Kantar’s Blueprint for Brand Growth uses 6.5 billion data points to rewrite the marketing playbook.
When you have the world’s largest database of how consumers think, feel and act, what do you do? Rewrite the marketing playbook, of course.
That’s what Kantar has been doing: combining the 5.4 billion data points from the global BrandZ database of consumer attitudes to brands with the 1.1 billion data points from its Worldpanel of consumer behaviour.
In total, the analysis covers 540 categories across 54 markets and spans 10 years, providing a vital longitudinal view.
The analysis focused on one question: ‘How can marketers better drive growth?’
The answer is simple, yet full of nuance. Kantar’s Blueprint for Brand Growth proves brands grow by being meaningfully different to more people. Brands that are meaningfully different to more people command five times the market penetration today, and have a real advantage in driving penetration growth over the next two years.
The ‘more people’ part is clear, but what does ‘meaningfully different’ mean? A brand should meet needs that matter, that’s meaningfulness. Difference is where brands create perceptions of relative competitive difference in a category, whether that’s actual functional differentiation, distinctive brand assets or being seen to be unique and setting trends.
Meaningful Difference is not only a predictor of penetration. Brands with high Meaningful Difference are so attractive people will pay up to twice as much for them.
To achieve Meaningful Difference, Kantar recommends marketers:
- Predispose More People
- Be More Present and
- Find New Space.
Brands can Predispose More People, both to buy more and, crucially, pay more. Kantar knows creativity, advertising and experience builds meaningful difference as well as mental availability for brands – in other words, predisposition. When optimally executed, this drives 9x higher volume share, 2x higher average selling price, and a 4x likelihood of growing share in future.
Secondly, Be More Present: optimising distribution, customer journey, range, pack, pricing and promotions wins 7x more buyers vs those present in only half of buying occasions.
Finally, Find New Space: innovation focused on identifying incremental spaces (motivations, occasions, tangential categories and services) doubles a brand’s chance of growth. Increasing usage occasions by 10% results in revenue growth of 17%.
Kantar’s research and experience proves three behaviours are vital to effective execution: being Consistent is about maintaining a consistent brand positioning over time – often neglected in a world where brand stakeholders are under pressure to demonstrate value.
Being Connected is about using distinctive assets to ensure your brand is recognised, as well as ensuring the exposures to and experiences of your brand are joined up and synergistic.
And being Optimised is a culture of curiosity and a ‘test and learn’ mindset that helps organisations identify opportunities and make objective, data-led decisions – so you can spend money on the things that really matter.
This might sound straightforward, but the nuance is in the application. For example, a small brand should probably focus on growing salience and distribution for a hero product, while a larger brand may need to concentrate on expanding its range, finding new uses for existing offers, or new territories to expand into.
The Blueprint builds on and enhances existing industry research on how brands grow. Importantly, it proves while market penetration growth is crucial, a sole focus on it isn’t enough to drive sustainable brand, revenue and margin growth. Kantar’s analysis underscores the role of differentiation in forging strong mental connections between consumers and brands as well as defending pricing power.
Kantar New Zealand is helping clients apply these principles to brands of all sizes in all categories, so they can plot a path to profitable growth.
This was first published in our June/July 2024 issue
