla, Uber, Whole Foods Market, Subway, Zappos, and Salesforce.com. In each case, their subcategory is defined by several characteristics. When a brand sees a big growth spurt, it usually happens because of new framing for a subcategory. Those who control frames control the marketplace.

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How Purposeful Always and Dove Campaigns Delivered Business Impact

Both campaigns help women and girls rise above attitudes that limit them and hold them back.

Many strong brands have a vision that includes a higher purpose such as environmental stewardship, healthy eating or third-world water safety. These programs make a difference with regard to corporate responsibility. But do they really help the brand and business? Can the investment in a higher purpose have a brand rationale?

Consider the efforts of Always and Dove to improve the self-esteem of girls. What impact do the campaigns have on the two brands? And how is that impact measured?

Always: Encouraging High Self-Esteem for Women  

In 2014, Always launched a three-minute video by award-winning director Lauren Greenfield, #LikeAGirl that showed the stereotypical view of women from the perspective of boys, men, and women as well doing things like running, throwing, or fighting “like a girl.” The caricature was one of awkward incompetence. The assumption was that girls are not equal to boys in these activities, an assumption that clearly affected young girls as they got older.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs

The “like a girl” line was pejorative. The video then showed the stark difference in the ways actual girls aged around 10 defined the phrase. These girls tended to make confident, serious efforts at running, throwing and fighting.

Always re-ran the video in 1-minute form during the Super Bowl to great effect. The message: Girls’ confidence plunges during puberty and Always wants to change that. It wants to change what “like a girl” stands for, making it mean amazing things instead of acting as a put-down.

Always’ “Like a Girl” campaign is a natural outgrowth of the brand’s 30-year-old efforts in puberty education, in which it has reached over 17 million girls across 65 countries. It is influenced by research that shows that fifty percent of girls report a drop in confidence after their first period. Always saw a problem and felt it was the right brand to address it.

The “Like a Girl” program is a long-term effort for Always, involving video variants plus multiple programs and partners. For example, in another video Always showcases Karlie Harman who became a female football quarterback for her high school team and gives “like a girl” a very different meaning. It encouraged girls to tweet all the amazing things that they recall doing “like a girl” with a promise to post the best tweets. It also joined the official list of partners in Sheryl Sandberg’s “Ban Bossy” campaign, working to ban the “b” word (bossy) from the vocabulary of people in the environment of young girls. Vocabulary matters.

Dove: Showing Women Their Real Beauty

Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” started in 2004 and was also informed by research on female self-esteem. It was designed to make women aware that real beauty is not based on a standard of young, model-thin bodies with excessive or elaborate make-up and hairstyling. The goal was to fundamentally change the way that women are perceived and to fundamentally change women’s self-esteem.

The campaign started with advertisements showing real women that may have been older or heavier but who Dove believed exhibited beauty. Global ads invited people to vote on whether a particular model was “Fat or Fit,” “Withered or Wonderful,” “Flawed or Flawless” and other such comparisons. The “Real Beauty” campaign also involves substantive programs directed at girls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=litXW91UauE

Since 2002, Dove has been collaborating with Girl Scouts of the USA  to promote self-esteem among tween and teenage girls with programs like Uniquely ME! and It’s Your Story – Tell It! An annual Dove Self-Esteem Weekend, started in 2010, aims to inspire moms and mentors to talk to girls in their lives about beauty, confidence, and self-esteem.

Purpose Messaging Should Align with Brands’ Audiences & Values

First, higher purpose messaging creates a qualitatively different relationship with customers than one based on functional benefits. Always and Dove are seen as having a higher purpose based on the concern for the self-esteem and self-confidence of pre-teen and teenage girls; these concerns resonate with women who have been through it. It strikes a chord. That higher purpose engenders respect, admiration and shared interest.

The brands are reframed, now perceived as partners and friends – not just as selling entities that want your business. Ironically, having such a relationship also provides credibility that the firm will deliver on its functional brand promise to provide innovative, quality products as well.

