SEGMENTING YOUR BLOG FOR THE RIGHT AUDIENCE
Determine required roles and brand moves. Where do individual brands have the greatest opportunity to play in the future, and what will it take to evolve them into this space? Brand roles must be established based on consumer and strategic opportunities: Is Brand A better suited to be a prestige/luxury leader to address Segment 1, or technology/design innovator to address Segment 2? Is Brand B
fulfilling an important price-positioning role for the channel? In many situations, there are alternate paths forward for a brand, as historicalpositioning lacks the clarity necessary to deliver successfully against any specific consumer segment. In the absence of clear positioning, consumers often position the brand for themselves, resulting in a murky and diluted equity.
Integrate brand moves to transform the portfolio. With the proper targeting and roles defined for each brand, the portfolio can be transformed. This is a complex process, as there are any number of brand “moves” available to the portfolio manager: competing brands must be separated; redundant or ineffective brands must be eliminated or consolidated; and/or gaps must be filled by leveraging existing
brands into a new category, launching new brands, or acquiring a brand from a third party. A critical issue to manage throughout this process is the domino effect repositioning one brand often requires realignment across multiple brands in the portfolio.
To account for this dynamic, alternate brand moves should be evaluated based on holistic portfolio scenarios, versus discrete brand events.
The resulting portfolio may look quite a bit different, depending on consumer dynamics and strength of brand assets. For example, the “one brand per segment” rule of thumb is not always the optimal portfolio strategy. Consumers may require multiple brands to meet their needs for variety or novelty. Additionally, it may be appropriate to eliminate well-positioned, sub-scale brands over time in favor of extending a powerful equity across categories. The objective is to minimize cannibalization, capture value more efficiently, and accelerate growth for the entire portfolio.
Develop a stronger customer perspective In our experience, a company’s view of a category in which it competes often is static and incompletely informed by the consumer’s perspective. It’s important to understand the broader context in which consumers make their choices – including the range of possible alternatives they consider. This means defining portfolios and brands not by category, but from the perspective of the benefits – both functional and emotional – that consumers derive from them (and those of competitors).