INSIGHT + STRATEGY
HOW WE INSIGHT
Every problem is an opportunity to learn, so research is always part of our process. But most research is long on regurgitating the same tired information. And painfully short on deep and actionable insight. Insight happens when you find patterns between data points, apply the wisdom of your team and sprinkle in some creativity to produce that moment of revelation when the business opportunity becomes clear.
When it comes to research, we have no skin in the game, no vested interest in selling you something you don’t need. We create the plan that’s right for you and then deploy our tier-one partners from qual, quant and data science to gather the intel we need. But that is not the end of the road. It’s the beginning. Intel becomes insight once we put that learning through our own process of distillation, which, has at its centre, a working session with your team.
We call it the Distillation Session.
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OUR INSIGHT TOOLBOX
DNA Diagnosis
Your employees, board members & customers know your business - its values, strengths & defining traits - better than anyone else. Through 1:1 interviews, we uncover common themes & insights to articulate an organization’s DNA.
Digital Ethnography
We leverage an online platform & time-tested activities with real people, on their own time, in their own homes to reveal how & why they live & behave & uncover their underpinning values.
Category Deep-dive
Through an audit of your key competitors’ communications & social behaviour, we assess their positioning, persona & distinctive assets. This comprehensive audit is input to the subsequent whitespace mapping strategic exercise.
Digital Journeying
Leveraging mobile-phone-wielding consumers, we shop-along or journey-along with them, seeing their surroundings and how they behave and understanding what their experience is like. Accompanying them on their journey reveals pain-points and opportunities vital to driving innovation and communication.
Zeitgeist Analysis
This is the evaluation of the “spirit of the time” - what’s going on culturally, religiously or intellectually - in the context of the problem to be solved. Tapping into what is culturally compelling gets to more relevant & motivating strategies.
Social Action Audit
Consumers’ claimed behaviour can have limitations. Through the aggregation & mining of existing online social & search behaviour, we are able to accurately gauge leading themes & consumer conversations, evaluate competitive differences & highlight category opportunities
Focus Groups
Focus groups are effective in bringing people together for a focused conversation to share ideas & build on them together. Groups are most effective for co-creation, creative evaluation & innovation with both consumer & internal stakeholders.
Segmentation
Identify & profile your brand’s market segments based on physical & psychological needs & lifestyles and quantify the potential of each for brand growth.
HOW WE STRATEGIZE
Most strategies are, pardon our french, bloody boring. Boxes and buzz words abound. We might use one or two of those along the way, but in the end, we know that people learn through narrative. We do positioning, portfolio architecture, go-to-market, innovation, content. The whole shooting match. But regardless of the output, we try to make every strategy tell a story. And what does every story have, at its core? A theme.
This is where our distillation process comes in. Because a strategy is not worth the paper it’s printed on if it doesn’t culminate in a sentence your Aunt Becky can understand at the next reunion or that your nephew can tweet with room to spare. We take the team through a series of creativity-unleashing exercises that help us find that theme and then develop the strategy to capitalize on it.
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OUR STRATEGY TOOLBOX
Brand Archetypology
Tapping into classic socio-cultural archetypes (e.g. the Warrior, the Creator, etc.) to help companies define its character, but also help set the tone for the brand’s role in the world. Our proprietary exercises help the team reveal & articulate your dominant type.
Annual Growth Planning
Setting the foundation for success, we work with your team to create a summarized plan of OKRs, marketing priorities and cadence of events and milestones agains a marketing calendar. But even an annual plan needs a theme for what we need to accomplish this year.
Portfolio Architecture
Every product or line of business is a member of a team. Each has a distinct role and yet is connected to each other and ladders up to the larger vision. We help you find the model that works for you and articulate the role and promises for each LOB.
Brand Platforms
The foundation for all marketing strategic planning (preceding Annual Planning and Portfolio Architecture), the Brand Platform provides both the north star and the guardrails for growth. Ours consists of the Brand’s Purpose, Promise, Persona and Activation Pillars.
Brand Bible
Your company is not just a collection of products. It’s a story you tell. We use a brand book (which is sometimes a video) to bring your strategy to life in an emotionally compelling way. It acts as a bible that guides all action around the brand.
Whitespace Mapping
New growth opportunities are developed using a series of exercises to identify where competitors are playing, and where the gaps are, and what it will take to fill these effectively. The process ends in business case development.
StoryPrint
Taking a page from the best media channels, we develop key “storylines” based on themes that intersect your objectives with audience passions. We then use those central themes to develop hero and supporting content ideas across your channel ecosystem.
Co-creation Labs
Employing a variety of techniques, our Co-creation labs bring innovative consumers together with members of your team, and a custom group of experts to generate ideas that reflect the vision for your brand.
© The Distillery Consulting Group 2020