“Higher purpose messaging creates a qualitatively different relationship with customers than one based on functional benefits.”

A crucial part of the relationship is authenticity. Brands have to convince their audience that they really believe in the ideas and programs they’ve created and are committed to making a difference both now and in the future. This relationship wouldn’t work unless the message was relentlessly connected to the brand and to the brand’s functional mission.

There is a fit with “real beauty” and Dove’s skincare and beauty products. The same is true about the Always “like a girl” concept and the learnings about puberty that involve the products of Always. Brand Director Amanda Hill stated that in their research they found that four of five girls affirmed it makes complete sense that Always would be connected in a movement that would change the perception of the phrase ‘like a girl.’ The message received enormous visibility for both brands because the messaging contained something of interest. The message wasn’t about deodorant, shampoo and feminine hygiene products but rather an issue that matters to most women.

Demonstrating Higher Purpose is Good for Business

Visibility is one of the pillars of a brand’s equity. Along with credibility, awareness is a necessary element of brand relevance. The ability to build and enhance brand awareness is crucial to creating and maintaining relevance. Some videos and ads went viral, creating unreal brand exposure. The initial #LikeAGirl video got over 80 million views, over 56 million on YouTube alone. The Super Bowl ad got exposure far beyond the paid media buy.

The Dove ads had similar success. One of their ads, Evolution, shows how much effort goes behind creating an artificial “model” look and won advertising awards creating unpaid exposure estimated to be worth over $150 million. The impact in equivalent measured media for some of Dove’s other efforts has been estimated to be 30 times their expenditures.

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A higher purpose such as helping the self-esteem and self-confidence of young girls is the right thing to do. But to be effective, that purpose should develop ideas and programs where it has some expertise and motivation to help its brand. The result can be visibility as well as a qualitatively different perception of the brand and even the category, leading to a deeper relationship. Look to Always and Dove as examples of just that.

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6 Ways Your Brand Personality Should Add Value

Like humans, brand personalities can be differentiating, enduring, endearing–or annoying.

What is the worst thing you can say about a person? High up on my list would be that someone has no personality. Who wants to spend time with someone so boring? I’d rather hang out with a jerk. At least then it would be interesting. The same reasoning applies to brands.

Not all brands have a personality, or at least a strong, distinctive personality. But the brands that do have a significant advantage in terms of standing out, communicating an on-brand message and supporting customer relationships. Personality is an important dimension of brand equity because, like human personality, it is both differentiating and enduring.

1. A brand personality can enhance self-expression benefits

People express themselves in part by the brands that they buy, especially when the brand is socially visible. For some, using a MacBook expresses a non-corporate, creative self, based in part on the perception that Apple-as-a-person is unpretentious and irreverent, and somewhat quirky in a good way.

Using Betty Crocker products and recipes expresses the home/mother/nurturing side of some of its users because Betty Crocker-as-a-person is a mother figure, a traditional, small-town, all-American person who cares about cooking and about her family. Wearing Nike shoes, clothing and accessories represents an active lifestyle personality for many, since Nike-as-a-person is exciting, spirited, cool, innovative, and into health and fitness.

2. A brand personality can provide the basis for a relationship

A brand personality can help lead to brand loyalty. For example, consider the following relationship metaphors:

  • A weekend companion: Pepsi might be better than Coke if perceived as a fun, energetic, social person.
  • A well-liked and respected family member: A warm, sentimental, family oriented, traditional personality like that of Hallmark, Kodak and even Coke can stay with you while growing up.
  • A teacher, minister or business leader: Brands like IBM or the Wall Street Journal can represent accomplished, talented, and competent people you trust.
  • An outdoor adventurer: REI, Nike or The North Face can represent your most athletic, rugged and outdoorsy friends.

3. A brand personality can represent a functional benefit

A brand personality can also represent functional benefits and brand attributes. It can be easier to create a personality that implies a functional benefit than to convincingly communicate that a functional benefit exists. Further, it is harder to attack a personality than a functional benefit. Consider:

Harley-Davidson as a rugged, macho, America-loving, freedom-seeking person who is willing to break out from confining society norms of dress and behavior. This suggests that the Harley motorcycle is powerful and has substance.

