John Phillips
- 25 years management and marketing experience with focus on brand strategy and product marketing
- Executive Marketing positions for Fortune 100, mid-size, and early-stage companies
- Brands include Sony children and family media properties, Colgate toothbrushes, Mennen Speed Stick, and Konica photo imaging products
- During tenure, Sony properties Sesame Street, Random House and Golden Family Entertainment properties earned 30+ RIAA gold and platinum awards, 2 Grammy awards, and 1 Emmy award
- All 10 Best Practices
- Pre-Meeting Discovery Process
- One-on-One Call with Expert
- Meeting Summary Report
- Post-Meeting Engagement
Brand Strategy - Consumer Products and Services
Key Trends
- Social media and user-generated content has increased the need for brand relationships to be built upon engagement and exceptional user experiences.
Organizations invite and leverage user-generated content. This has led to a greater importance being placed on how brands build trust with consumers and, in turn, how consumers affect reputation.
Trust is being directly developed between consumer and brand, with marketers seeking to create exceptional brand experiences that reinforce the brand promise and generate favorable consumer comment.
In a social media culture, a brand must not hide from its consumer; it must engage on its own terms and be proactive listeners and prompters of communication.
- Sustainability (managing carbon footprints, green packaging, attending to regulations, etc.) demands that organizations attend to both economic value and societal value.
Brands and the organizations that support them must be mindful of sustainability. This means not only managing economic value but a societal one—managing a carbon footprint or pro-environment packaging or complying with an appropriate regulatory environment.
The most successful brands seek to lead in this regard within their industry sector. Brands have been moving beyond the simple “green” concept, which mostly referred to environmentally friendly practices, packaging and positioning, to sustainability, which demands a more holistic approach that includes everything from labor practices and equity to the environment to long-term economic impact.
- Brand relationships have migrated from connections made through varied channels of fragmented media to a continuous connection that is web-based and mobile and always on.
A brand is a continuous connection. Mobile technology has multiplied both access and interactivity between a brand and its users. The new media landscape represents a new way to listen and a new way to make an emotional connection between brand and consumer.
- Brand experiences are more personal than ever.
Brand experiences have become customized as the consumer’s desire to be unique and expressive of self in more permissive ways has been matched by proliferation and ability of media and business to deliver custom products and experiences. Examples: In fashion, NIKEiD customized shoes; in food, the proliferation of international cuisines and offerings; in media, politically-customized news channels such as Fox, MSNBC.
- During challenging economic times, brands are focusing on basics — product quality, talent, growing market share — as well as customer-driven innovation that can help brands emerge as category leaders tomorrow.
In economic downturns and early recoveries, brands that emphasize basics will be best positioned to succeed.
Apple and Google have proven this with their ability to attract top talent and fund innovation. GM, BP, and Samsung have each produced their own renewal and resurgence case studies.
In terms of branding success, there’s no difference between a consumer staple category-leader like Kleenex and a high-end, discretionary category leader like BMW. Each must establish and maintain market leadership, embrace rabid fans with pioneering product and messages, and stay focused and engaged to remain fully-realized brands.