What do we do
In Spring 2024, we’ve launched the Kantar Blueprint for Brand Growth, the breakthrough understanding of how businesses build strong and profitable brands. For the first time in marketing history, Kantar has combined billions of attitudinal data assets with behavioural data to learn what drives sustainable brand growth. Kantar’s Blueprint for Brand Growth gives insights into what strong brands have in common, which activities make the biggest difference, and how to track and predict the most important metrics. 

Now, there is a great opportunity to elevate this evidence-based framework into an actionable Brand Growth roadmap. This is where the Kantar Blueprint Diagnostic Solution comes in, an innovative solution that helps you outgrow competitors and achieve growth targets with confidence: Where the Kantar Blueprint for Brand Growth builds a unified point of view on brands and shares what we know about how to create brand value, the Kantar Blueprint Diagnostic Solution is an activation program that elevates multiple datapoints into a root cause analysis, and translates these findings into a practical growth roadmap. Supported by best-in-class examples, category-inspiration, bespoke engagement moments and a tailored organizational assessment to accelerate internal enablers for growth.  

Basically, the Kantar Blueprint Diagnostic Solution supports CMOs by not only defining the future of marketing, but also by walking the right direction together towards that point at the horizon – while ensuring added brand value from step one. 

 

How do we do it 
The Kantar Blueprint Diagnostic Solution is a proprietary program that ensures collaboration with the client, commitment and engagement across significant stakeholders within an organization. 

The concrete deliverable of the Diagnostic Solution is identified brand growth potential, incl a client-specific Brand Growth roadmap for the next 18-24 months with clear direction on key initiatives and Jobs to be Done. Jobs to be Done will be on WHAT (marketing mix; external world) & HOW (organizational pillars; internal organization). 

The Kantar Blueprint Diagnostic Solution starts with clearly defining the category we research and activate, and can span multiple markets, aggregating the insights. To keep it actionable, final Jobs to be Done will be localized per brand. 

The workshop-led approach is based on Kantar Blueprint for Brand Growth data & insights, and supported by best-in-class examples, category-inspiration, bespoke engagement moments and a tailored organizational assessment to accelerate internal enablers for growth. 

The trajectory is led by Kantar’s Consulting division and secures cross-divisional expertise with our Insights Brand Domain and Worldpanel colleagues.  

Basically, where the Kantar Blueprint for Brand Growth is the ultimate voice in all the ‘noise’, the Kantar Blueprint Diagnostic Solution is the realistic ‘hands and feet’. 


Questions we help clients answer  

Now we’ve connected the dots (data & insights), how to effectively leverage the brand potential?  
 - How to turn knowledge into action, how do we get from ‘as-is’ to ‘to-be’? 
 - What does it take to elevate the root cause analysis into a simple and bold brief of actions and roles & responsibilities?  
 - What type of activities does it take externally across the Marketing Mix (“WHAT”)? What type of activities does it take internally across the organisational pillars (processes, tools and capabilities; “HOW”)? 
 

How can I organize for and keep on pushing our growth roadmap?  
 - How to best show up as strategic partners for driving business growth within my organisation? How do I ensure all stakeholders across different functions (e.g., including sales, category planning, innovation, R&D, etc.) are committed to the growth roadmap? 
 - How do I take lead and keep momentum? How to mitigate risk of (re)focusing on short term brand and business results? 
 

What are metrics to measure success?  
 - How do I know if I’m still on-track? What are best growth metrics for my category; how to look beyond corporate P&L metrics? 
 - What if category or competition outsmarts my approach; what can I learn from best-in-class examples?  
 - How to best celebrate growth milestones along the journey? 

If you are interested in engaging with Kantar Blueprint for Brand Growth, feel free to download our Blueprint book or browse all Blueprint thought leadership here: Blueprint for Brand Growth (kantar.com). 

If you are interested in running a Blueprint Diagnostic project, please reach out to Kantar Consulting: Nico Stouthart, Senior Partner (nico.stouthart@kantar.com ) 

What do we do  
We help you to future-proof your business by identifying macro changes that open up new profit pools impacting decisions for your current portfolio, innovation pipeline and business transformation goals.  


How do we do it 
We leverage Kantar proprietary Drivers of Change STEEPW (Social, Technological, Economical, Environmental, Political, Well-being) framework and apply actionable outcomes for your business.  
We also leverage Kantar’s network of Streetscapers and Expert Interviews to bring to life inspirational, emerging signals of change and how it is manifesting in your key markets of interest.  
When the innovation opportunity applies to your current portfolio of brands, we help you to ideate, refine and test the concept through our digital platform Kantar Marketplace.  

 

Questions we help clients answer  
 - Can you help me better anticipate how the needs of my consumers might evolve tomorrow and where demand will come from?  
 - How to respond to this evolution with a futureproofed portfolio strategy and meaningful innovations in the future 1, 3, 5, or even 10 years out? 
 - How to make sure my brand positioning has longevity and will keep resonating tomorrow with consumers? 
 - What are the emerging trends in the markets – and their early manifestations – that may impact my category?  
 - How do I translate these foresights intel into tangible actions for my business? 