Hallmark as a sincere, sentimental, warm, genuine, wholesome, person, both competent and imaginative. This says so much about Hallmark’s offerings.

Wells Fargo, as represented by the stagecoach, reflects an independent, cowboy who delivers reliably. Although competitors may actually deliver superior reliability and safety of assets, because of the stagecoach, Wells Fargo can win the perception battle.

The Energizer rabbit is an energetic, upbeat, indefatigable personality who never runs out of energy—just as the battery runs longer than others.

4. A brand personality can guide brand building programs

As a practical matter, decisions need to be made about brand communications packages including advertising, physical packaging, promotions, events, customer touchpoints, digital programs and more. If the brand is specified only in terms of attribute associations, little guidance is provided.

“It’s almost impossible to copy a personality.”

To say that TaylorMade golf equipment is of high quality with an innovative design doesn’t give much direction to the communications team. However, to say that TaylorMade-as-a-person is a demanding professional who expects the best from his or her equipment conveys much more. A brand personality statement provides depth and texture, making it more feasible to keep the communication effort on-strategy.

5. A brand personality can help understand the customer

The brand personality metaphor can also help a manager gain an in-depth understanding of consumer perceptions of the brand. Instead of asking about attribute perceptions, which can be both boring and intrusive, asking people to describe a brand personality is often involving and can result in more accurate and richer insights into feelings and relationships.

The arrogant and powerful personality ascribed to Microsoft, for example, provides a deeper understanding about the nature of the relationship between Microsoft and its customers.

6. A brand personality can provide energy

A strong brand personality such as those surrounding Mercedes, Muji, or American Express can provide energy by adding interest and involvement; it effectively amplifies brand perception and experiences. All airlines seem similar until you consider the energy created by the personality profiles of brands like Singapore, Southwest, and Virgin.

A brand personality can provide a vehicle to express a person’s self, represent relationships, communicate attributes, guide brand–building, understand the customer and contribute energy. It can also provide a sustainable point of differentiation – it’s almost impossible to copy a personality.

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A brand personality can be a vehicle to express a person’s self, represent relationships, and even communicate attributes. In doing so, it can provide a point of differentiation and energy. And above all, it should add value.

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How to Win The Race for Brand Relevance

To regain relevance, find parity, leapfrog the competitor and know when it’s time to reposition.

The biggest threat facing most brands today is the loss of relevance because the category or subcategory they are serving is declining. If a group of customers wants a battery-powered car, it doesn’t matter how much they love your hybrid brand. It will not be relevant.

A newspaper can have the best news coverage and editorial staff, but if readers are diverted to cable news or blogs, relevance declines. If a customer becomes health-conscious, loyalty to a high-calorie beer goes out the window. The threat emerges when customers are no longer buying what the brand is perceived to be selling. New categories or subcategories emerge as competitor innovations create “must-haves.”

“The ultimate tragedy is to achieve brilliance in achieving differentiation, win the preference battle, create a better-than-ever offering with incremental innovations, and build a powerful brand…only to have that effort wasted because of a relevance problem.”

So, how does a brand stay relevant?

Gain Parity

The goal is to create an option that competes with a competitor’s “must-have” that is close enough in performance so that your brand is no longer excluded. Over the last few years, several fast-food brands introduced menus items like salads and fruit smoothies designed to be “good enough” so that their brand is no longer excluded by the healthy-eating segment. Others have developed breakfast items for those that have gone elsewhere for that important meal of the day. McDonald’s, facing a threat from Starbucks to their breakfast and other off-hours business, introduced the McCafe sub-brand that created for many customers a point of parity with Starbucks in respect to coffee quality. McDonald’s got close enough to escape being excluded.

