ways4brands

Our ways4brands 

 

From Insight to Opportunity.

From Strategy to Reality. 

Discovering genuine brand opportunities is a continuous and powerful source of brand growth. The playgrounds to achieve this are manifold – from innovation cultivated within the brand’s current business model to realizing opportunities outside the brand’s home turf.

 

Translating a brand opportunity into a commercial reality requires a clear commitment from the brand owner, a convincing game plan and dedicated partners to realize the brand’s potential.

Brand Opportunity

Brand Opportunity

Initially the ability to seize/recognize/realize promising opportunities for a brand requires generating the relevant insights. The acquired insights need forward-thinking interpretations that genuinely connect with the brand, target audiences and the business models used by the brand. Combining these insights with different frameworks (=perspectives) allows us to produce an array of brand opportunities and eliminate any unexpected and out-of-the-box conclusions.

To us, developing brand opportunities essentially relies on creating scenarios that move along the following lines: positioning opportunities (what the brand will stand for in future), extending opportunities (which options define, structure and grow the brand’s offer) and identifying and assessing partnering opportunities (which partners are required to realize strategic and tactical growth). Brandway supports dealing with these essential strategic brand and business questions in cooperation with appropriate partners.

  • Insight Generation
  • Positioning Opportunity
  • Extension Opportunities
  • Partnering Opportunities

Brand Strategy

Brand Strategy

We regard brand strategy as a long-term approach for how to grow a brand. First of all, the ingredients for a brand strategy consist of a comprehensive but crisp brand definition, including the brand’s reason to exist and its purpose, the offer related to the brand and the types of experiences made at different touchpoints that create the intended perception. A wider sense of brand strategy includes how the brand goes to market and communicates with its audiences.

The development of a brand strategy is influenced by a wealth of factors. For us, it is essential to successfully connect future expectations, customers’ behavior and priorities with the brand’s current equities and the opportunities we have identified for the brand. We understand the brand definition as the brand’s proposition and a basis to formulate a product strategy and an experience strategy, which defines how the brand is experienced, followed by a ‘go to market’ strategy that ultimately translates the brand strategy into a concrete market presence and brand experiences.

  • Brand Definition
  • Product Strategy
  • Communication Strategy
  • ‘Go-to-market’ Strategy
  • Experience Strategy

Brand Structure

Brand Structure

 Regardless of whether the brand structure is based on a master-brand approach utilizing an array of sub-brands, consists of a portfolio of individual brands or follows a hybrid brand architecture model, the brand structure should adhere to clear organizing principles and reflect the selected brand strategy. These are the ingredients that forge a future-oriented brand structure: existing brand architecture, extension scenarios for different brands and emerging market segmentation models. The realization of a brand’s potential, in terms of the products it offers, triggers questions related to how these offers are organized within the brand. Such questions should be answered before communicating new products and creating potentially new touchpoints.

  • Brand Architecture
  • Brand Portfolio
  • Product Segmentation

Brand Experience

Brand Experience

Brand touchpoints are the sources of brand experiences. Whether these refer to the branded product itself, its website or the tone of voice of the employee speaking on your service hotline: Touchpoints create impressions and impressions influence perceptions and emotions, no matter which senses are involved.

Touchpoints are like the instruments of a brand orchestra and only if they follow a clear direction will they have their intended effect. We regard it as important to understand the role and function of touchpoints in the overall context of a brand experience and the individual purpose they were designed for. The tremendous spectrum of touchpoints also implies that we need to draw on partners with specific skillsets for their development and realization.

  • Touchpoint Analysis
  • Touchpoint Development
  • Touchpoint Realization
  • Touchpoint Documentation

Brand-Out-Licensing

Brand Out-Licensing

Once a brand potential has been recognized and the decision to realize it has been made, brand licensing (out-licensing) can be a strategically valuable instrument for brand growth. Especially when the extension stretches beyond the owner’s current organizational capacities or requires a different business model and skillset, brand out-licensing is an option. Clearly, an appropriate set of equities should be available for the brand to credibly enter an unknown product category. When considering a brand stretch with a partner, the brand owner needs to be aware of the potential change in brand perception that is fueled by moving into new product areas.

The advantages of brand out-licensing programs can be summarized as follows: The brand is strengthened by additional investments and can increase its overall sales volume. New products trigger new interest, new sales channels increase brand presence and, if managed properly, cross-selling activities allow promoting the brand across licensors’ and licensees’ product categories. All the potential advantages of licensing partnerships need to be viewed with respect to potential positive or negative retransfer effects on the brand image and core product categories that are related to and offered by the brand (licensor). Brandway guides brand owners through the different phases of a licensing program, supported by appropriate partners.

  • License Exploration
  • Licensing Strategy
  • Licensee Search
  • License Realization

Brand Partnership

Brand Partnership

Boosting short-term sales in the context of brand building activities is often achieved by remarkable and exciting promotional campaigns. Partnering with an appropriate brand to jointly create compelling promotional ideas and concepts is a powerful tool to activate the brand and increase the sale of the products promoted. Brandway seeks brand partners to pair brands while ensuring a high mutual brand fit with sufficient ‘creative space’ to formulate a promotional idea that results in a genuine ‘co-created’ brand experience and leads to increased sales and brand relevance.

  • Brand Partner Exploration
  • Brand Partner Strategy
  • Brand Partner Concept
  • Brand Partner Realization

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