How can marketers drive better growth?

Achieving brand growth, particularly in a constrained market, is the holy grail for every marketer. Kantar has introduced the Blueprint for Brand Growth, a decision-making framework that helps marketers to better control the levers of growth that shape their brand future.

The Blueprint, which combines Kantar’s unique BrandZ and Worldpanel data assets, is focused on one question: how can marketers better drive growth?

Jane Ostler, Kantar’s EVP of global thought leadership and Blueprint project lead, says the Blueprint sets a new standard for strategic marketing understanding and excellence. “Marketers can use this framework to evaluate their brand’s competitive positioning and then shape their strategic response and marketing investment priorities. The Blueprint combines a decade of attitudinal brand research with actual shopper behaviour to more holistically understand the tangible impact marketing has on growth.”

The Blueprint proves that brands grow through being meaningfully different to more people. Kantar says that brands that are meaningfully different to more people command five times more market penetration today and have a real advantage over the next two years.

To achieve meaningful difference, marketers need to activate three growth accelerators, recommends Kantar. The first is to predispose more people to the brand through creativity, advertising and experience. When predisposition is optimally executed, volume share will be driven nine times higher with a selling price that is twice as high as average, and the likelihood of growing market share in the future will be four times higher.

The second growth accelerator is being more present. Brands that optimise distribution, customer journey, range, pack, pricing and promotions will win seven times more buyers compared with those present in only half of buying occasions.

The third accelerator is to find new spaces. Innovation focused on identifying incremental spaces — motivations, occasions, categories and services — doubles a brand’s chance of growth. Increasing the number of usage occasions by 10% results in revenue growth of more than 17%.

Ostler says the Blueprint builds on and enhances existing industry research on how brands grow. “Importantly, it proves that while market penetration growth is crucial, solely focusing on this is insufficient to holistically drive sustainable brand, revenue and margin growth. Our analysis underscores the role of differentiation — rather than just distinctiveness — in forging strong mental connections between consumers and brands, as well as defending pricing power.”

While Kantar’s growth accelerators will be familiar to marketers, they are now underpinned by new quantifiable evidence of their impact on brand and revenue growth, says Ostler. “These are universal truths that every brand can use to focus their strategy and secure the budget for their highest-impact activities.”

Download Kantar’s Blueprint for Brand Growth here.