One challenge facing the parity strategy is that your brand may be perceived to lack credibility in the new area. Gaining visibility may be difficult because your parity addition may not be very newsworthy. It might be difficult to actually deliver on the promise given the fact that the culture, assets and skills of the operation were not designed to support the parity initiative. But you have to work against these challenges.

Leapfrog the Innovation

Instead of being satisfied with being relegated to a parity product, a brand could also attempt to take over the new category or subcategory. Or at least, they could attempt to become a significant player with a substantial or transformational innovation, leapfrogging the competitor. Nike+ products allow a runner to hear their music while they track their workout.

The Adidas miCoach also provides a way to monitor workouts, but it also provides an active forum, the ability to create a unique program, and even contact trainers to design customized programs.

Cisco has faced a gap in their product lines many times that they filled with an acquisition. Then they add Cisco-driven synergy and systems benefits to that acquisition, creating a leapfrog result. The leapfrog strategy represents a formidable challenge because substantial or transformational innovation is necessary. Getting established in a marketplace in which a competitor likely has scale and momentum will be difficult. But again – worth trying.

Reposition

Sometimes you must modify and reposition your brand so that its value proposition becomes more relevant given the market dynamics. Madonna has transformed throughout the years to maintain her relevance. L.L. Bean, originally built on a heritage of hunting, fishing and camping, repositioned to a broader outdoor brand relevant to the interests of outdoor enthusiasts such as hikers, mountain bikers, cross-country skiers and water-sports enthusiasts. The outdoors was still treated with the same sense of awe, respect and adventure – but from a different perspective.

The challenge here is to have enough substance to earn credibility in the new position and to implement the rebranding strategy well. Madonna and L.L. Bean had to live and breathe their reposition efforts in order to see the benefits.

Stick to What You’re Good At

Sometimes, instead of working to adapt it’s better to keep pursuing your original strategy with your original value proposition – but just do it better by continuously improving and creating brand energy. The safety razor, for example, was threatened in the 30s by the electric shaver with its compelling benefits. However, an incredible stream of innovations from Gillette allowed it to beat back the new category and enjoy robust growth.

In-N-Out Burger, a chain in the western United States that has developed intense loyalty with a menu of burgers, fries and shakes, has made no effort to adjust to the healthy trend. They simply continue to deliver the same menu with uncompromising quality, consistency and service under the assumption that worthwhile segments will either ignore the healthy trend altogether or at least indulge periodically. The risk of the stick-to-your-knitting strategy is that the new category or subcategory might be based on such a strong trend or such a compelling set of benefits that avoiding it might prove futile and even disastrous.

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The selection of the optimal response will be context-specific, but it will involve two questions. What is the size of the relevance threat and its supporting trend? And what is a realistic judgment about the firm’s ability to innovate, add needed capabilities, and be successful in the marketplace? Both questions are not easy to answer because of complexities, interactions, and future uncertainties. But both questions are worth asking… and answering.

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David Aaker’s Roadmap For Managing Your Personal Brand

Your personal brand deserves attention, too. And knowing how others perceive you can spark growth.

Every person has a brand, represented by a name and face. This brand has a host of associations. The brand will influence all relationships and affect how a person is perceived and/or respected. Your personal brand can be actively managed with discipline and consistency over time, or it can be allowed to drift. There is a huge payoff to employing the active management option and large risks to the alternative. Here is a road map to getting control of your personal brand:

Assess Your Target Audience

Describe the group with who you would like to have the right impression of you. Who would want to spend time with you? Who might admire you? Who do you want to respect you? For example, you may want a professional audience, a family audience and a friend audience. You might pick out a few representative people in each segment to provide focus and clarity. It may be useful, at least at the outset, to focus on one or two segments that are the most important or in need of the most attention.

The ultimate brand visions will have a lot of overlap, but there might be a visual element that occurs in one and not the other. For example, in the co-worker context, mentorship may be a goal where it isn’t in other contexts. Some vision elements may be interpreted differently in different concepts. Creative enthusiasm in a professional setting might be about innovation, whereas in a family context it might be about your willingness to participate in adventurous activities.

