Kantar reveals ‘growth accelerators’ using 10 years of customer data
To drive growth, brands need to be meaningfully different to more people.
That is according to the latest analysis from Kantar, which has released its Blueprint for Brand Growth, an empirical study seeking to understand the key drivers of brand growth.
Blueprint for Brand Growth analysed more than 6.5 billion attitudinal and shopper data points from the past decade across thousands of brands, hundreds of categories and 54 countries, offering Kantar a “longitudinal view of what’s important about what people think and feel, and then how that correlates with how they act,” according to project lead and executive vice president for thought leadership Jane Ostler.
The growth driver and growth accelerators
Ostler described the importance of brands working to become “meaningfully different” (defined as being functionally and emotively distinct from competitors), with meaningfully different brands commanding five times penetration today and advantaging future penetration advantage compared to brands that are not meaningfully different, according to Ostler.
Explaining one example, Ostler told The Media Leader “meaningful difference” was positively correlated to churn rates for streaming services.
If being “meaningfully different” is a core growth driver for businesses, Kantar has outlined three “growth accelerators” for marketers to focus on to further speed growth along.
“Depending on where the brand is, and its starting point, marketers may need to lean into one more than the others,” said Ostler. This is true regardless of brand category, though certain categories of brand may be more likely to need to focus on one driver of growth more than others.
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The growth accelerators include:
>> Predispose more people.
>> Be more present.
>> Find new space.
These tend to be reliant on one another. For example, a brand may not yet want to focus on “finding new space” without first predisposing more consumers to their product and being more present in the spaces in which they already operate.
When it comes to predisposing more people, Ostler explained, “the way you predispose more people is to invest in exposures,” adding, “strong predisposition drives much higher volume share, it also drives price paid as well.”
Being more present, Ostler suggested, is “ultimately about optimizing your marketing investments in customer journey, range, distribution online and offline, pricing and promotions, and any other activity that converts consumer predisposition and captures choices from other brands.”
Finally, finding new space tends to be about finding incremental growth through introducing your brand to new markets and new categories.
Importance of brand consistency across channel
Ostler admitted the conclusions “will, instinctively, feel familiar to CMOs.”
But, she continued, “They are now underpinned with new quantifiable evidence of their impact on brand and revenue growth. These are universal truths that every brand can use to focus their strategy and secure the budget for their highest impact activities.”
This is important as marketing techniques and formats are constantly in need of adjustment in an era of media fragmentation.
“There needs to be something that is consistent,” argued Ostler. “As agencies and marketers handover the reins of control to creators and influencers, how you attribute that back to the brand is an even greater challenge because you don’t want your brand to mean hundreds of different things to different people. There has to be something that unites [your brand.]”
Additional recommendations for marketers looking to grow their brand, according to Ostler, include: emphasising the need for high-quality creative on every single channel being used and taking special care to not cannibalise one’s own sales through both product and marketing innovation.