For agencies that don't have a Planner, here's a toolkit consisting of four power questions that I reckon will provide strategic direction to any project. If you're able to answer the questions and your client is satisfied with your work, congrats – you just completed Planning 101!
For agencies that don't have a Planner, here's a toolkit consisting of four power questions that I reckon will provide strategic direction to any project. If you're able to answer the questions and your client is satisfied with your work, congrats – you just completed Planning 101!
Click to enlarge
The Swedish Standards Institute, has formed a group of brand consultants, academics plus legal and accounting specialists to join an international project on developing common guidelines for brand valuation.
The goal is to create common guidelines that are open and comparable valuation processes and results. These will make it easier for companies and stakeholders to measure and understand the underlying factors of brand value.
As I think this in principle is a good idea and also interested in what the implications for the ad industry and my own work is, I've done a little backgrounder on the subject of brand valuation. In what types of business issues is it relevant to value brands? What are the different approaches to valuing brands? How is it done in practice? What are the current problems facing brand valuation as a concept?
I've visualised the approaches, applications, processes and challenges of brand valuation in an issue tree above. This will hopefully give you better overview of the topic.
Links
Pressrelease from Swedish Standards Institute
Resumé
Associate professor Micael Dahlén explains
Click to enlarge
The Swedish Standards Institute, has formed a group of brand consultants, academics plus legal and accounting specialists to join an international project on developing common guidelines for brand valuation.
The goal is to create common guidelines that are open and comparable valuation processes and results. These will make it easier for companies and stakeholders to measure and understand the underlying factors of brand value.
As I think this in principle is a good idea and also interested in what the implications for the ad industry and my own work is, I've done a little backgrounder on the subject of brand valuation. In what types of business issues is it relevant to value brands? What are the different approaches to valuing brands? How is it done in practice? What are the current problems facing brand valuation as a concept?
I've visualised the approaches, applications, processes and challenges of brand valuation in an issue tree above. This will hopefully give you better overview of the topic.
Links
Pressrelease from Swedish Standards Institute
Resumé
Associate professor Micael Dahlén explains
I've just finished reading The McKinsey Way, an insider's perspective on how McKinsey & Co, the world's most respected management consulting firm, manage their engagements (what we call accounts). I'm not going to review the book (you can find that elsewhere) more than saying it's rather useful for those handling large advertising accounts and brand consulting projects.
One of the core concepts of the firm, according to the author Ethan M. Rasiel as well as many former McKinsites is MECE. MECE (pronounced 'mee-cee') means Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive and is the core of everything that's communicated between employees and to clients - in presentations, emails, phone calls, dialogues, etc.
Collectively exhaustive means "no stone unturned". In other words, nothing is forgotten or overlooked. Mutually exclusive means that there are no overlaps in the messages, arguments or recommendations that are given.
Here's an example in branding that's MECE:
"The new brand strategy of company X will entail a new brand positioning, brand architecture and a new advertising campaign."
Nice and simple. Positioning, architecture and advertising are part of a problem-solving strategy, yet they are separate phenomena in terms of objective and projects.
An example of non-MECE:
"The new advertising campaign will create loyalty and increase sales"
This argument is clearly not mutually exclusive, because loyalty is related to sales to current customers. It's not collectively exhausive either, because sales can include sales to new customers. Hence, awareness etc has not been mentioned.
I think the concept of MECE is very useful in our line of work, because it requires us to think more specific and broader about the problems that we want to solve, and it makes communication clearer and therefore more efficient.
I've just finished reading The McKinsey Way, an insider's perspective on how McKinsey & Co, the world's most respected management consulting firm, manage their engagements (what we call accounts). I'm not going to review the book (you can find that elsewhere) more than saying it's rather useful for those handling large advertising accounts and brand consulting projects.
One of the core concepts of the firm, according to the author Ethan M. Rasiel as well as many former McKinsites is MECE. MECE (pronounced 'mee-cee') means Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive and is the core of everything that's communicated between employees and to clients - in presentations, emails, phone calls, dialogues, etc.
Collectively exhaustive means "no stone unturned". In other words, nothing is forgotten or overlooked. Mutually exclusive means that there are no overlaps in the messages, arguments or recommendations that are given.
Here's an example in branding that's MECE:
"The new brand strategy of company X will entail a new brand positioning, brand architecture and a new advertising campaign."
Nice and simple. Positioning, architecture and advertising are part of a problem-solving strategy, yet they are separate phenomena in terms of objective and projects.
An example of non-MECE:
"The new advertising campaign will create loyalty and increase sales"
This argument is clearly not mutually exclusive, because loyalty is related to sales to current customers. It's not collectively exhausive either, because sales can include sales to new customers. Hence, awareness etc has not been mentioned.
I think the concept of MECE is very useful in our line of work, because it requires us to think more specific and broader about the problems that we want to solve, and it makes communication clearer and therefore more efficient.
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