Appraise Your Image

Be brutal with yourself. What are your positives? Why are you respected? Why do some like to be with you? What are your negatives? Why do you lack respect from some? Why are some not attracted to you? What annoys people about you? What do people think of you in terms of personality, likability, appearance, skills, possessions, and the people you associate with? After you have a draft of your image in your head, you might ask for input from others to see what you are missing. Such input is often an eye-opener—both positively and negatively.

Make a List

Now that you know how you are perceived, think about how you would like to be perceived. It can involve elements like being stimulating, well-versed, interested in politics or movies, a trendy dresser, clean-cut, humorous, kind, thoughtful, friendly, adventurous, calm in crises, competitive, competent, creative, gets-the-job-done, outdoorsy, environmentally conscious, or whatever is important to you and those you care about. When your name comes up, what characteristics would you like people to come to mind?

Convert that list into personal brand vision concepts

Evaluate the elements on the list. Delete or downgrade those that will not impress your target audience or that you might not be able to realistically deliver. Then group the remaining characteristics into six to twelve concepts. After eliminating redundancy, the grouping should represent different perspectives or dimensions of concepts that you feel are important to be associated with you.

“Your personal brand can be actively managed with discipline and consistency over time.”

Prioritize the elements

Two to four of the most important elements should comprise your core vision. They should be the most important drivers of relationships. The remaining will consist of things you need to do to avoid messing up relationships, but they won’t be key drivers that will make a difference in building them.

Identify what you need to work on

Create programs to develop or nurture yourself or your interaction pattern so that you deliver. Maybe one of your elements is positivity. Your program could involve daily positive behavior goals. Or maybe you’d like to be more empathetic and kind. You might need to develop the habit of performing small acts of kindness. You need to be able to deliver on your brand vision, and that might require changes in substance and not just perceptions.

Develop a communication plan

How can you communicate your brand vision, particularly for those elements that you now deliver but do not get credit for? This might be difficult, and it will take some time to shift perceptions. Some suggestions:

  • Consider role models: Who inside and outside your professional or social circle has been successful at achieving the brand vision you aspire to? How did that person get there?
  • Consciously change your activities, your appearance, your companions and your interaction patterns. Be consistent and persistent.
  • Develop visible programs to represent the new you. If you are trying to lose weight, get involved in a charity, or become less rigid – let people know! Accountability is key.

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Managing your personal brand will take uncomfortable introspection and discipline in terms of succeeding. It will take emphasizing “on-brand” thoughts and actions in order to avoid being seen as “off-brand.” It’s difficult, but it will prove worthwhile both personally and professionally.

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How to Drive Relentless Relevance in a Changing World

Customer-obsessed, pragmatic, inspired and innovative, these brands win by staying close to consumers.

Today’s consumers are experts at ignoring the tens of thousands of brands that don’t interest them. But for their favorites, they go above and beyond what “rational” people do. In a recent study, we found that they mention these brands an astounding 90 times per week to friends and family, who are, in turn, 61 percent more likely to buy based on those recommendations. These brands earn and re-earn loyalty by doing something others don’t: They connect, engage and inspire their customers. What makes these rare brands—brand stalwarts like Apple and Starbucks, to emerging favorites like Birchbox and Nest—stand out from their competition? They are what we at Prophet like to call relentlessly relevant brands.

Aware that they are fighting for share in an era of infinite customer expectations and constant competitive change, these brands have made it their mission to continually find new ways to engage and delight customers. Whether it is through new offerings, experiences, channels, value propositions, communications or content, they understand that at some level every brand is both a defender and a challenger. They always have the mindset that if a brand giant like Amazon or Google isn’t disintermediating their business or brand, someone smaller may be. Look at what Airbnb is doing to the Marriott’s and Hyatt’s of the world – challenging a business model that has worked for decades – in a very short period of time.

