Blog

When it comes to coronavirus, there are ten ways companies and brands can adapt to tell the difference between success and failure in 2021.

C.– Competition and concentration within the categories will escalate.

• Situation: Large companies with solid balance sheets and affordable access to capital investment will catch the growing number of troubled mid-cap and small-cap companies. The simplification of the range will give preference to the largest brands. Consumers will be looking for more stability in terms of familiarity, convenience, and routine.
• Opportunity: Successful companies will prioritize the brand scale and not the portfolio range and concentrate resources behind established brands with roof top appeal.
• Next step: discover the new pillars of growth to ensure the company is an optimal fit for the post-pandemic market.
• To do: Research where to play and how to win.

Ö–The changeover from business models with high fixed costs will accelerate.

R.–The recovery will be stable but volatile.

• Situation: Companies with essential products are becoming more important as companies with discretionary products and services have more discretion. Different counties and even regions within countries will perform differently. The virus and lockdowns will continue to rise in rolling waves until vaccine implementation is final.
• Opportunity: Successful organizations will move to localized and adaptive planning to align business with vaccine implementation and business models that are less likely to be disrupted by lockdowns.
• Next step: Introduction of real-time planning that enables rapid reallocation of resources and operational redistribution in certain regions in relation to rapidly changing market situations.
• To do: Invest behind contingency plans for future scenarios.

Ö–The move from home to home solutions will increase and become permanent.

• Situation: The acceleration of digital and virtual will focus life on distance, delivery and decentralization. Work-from-home will be skipped. Virtual is getting a lot better. Consumers will refuse to give up time and control. Company decisions are determined by cost savings and productivity. Second order effects will spread.
• Opportunity: Winning companies will instantly develop a detailed understanding of needs, occasions and media from home.
• Next step: identify and quantify the value of need gaps and potential home offers.
• To do: Research to remap the structure of demand.

N.– Nothing will be more critical than building loyalty.

ONE– Antimicrobial protection is the most important operational requirement for any company.

• Situation: Health has become hygiene. Masks, distancing and hand washing are here to stay. Disappointments that alarm consumers about exposure will penalize brands. Over time, many skeptics will fluctuate, increasing the need for a safe sanitary area from which people can go back to normal.
• Opportunity: Successful companies will include hygiene in their fundamental brand value proposition and develop innovations in relation to hygiene solutions.
• Next step: Make the hygiene obvious and unmistakable and then build a category-specific differentiation on this basis.
• To do: brainstorm and test innovative hygiene solutions.

V.–Virus reverberation makes health a major benefit in any category.

• Situation: Each category was influenced by infection protection protocols. For consumers, this means that any category, not just traditional health care, can help or harm health. So now every category can plausibly treat health as a benefit. Big tech companies have already moved in that direction.
• Opportunity: Successful businesses will move beyond old category boundaries to monetize innovative ways to ensure and improve health and wellbeing.
• Next step: find a credible match between health and the category that offers short-term branding opportunity.
• To do: Updated market structure research to include health.

I–The integrity of commitment to the common good will be even more important.

R.– Sustainable building will not be discretionary.

• Situation: Climate problems now have an unstoppable dynamic. Unprecedented natural events and a shift in the forefront of US politics will come with growing protests and the handover of generations to a cohort of greater concern. Investors are demanding better pricing for risk while looking for sustainable innovations to invest in.
• Opportunity: Successful companies will gain a competitive advantage through sustainable practices, especially in logistics, manufacturing, materials and energy.
• Next step: Formulate a long-term transformation plan to put the entire company on a sustainable basis.
• To do: Develop and benchmark a sustainable transformation plan.

U.–S / China relations will improve, but business planning will continue to worry.

• Situation: Concerns about single-threaded supply chains and job losses from offshoring will continue to motivate politicians. Both countries will continue to support domestic production and consumption. The pressures on technology and intellectual property will increase. Regional policy issues will continue. The tension will ease but not go away.
• Opportunity: Successful companies will switch to localized systems and solutions that offer protection against ongoing uncertainty in the course of advancing globalization.
• Next step: Strengthen the business infrastructure and brand positioning with local elements and sources.
• Things to Do: Create an innovation plan that maximizes ROI on “local”.

Bonus: S.– beyond the next year – Disturbances are the new normal.

• Situation: The pandemic has destabilized much of the market and these effects are still playing out. Other macroeconomic changes like climate change, AI, an aging population, political unrest, and even other pandemics lie ahead, along with a lot of good things like space exploration, biomedical advances, and green energy breakthroughs. Across many fronts, the future will be a series of disruptive step changes.
• Opportunity: Successful companies will supplement extrapolation-based planning processes, which require a high degree of continuity, with scenario-based systems that are structured in such a way that they offer stability and control despite a high level of uncertainty.
• Next step: Create a scenario-based planning system to expand and contextualize existing brand and annual planning processes.
• To do: Futures and trend program linked to business performance metrics.

Your call to action – A branding program in the light of these ten (plus one) success strategies for 2021 should …

• Develop scenarios: Develop a full set of possible futures. Decide how to plan against everyone. Invest behind Best-Guess, but also work out contingency plans.
• Set up tracking metrics: Provide key benchmarks that directly track new dynamics and trends. Create a dashboard. Establish frequent review meetings.
• Revised business strategy: Review of branding and retail channels in the light of changes in the demand structure. A new strategy is likely to be needed; At least the strategy needs to be updated.
• Renew Organizational Skills: Perform a skill and functional re-evaluation, then update both on business strategy.

Contributing to Brand Strategy Insider By: Walker Smith, Chief Knowledge Officer, Brand & Marketing at Kantar

The Blake Project helps brands define and articulate values ​​at all stages of development: Get actionable guidance from experts on brand differentiation, growth, and purpose strategy.

Brand Strategy Insider is a service from The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in brand research, brand strategy, brand growth and branding

Free publications and resources for marketers