Unsere Artikel werden in Publikationen weltweit veröffentlicht

BERLIN (09.04.2013) – Nach nur 2 Jahren im deutschen Markt zieht die strategische Marken- und Marketingberatung Prophet positive Bilanz. Seit dem Zusammenschluss mit der Managementberatung Noshokaty, Döring & Thun Anfang 2011 konnte Prophet eine Vielzahl von Kunden in Deuschland gewinnen und somit signifikant zu dem Wachstum von Prophet in Europa von mehr als 100% in den letzten zwei Jahren beitragen.

Wer in dynamischen Märkten Erfolg haben will, muss Angebote entwickeln, die so innovativ sind, dass sie neue Kategorien oder Subkategorien schaffen - und damit Wettbewerber irrelevant machen. Das wegweisende Buch von David Aaker zeigt, wie man sich auf den Erfolg im Kampf um Markenrelevanz konzentriert.

While the role of the ideation session, in its myriad guises, holds a place in the innovation firmament, and while the role that inspiration plays in such sessions is hardly to be questioned, we challenged ourselves to think more broadly about the role that inspiration plays throughout the innovation process. Ultimately, we determined that an inspiration-driven approach to innovation fundamentally changes how each process step looks, feels and, most importantly, the value it delivers.

Achim Wirtz (55, Bild) ist neu bei Prophet, Zürich, als Partner und Mitglied des European Leadership Teams tätig. Seine Karriere wurde bisher von Kaderpositionen in international tätigen Schweizer Industrieunternehmen, Agenturen und Consultingfirmen geprägt. So war er Chief Customer Officer (CCO) bei Mettler-Toledo, Leiter des Aufbaus der BBDO-Consulting-Präsenz in der Schweiz sowie langjähriger Partner in der Wirz-Gruppe mit Geschäftsleitungsfunktionen in Werbung, Identity und zuletzt Wirz Corporate.

Companies often engage in an analytical and creative process to develop or review their brand positioning, an exercise often triggered by the need to support a revised business strategy.

One of the risks they may encounter, however, is embarking on positioning development that lacks a strong enough strategic foundation. One way to offset this is by employing a “Brand Archetype” model, which helps define the space in which brands should play, providing strategic direction for the brand positioning.

The Brand Archetype model was inspired by the understanding that brand positioning is dictated by a company’s assets, business situation, and future strategy, as well as the “appetite” for category disruption. 

When thousands of people lost their jobs during the Great Depression, many of them started riding the rails across the country in search of work and food. Hobos, as they were called, had been hopping trains since the 1870s, working as migrant laborers wherever they could find a job. They often traveled by themselves, leading to the inevitable problem of knowing what to expect when arriving in an unfamiliar place. Some cities might be welcoming while others might be less hospitable. A farmer might feed those who worked his fields while others might turn you into the police. A secret language of signs was developed that informed hobos about what awaited them. To the casual observer, the signs were gibberish or graffiti; but to the hobo, they could mean the difference between a hot meal and a night in jail. And therein lies a key question for today’s companies to ask themselves:

For some time now, marketers have talked about methods to measure the economic effectiveness of their programs and have looked for financial metrics suitable to report their activities to the board. A recent survey by the Columbus Business School indicates their success has been limited. Only 30% of the CMOs interviewed use financial metrics for reporting, and 57% of CMOs use no measure of Return on Marketing Investment to evaluate their achievements.

When marketers map customer experience, we start by defining a beginning and an end. To improve the experience for a particular brand, we typically look at the customer’s touchpoints with the brand on that continuum, not acknowledging that our customers live in an ecosystem, transcending any single brand.

Look at any product category, and the answer is the same. All of the meaningful changes in market position and sales of individual brands occur only when the brand creates a “must have” for which competitors lack visibility and credibility to be considered. However, most firms seldom foster such innovation and bring it to market—and in most cases, it is not because there is a lack of resources. Firms that are profitable and successful are actually less likely to fund market-changing innovation than firms that are struggling or in crisis. Why? One answer is the curse of success, which can take several forms.

The only way to grow, with rare exceptions, is to engage in substantial or transformational innovation that will be a game changer, that will create new categories or subcategories defined by qualities that customers deem “must haves” and protected by actively managed competitive barriers. Healthy organizations often have plenty of ideas that potentially qualify but get killed off before reaching the market. As a result, an opportunity to create a platform for real growth is lost.

Chaos. If there’s a single word to encapsulate today’s digital environment, that one clinches it. The dizzying pace of change has been hard to keep up with (never mind get ahead of) from every perspective: Channels and platforms. Devices and tools. Customer behaviors…and expectations.

Das Jahr 2011 war voll bedeutender Partnerschaften. Oder wer könnte die prachtvolle Hochzeit von William und Kate vergessen, die Milliarden Menschen auf der ganzen Welt live verfolgten? Schlagzeilen machte auch die nur 72 Tage dauernde Blitzehe von US-Reality-TV-Starlet Kim Kardashian und dem amerikanischen Basketballprofi Kris Humphries – okay, vielleicht gibt es doch manche Partnerschaften, die einfach nicht sein sollen.

Interview mit James Walker. Der neue Senior Partner von Prophet wird auf absehbare Zeit zwischen seiner Heimat Großbritannien und den Vereinigten Staaten pendeln, um Marketingspezialisten in Fragen der Analytik zu beraten. Seit 20 Jahren ist James im Marketinggeschäft unterwegs – als Berater bei großen Agenturen (J. Walter Thompson) und Beratungsunternehmen (Accenture) ebenso wie als selbständiger Unternehmer. Wir sprachen mit ihm über die neue Beratungssparte, die er leitet, und seine Leben jenseits von Prophet.

Wie Markenidentität und Positionierung in einem hart umkämpften Markt zu Erfolg führen können.  Joerg Nissing und Philippe Knupp von Prophet und Aurel Keller, Marketing- und Verkaufsleiter der Delica AG, einer Tochter der Migros Gruppe, berichten anhand der erfolgreichen Markteinführung von Delizio.

Zum 70. Geburtstag der GfM Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Marketing blickt die GfM auf sieben Jahrzehnte Marketinggeschichte zurück. Prophet hat zu diesem Symposium beigetragen und hat für die GfM sieben internationalen Forschungsthemen entwickelt.