These relentlessly relevant brands understand that leveraging the power of digital brings ease of commerce, communications, engagement and instantaneous feedback that can make or break a brand. Even five or ten years ago a company could fool themselves into believing that a brand’s value stemmed solely from customers’ willingness to pay a premium. Sales were the primary measure of success. Today, companies are realizing that an equally important currency is getting your brand to achieve deeper levels of “all-in” engagement, resulting in the levels of loyalty described above.

Sales still rule the day, of course, but winning brands understand that relentless relevance and the deeper engagement it creates is what drives those transactions. Prophet recently surveyed a representative sample of U.S. customers, and four out of five say they choose brands for “how they connect with my life” rather than those that are widely known or advertised. And 59 percent say that their ability to interact with a brand they are considering is important to their purchase decision and driving longer-term loyalty.

“59 percent say that their ability to interact with a brand they are considering is important to their purchase decision and driving longer-term loyalty.”

At Prophet, we believe relentless relevance requires a commitment to four big ideas:

1. Be customer obsessed

Customer centricity means more than conducting research. These days, customer preferences can change in an instant, and user feedback is immediate. To achieve relentless relevance, companies must uncover and act upon evolving customer insights faster than their competition; and figure out how to disproportionately win with those consumers that both drive margin and influence. These companies don’t just listen to their customers, they embrace them as true partners in achieving commercial and brand success, taking co-creation, collaboration and participation to entirely new levels. Look at old school IBM and new school Waze for examples of customer obsession at work.

2. Build brands that are distinctively inspired

Our job as marketers is to build brands that are inspired in their promise and aggressively positioned in their ambition. A brand has to induce customers to act and inspire employees to help deliver the promise and essence every single day. Great brand builders know that successfully building inspiring brands externally requires the energy and talent of the entire team. If you want to see inspiration practiced day in and day out, look no further than Burberry and Starbucks.

3. Pervasively innovate

It’s all about being nimble and responsive in creating opportunities for authentic engagement and delighting customers at every turn. Whether it is with new offerings, content, channels, experiences or business models, brands that constantly give customers fresh, novel and better ways to interact and engage, will win. The best companies are also recognizing the power of participation and co-creation in building and innovating their brand. From T-Mobile to Electrolux, the customer is as much a part of the innovation team as is R&D.

4. Be ruthlessly pragmatic

Once companies construct a customer-driven brand/growth strategy, they must adopt a strict level of pragmatism. This applies both to how the brand can support the business strategy, and how it is actually brought to life. These practical considerations are often the most challenging aspect of brand positioning and require clear alignment around growth objectives. From Capital One to Google, there are great examples of companies that are not afraid to test, learn, fail fast and continue to rapidly innovate to keep their brands front and center, in both inspired and pragmatic ways.

“80 percent of consumers say they are more loyal to brands that continue to find new ways of being relevant in their lives.”

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It’s not just a matter of trying harder and earning and re-earning loyalty – that’s a given. Companies who understand the value of relevance look for the bold moves required to amaze customers and push competitors out of consideration. That’s how they win and find accelerated growth.

It’s worth it: 80 percent of consumers say they are more loyal to brands that continue to find new ways of being relevant in their lives. By harnessing relentless relevance as the new norm, companies can re-energize employees, shape brand perceptions and change behaviors, which thereby increases engagement, sales and share of market and share of margin.

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Three Threats to Brand Relevance: Strategies That Work

DAVID AAKER

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Summary

From branding guru David Aaker comes “Three Threats to Brand Relevance: Strategies That Work,” a provocative new offering in the Jossey-Bass Short Format series. In Three Threats Aaker reveals that the key to an organization’s sustained growth is to learn what it takes to bring “big” innovation to market and create barriers to competitors.

Aaker also shows how well-established companies can avoid becoming irrelevant in the face of the continuing parade of marketing dynamics led by others. Building on his full-length book “Brand Relevance”, Aaker offers a guide for confronting the three threats if they emerge and shows how to put in place the strategies that will keep the threats at bay. David Aaker says,

“Threats to brand relevance are always lurking around the corner. Your brand is virtually never immune from the risk of fading instead of being energized or being damaged instead of strengthened.”

