1-minute Summary: Key Concept Brand Challenge
Why is Brand Challenge Important?
“The first step in solving a problem is to recognise that it does exist” (Zig Ziglar).
Here we explore the present-day business context to understand the nature of the brand challenge. When ultimately positioning a brand, it must be accomplished with an understanding of the critical issues within the business that impact its profit or growth.
How do you Explore Brand Challenge?
Looking at a brand’s positioning strategy often denotes the need for some sort of evolution due to societal, product, market, or consumer challenges. Identify brand challenges through 5P’s & PESTEL frameworks. Ask: why are we here? Identify brand lifecycle and compare against competition.
What Does the Right Answer Look Like?
Define the brand’s key business challenge(s) expressed as a simple articulation of the key issue or barrier to growth. Looking at all the challenges, barriers, and threats on a page, can we trace them back to a similar origin? Sacrifice is key, get to one simple, clearly expressed Brand Challenge.
5-minute Tutorial: Key concept Brand Challenge
Meaning (why are we asking the question):
Here, we are exploring the business environment and context that the brand exists within today. We are determining the key challenges to the brand that impede growth. This is answered from a ‘business point of view’. There are many challenges to running a business, but there are always crucial issues that are either top of mind or perceived to be significant barriers (usually both!). They could be evident within the internal or external perception of the product or service, the manufacturing, distribution, pricing, ranging, or packaging, but may involve the changing social, market or consumer dynamics. There are no limits to what can be perceived as key challenges.
When ultimately positioning a brand, it must be accomplished with an understanding of the critical issues within the business that impact its profit or growth. It is useful to remember this is not an operational, fiscal, or business strategy meeting. (In my consultancy, I cover this question with the key members of the team individually, prior to any workshop).
We need to remain as ‘top-level’ as possible when considering the key business challenges (today) for the brand overall, and not get lost in the minutia!
Process (how to find the answers):
- What are the key barriers impeding growth and profitability?
Looking at a brand’s positioning strategy often denotes the need for some sort of evolution due to societal, product, market, or consumer challenges – and we typically know what they are.
[If you don’t know, you will need to spend some time here establishing the context for your brand positioning. Having different members of the team is vital in this instance. Most businesses (dependent on size) will have some form of finance, sales, category, marketing, or management representation. Gathering these representatives together and asking what your business challenges are is a rewarding exercise in itself. Each specialisation usually brings to the table their own concerns – and working through the groups’ concerns, universal challenges will often emerge.
There are various frameworks we can employ to bring out and decide the key brand challenges. Utilise the classic 4P’s (Product, Price, Place and Promotion), or, preferably, the 5P’s (by adding People). Or try PESTEL, looking at the macro business challenges through Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal filters].
Is the business a start-up, established, challenger or iconic brand? This could be obvious, or it could lead to debate. Establishing and agreeing on what stage a brand is in from a business point of view is useful in determining the overall Brand Story and Brand Essence (e.g., A brand strategy for a new brand is usually different from an established one). A challenger brand has a different approach to the iconic #1 brand.
Still, the discussion may prompt the desired change in brand approach – the iconic brand wants to become the challenger; the established brand wants to act like a start-up, or the start-up has matured and needs an appropriate strategy.
- Why are we here?
Avoiding the philosophical responses(!), there is often an underlying reason the brand has come under review. It is always essential to get that reason on the table as soon as possible For example: something wrong or great has happened; something important has changed (political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal, or in leadership); an opportunity or market has opened or closed.
One of the significant barriers to a successful brand definition is modern business politics. The reason a brand often remains undefined (or at least open to interpretation) is to allow the necessary degree of ambiguity. Necessary, because it will enable all the senior brand executives to agree. Although politically expedient, this is often why brands stagnate (or worse). Brands are like people: wear your heart on your sleeve, and people know what you stand for.
You must be honest in this process with yourself, the team, and the business.
- How do we compare with the competition?
Often, a challenge or an advancement by the competition will necessitate a response or change in direction. In this section, we are not looking for a full competitive review. But, if necessary, we must identify the challenge the competition has forced us to consider.
Once we have thoroughly explored this question, there may be several challenges. In my experience, there is often a recurrent theme. It may exhibit itself in different ways but come from the same source. We need to spend some time discarding minor irritants, and sorting and grouping reoccurring themes, through reference back to the original question. The goal is to establish a single key challenge. However, we can settle for a maximum of three challenges that are impeding the brand’s success.
Outcome (what the answer looks like):
This question, more than any other, is quite specific and will have answers based on the understanding of the marketplace, the consumer, and the brand itself. It directs our thinking towards those challenges that are an impediment for growth. It is ultimately an introductory question – the answers set the context for the Core Concept to be answered. Hence, the answers to this question are usually more contextual – they help frame the answer and are not the answer itself.
Critical again in this process is convergence. Many impediments come from a reoccurring barrier. Looking at all the challenges, barriers, and threats on a page, consider the similarities – trace back the stated challenges, barriers or threats.
Is there a similar origin? Remember, we don’t have to get to three – Ideally, we should get one. Three is a maximum, not a minimum. Then, try to articulate the key challenge using plain language versus business terminology. In doing this, it will be easier to capture multiple business issues into a single brand problem.
For example, I often hear, ‘We’re losing what we were through growth, so we need to capture and define what that was before we lose it completely’. Or from the growth cycle of the brand, ‘We have been the same size for years; we don’t know how to grow’; and ‘We have grown as a business, come of age. We need our brand to reflect this’. Newer brands might say, ‘We are a new brand, we must simply tell people what we do and why they should support us’; or ‘We want to expand to the next level, and we need a brand that can take us there’.
The challenge can be people-based, ‘Our own people are not engaging as much with the brand as they used to’; or ‘We are a new team; we need to set a common agenda for the brand’. Or product-based, ‘We have so many product lines we need to define what exactly we are’.
Key challenges also result from the category and the consumer. We typically hear, ‘The market (or) our competition has moved the goalposts, and we no longer believe we’re in the right territory’; or ‘We are no longer as relevant to our customer base. We need to give them a reason to reengage and reassess us’.
This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but even from these few examples, we can understand the nature of the challenge.