What we do 
GrowthFinder identifies opportunities 100x the original investment.  
We identify new space for brands to grow and optimise portfolio and go to market strategy to enable businesses to achieve their growth ambitions based on a deep, commercialised understanding of where demand sits in markets and categories today, and tomorrow. 

How we do it 
GrowthFinder is the complete consumer demand led growth engine, created bespoke to client’s ambitions, markets and brands to uncover the greatest enterprise level growth opportunities for their business. 

1.We predict growth with confidence 

GrowthFinder is built using robust digital quantitative data fielded through Kantar’s proprietary data quality systems to create a framework of demand. We project into the future by integrating trend projections and social shifts, and we commercially size these opportunities, having taken on board a range of insights from within the client’s business and from pulling on different insight and data sources from across Kantar such as Digital Analytics, Worldpanel and Futures thinking.  

2. We optimise portfolio and brand trajectory  

GrowthFinder uses Kantar’s validated brand equity model, MDS to pinpoint areas of strategic strength, weakness and opportunity for our client’s brand(s). Once we know how the brands should be set up to cover the market profitably, we then apply Kantar’s Blueprint for Brand Growth Accelerators to create actionable growth plans to enhance brand power. 

3. We create a connected ecosystem 

As well as informing KPI setting in ongoing brand tracking, GrowthFinder creates a universal language for growth planning that’s proprietary to each client’s business and enables connection and cohesion across multiple functions, including marketing, media planning, communications, innovation, consumer and shopper marketing and investment planning. 


Questions we help clients answer  
 - What is the optimum Brand Portfolio strategy to maximise our commercial performance today, and in future? 
 - Where are there opportunities for new growth? Either from our existing brands or new ones?  
 - Are there any real growth opportunities for us when we are the big incumbent and all of the smaller brands seem to be growing around us?  
 - What do I need to do to unlock my brand(s) full commercial potential? What is my optimal brand proposition and go to market strategy? 
 - How do I create a growth plan that connects marketing, insights and shopper?  

What we do  
Organisational excellence is about the interplay between Strategy, Structure, Process, Tools and People. Making sure you have the right structure and processes in place and equipping your teams with the relevant tools and training to deliver against your growth strategy. This can't be done overnight but requires a clear transformation agenda. And that's where Kantar's OP practice comes in! We exist to drive behaviour change in order to unlock new levels of organisational performance. 


How we do it 
To accelerate our clients’ transformation agenda and capitalise on brand growth, the Organisational Performance team specialises in four key areas: 

1. Benchmarking: Designing and implementing comprehensive benchmarking tools to identify the most impactful drivers of change, by assessing the effectiveness of a company’s insights & analytics, marketing and/or sales organisations vs. best-in-class organisations. 

2. Organisational Design: Redefining operating models; culture, structure, processes, and tools to seed the desired behavioural change seamlessly across the workforce. 

3. Capability Excellence: Developing and deploying capability programmes that build the critical skills your business needs to grow, today and tomorrow. 

4. Change Management & Transformation: Supporting the workforce with their transformation journey, designing the right initiatives at point of need that move them from awareness to desire, from understanding the change to truly behaving differently. 
Questions we help clients answer.
 
Where should we focus? 

 - How well is my organisation and workforce performing vs industry leaders? 
 - How aligned is my sales & marketing function vs. the company strategy? What do we need to do in terms of elevating ways of working to meet the company’s new ambition? 


How do we build and equip our teams? 

 - How do we identify and build the right skills needed to drive sustainable growth?  
 - What capabilities do we need to win with our consumer, shoppers and retailers? 
 - How do we design and deliver learning journeys that meet our employee & capability needs? 


How do we set-up for success? 

 - How well does our operating model support our transformation ambition? 
 - How do we remove cross functional silos to work better as one team, with clear roles and responsibilities? 
 - How do we embrace more agile processes and tools to fostering a culture of curiosity and experimentation? 


How do we make it last?  

 - How do we take our employees on a journey from understanding the business change required, to behaving differently in the long-term?  
 - How can we measure the impact of change inc. the learning programs we invest in? 

What we do 
We conduct bespoke brand valuation in line with the BrandZ methodology to capture the value of your brand(s) on the balance sheet and define holistic ways to act upon their key growth drivers. 

How we do it 
Brand Value is the product of the Financial Value generated by a brand and the portion of sales that is driven by the brand itself. 

 

 Financial Value 
1. We start from standard Market Valuation to determine total enterprise value. 
2. Then we isolate intangible earnings and branded earnings to determine the financial value generated by the brand 

 
Brand Contribution 
3. We conduct customer research to identify Brand Contribution, the portion of the purchase decision that is driven by the brand, agnostic of activation. 

 

Examples of questions we help clients answer 
By connecting brand equity to dollars, we can help you address multiple strategic questions via ad-hoc Brand Valuation, depending on your needs: 

 - What is the value of my brand and how can I increase it, creating long-term value for my business? 
 - What is the impact of brand related investments on delivering incremental brand value (return on marketing investment)? 
 - How can I optimize the value of my brand portfolio via clear brand architecture? 
 - What is the value of sponsorship, how much is it increasing my brand value? 
 - What is my brand’s endorsement worth, what should I charge for licensing?