STRATEGY

THE CULTURE RESET: Unsettled Times. Unsettled Culture. Unsettled Brands.

It's time to address the challenges your business is adapting to today, and capitalize on it for years to come. How? Through proprietary insights that determine how generations will make their purchasing decisions.

These unsettled times we're living in have shattered the fundamental meaning of brands. Importantly, this is a "cultural brand leveling" moment for consumers and marketers. A moment in time to smartly re-examine, reposition, reinforce, even reformulate your brand to achieve new revenue goals.

Enter THE CULTURE RESET PLATFORM -- designed to create and maintain brand saliency in these changing times. The platform provides proprietary thinking and key consumer connection points. 

We unlock Generational Consumer Resonance, Cultureography, Narratives and Visualization for defining and optimizing your brands ultimate 'Culture Truth'. They are guaranteed outcomes.

What are the key steps you ask?

  1. Virtual Briefing -- A complimentary 30 minute briefing session to take you deeper into the entire platform solutions package and guaranteed outcomes on how people decide what they decide and why they value what they value.

  2. Fast Track Thinking Session -- We conduct two 90 minute sessions where we arrive at a group consensus, common vision and action points. It’s our highly collaborative approach to arriving at an initial culture truth platform statements.

  3. Synthesize & Shape -- We agree, focus, and shape what we’ve uncovered into final culture platform statements.

  4. Generational Resonance -- Recognizing that all truths are generationally shaped, we will provide a structure insuring the message is universally powerful, as well as applicable to that consumer's journey.

  5. Visualization -- We create visual design cues to bring these truth statements to life for consumers.

  6. Testing (optional) -- Available if you so choose using our video research network.

  7. Final Culture Reset Recommendation -- The final strategic roadmap that defines your brands ultimate culture truth along with key narratives for generational resonance going forward.

Business, Post COVID-19: How to make the most of Virtual Technology to grow your business once the crisis is over.

How you use Intimate Digital Conference Room technology can set you apart from your competitors, get you closer to your clients, and leave you better off than your competitors when the crisis is over.

Canopy Futurist Advisor, John Krubski, reveals how Virtual Meetings Can Be More Effective than the “real thing.”

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“It’s not about mechanics. It’s about dynamics. What we make of this moment in time can have a profound impact on the way we do business in the post COVID era." www.krubski.com

"As the business world moves towards virtual meetings out of necessity, I fear we might just miss the really big opportunity," says Krubski. "I believe that, done right, digital meetings can actually be more powerful and productive than same-room meetings. I have seen that happen over and over."

Here are three of the factors the video below covers in full that give virtual meetings an edge over their face-to-face counterparts. (Workshops and training are available.) 

  1. The Safety of Digital Solitude: A virtual meeting puts up a barrier, but that does not mean it squashes the flow of ideas. Much like people are freer to speak their minds when posting to social media, employees are more likely to contribute in a bold way in front of their screens.

  2. Permission to Think Out Loud: Just the presence of others makes thinking a cautious activity. Even though staff members are not alone during a virtual meeting, the simulated feeling of isolation is enough to get some creative thought patterns going.

  3. Access to Collective Native Intelligence: When participating in an in-person meeting, we limit our contribution to our specific job function. Away from those constructs, people open up and open up to ideas that draw on the breadth of their experience.

Why Brands Need to Take Bigger Risks in 2020

Positioning 101

Market positioning refers to a brand’s ability to influence consumer perception, especially relating to competitors.

Think of the Coke vs. Pepsi ‘feud’. Though they both generate a lot of revenue and nobody can complain about that, you’ll find a lot of consumers defending one over the other. That’s because, for that person, one of the brands has a stronger positioning that connects with them.

The objective in brand and market positioning is to have such a clear identity of a brand or product, that the average consumer identifies you with it, and not your competitors, even if you are both offering virtually the same thing.

Why You Need to Take Risks

It’s really difficult to reinvent the wheel in 2020 when it seems like everything has been done. Still, even if the strategy itself is nothing new, it’s important for brands to think outside the box when trying to improve their market positioning.

For instance, let’s assume you want to sell handbags, and go on the idea that said handbag is a statement of luxury. You have two other brands, your competitors, doing the same thing. What’s worse, you most likely have very similar audiences, and your ads and campaigns reach the same users.

If this is the case, then put yourself in the shoes of a buyer: with three brands selling the same thing, in the exact same way, how could they know which one to choose? What separates the three of them? Sure, if they go on a little research journey they could find said differences, but that’s already a step too far because you have no guarantee they will actually do that.

Without taking risks, your brand could potentially stay buried in the crowd, and while there are ways to get out of it at one point, it could be difficult and time-consuming.

How Can You Set Yourself Apart?

There are several types of positioning strategies:

  • Product benefits and attributes;

  • Product price;

  • Product quality;

  • Competitors, or making audience members think you are better than them.

 To know which strategy works best, you have to keep in mind two essential things:

  • What are your strengths?

  • What are your competitors’ weaknesses?

For example, if you’re selling similar handbags as two of your competitors, you need to find the thing that sets you apart, and the things your competitors lack. Perhaps in terms of quality and benefits, you are on the same plan. But, your prices may be a lot better, making your handbags more affordable. Then, you can leverage the idea that luxury and style can be achievable for everyone, in spite of what your competitors are doing. It could be a risk because people associate high prices with luxury, but this angle could potentially be strong enough to get people to notice your brand.

Over to You: Create the Strategy Now

Market positioning is a complex process that requires a lot of time and effort, but given the high levels of competition businesses often face, it’s not something you want to skip.