The Three Threats to Brand Relevance

Threat #1:

A decline in category or subcategory relevance. Customers simply no longer want to buy what you are making, despite the fact you are offering a quality product and some customers love it.

Threat #2:

The loss of energy relevance. Without energy the brand simply does not come to mind as other more visible brands and a decline in energy can create a perception that it is locked in the past, suitable for an older generation.

Threat #3:

The emergence of a “reason-not-to-buy.” The brand may have a perceived quality problem or be associated with a firm policy that is not acceptable.

—

“Three Threats to Brand Relevance: Strategies That Work” is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million or wherever books are sold.

Highlights

  • Using dozens of case studies, shows how to create or dominate new categories or subcategories, making competitors irrelevant
  • Shows how to manage the new category or subcategory as if it were a brand and how to create barriers to competitors
  • Describes the threat of becoming irrelevant by failing to make what customer are buying or losing energy

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About the Author

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

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

Explore how David Aaker and Prophet can help your business build a more relevant brand.

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5 Digital Transformation Imperatives

Start with focusing on customers before technology, and then measure what matters most.

Mainstream, established businesses have reached a digital tipping point. After decades of exploiting information technologies to improve the efficiency of their operations and amplify their communications, they must now shift their focus to digital to deliver greater customer value. Leaders face a stark choice: transform digitally on behalf of customers, or risk being abandoned by them for digitally enabled competitors, disruptive market entrants or new digital business innovations.

Digital transformation requires urgent and fundamental change. Success depends on elevating products and services into digitally enabled solutions and customer interactions into engaging, customer-centric experiences. The companies who have done so are reaping the rewards. A recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Accenture reports that companies who reach a higher level of digital maturity are 26% more profitable, grow 9% faster and achieve 12% higher market valuations than their industry peers.

But leaders are struggling to chart a clear digital transformation path and execute it effectively. Most report that their digital investments have disappointed on the bottom line. Sure, they note some successes—a great app here that attracts new users or better data that helps to customize products. But the kind of digital transformation that unleashes new value for the customer? That’s not common.

There are plenty of reasons why companies find moving past the digital tipping point to unleash customer value is slow and difficult. For one, many companies start by delegating too many decisions to digital agencies that may be great at technology but lack customer insight. Or they work with management consultancies whose extensive industry expertise can blind them to breakthrough innovation opportunities on behalf of customers. Too often, the pursuit of digital transformation is not strategic as experts, pundits and agencies act like proverbial kids in a candy store, chasing the next digital fad without a view of what customers need most.

We’ve found that the companies that leverage digital to strengthen their bonds with customers and unlock new sources of growth share five imperatives:

Put Customers Before Technology

When customer insight guides technology, market adoption is faster, margins are greater and the impact on growth is more substantial. Companies must look past the shiny new technology toys to focus on what matters most – insights about customer needs. What are their perceptions? Motivations? Pain points and daily hassles? Harnessing their problems and desires to develop digital solutions and experiences is crucial to being more relevant to customers.

Scholastic, the world’s largest publisher and distributor of children’s books, knew it faced increasing competition as more parents shopped through Amazon and children engaged in new media. But it needed a solution that was bigger than just another e-reader. Scholastic partnered with Prophet to find an innovative solution that would be compelling to children, trusted by parents and teachers, and differentiated in the market. The result was an interactive tool called Storia that helps parents and children navigate the world of children’s literature, specifically focusing on a child’s reading level.

Shift the Organization

Leaders can tackle the greatest barrier to digital progress, organization inertia, by arming themselves with the understanding that digital transformation requires embedding new methods and mindsets. In a world where culture eats strategy for lunch, failure to build an organization’s ability to move faster, flexibly, collaboratively, and with more risk-taking is the chief pitfall to avoid in transformation efforts. A digital mindset requires thinking like an entrepreneur while leveraging the assets of an established firm. When companies build digital capabilities, digital becomes a core part of how work gets done. And of course, that positions them to better serve the customer.

Electrolux, a global leader in household and professional appliances, realized it needed a digital transformation if it was to leapfrog the competition and create engaging branded shopper experiences. And that required crafting a culture of experience innovation. Prophet partnered with the CMO and CEO to develop digital executive leadership across the organization, to create digital education summits across the globe and ultimately to create a governance model to drive digital transformation. Together, we developed a new way of working and empowered the entire organization to create differentiating and impactful digital experiences for customers.

Think Strategic, Act Bold

Building urgency is crucial to success but only if it leads toward a destination around more valuable customer relationships. Leaders must chart a path that defines the customer growth opportunities to pursue, the digital moves to make and the tools required to support these efforts. Sequencing the transformation and developing the right pace of digital innovation is a difficult challenge that can only succeed through clear strategic direction combined with a bias for action.

“Building urgency is crucial to success but only if it leads toward a destination around more valuable customer relationships.”

Monsanto knew it needed to transition from being product-focused to customer-centric and turned to Prophet to develop a new grower-focused approach. A robust customer segmentation revealed new opportunities to deliver differentiated value to growers, primarily through tools that would enable farm productivity. Monsanto started to deliver value beyond the product by pairing growers with Monsanto agronomists who provide customized advice for increasing yield. Today, customer-centricity as at the center of the company’s growth strategy, and can be seen through examples like the recent acquisition of a weather company – Climate Corporation – that will use weather data to help farmers optimize productivity.

Start Now, Improve

Transformation cannot wait. Digital moves too fast and is too complex to work on ten-year plans or monolithic, pie-in-the-sky customer engagement platforms. Rapid innovation based on frequent trial, measurement and refinement has proven time and again to work best. A customer-inspired digital strategy puts technology in its proper place, treating tech as a tool to better serve customers, not as an end in itself. When launching and then enhancing MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) becomes standard operating procedure, companies know they are on the right track. Seamlessness is crucial. Every innovation cannot come at the cost of replacing everything a customer already values. When new ways of providing value are integrated with what already works well, customers adopt more rapidly and are far more likely to be satisfied with the end results.

Schneider Electric, a B2B company is transforming to change the way it works throughout its complicated, multi-layered value chain. By providing tools and mechanisms for understanding new customer groups, Prophet is helping Schneider Electric drive demand with electrical contractors and facility managers, while also enabling traditional channel partners with better tools for delivery. Today, customized online portals and mobile tools are enabling contractors around the world to make smarter project decisions, while end customers are empowered to better monitor energy usage through a dashboard called Building Insights.

Measure What Matters

Measures matter when they drive improvements to digital transformation. The key is to link business impact to the work digital investments undertake. Without a clear connection, leaders scale up winners and eliminate losers far too late or never at all. When companies understand the relationships between customer behavior, the motivations that underlie behavior and the impact of behavior on the business, they can rapidly accelerate the pace of digitally enabled growth. In a digital world, it is possible to measure almost everything. So focusing on what really matters and taking action to address what the measures reveal becomes the job of everyone in the company.

For Charles Schwab, determining the most important metrics has been critical. With investors increasingly relying on digital and mobile for both financial transactions and information about investment decisions, it’s created a range of content and digital tools. And it tracks them for engagement and conversion across different channels and investor segments. Thanks to this commitment to its customers and its “Own your tomorrow” positioning, Schwab is earning record sales and profits and outpacing its competitors.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

Taken together, these five imperatives are the keys to harnessing digital to fundamentally enhance a company’s core value proposition and create a competitive advantage. Focus on these imperatives yields digitally enabled solutions and experiences that boost buying behaviors, and accelerate financial results.

While digital has been rewriting the rules for growth for years, employees, boards and shareholders are now challenging leaders to chart next-level strategies. Established businesses have more at risk, but those that achieve this transformation combine current strengths with digital dexterity and can achieve uncommon growth.

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