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Process
Needs/Wants Identification What are the patterns of functional benefits and emotional needs and connections that characterize consumers in this product/service category? Emotional Mindsets What are the constellations of emotional- and values-driven priorities that filter the perceptions of the functional benefits and objective characteristics of products and services? Perceptual Mapping What are the functional and emotional dimensions that meaningfully discriminate among the Brands and products/services in this category from the consumers’ point of view and how are they arrayed vis-a-vis one another? Core Understanding What is the distillation/synthesis of what the consumer knows (or thinks she knows) about the Brand and its offerings, both functionally and imagaically? Meaning Connections How the Core Understanding of the Brand and its Product/Services practically and emotionally fits into the life of the consumer, what they mean to and reflect about the consumer. The Brand Complex What are the sociocognitive and emotional perceptions of the consumer of how the elements of the Brand (products/services, positioning, imagery, customer experience, etc.) fit together in terms of coherence, relevance, distinctiveness, quality, etc.? |
Outputs
Faceted Segmentation A multi-dimensionalpartitioning of the consumers in this category that reflects clusters of functional and emotional priorities as manifested in this category at the time and place of purchase decision-making. Brand Architecture A organizational structure of the Brand and its equities that speaks to different audiences about different subsets of products/services, providing each subset with a unique, meaningful, and impactful value proposition. Brand Story A sequential, believable and persuasive narrative explanation, framed in the language and life experience of the targeted consumers, that connects the Brand’s promised benefits to their emotions, priorites and values. Laddered Positioning An assertion by the Brand of what distinguishes it and its product/service offerings, in terms of the benefits derived from their features and what these benefits mean to, connote in the lives of the consumer. Selling Story A believable and persuasive narrative about a product/service offered by Brand, framed in the language and life experience of the target, that allows her to imagine what the offering will bring to her world, how it reflects what is important to her. |
Most of the Process and Outputs of what I do at Communications-Strategies.com overlaps with what I do with my colleague Brenda Blake at Indigo-Thinking.com, our marketing and communications consultancy. The organizations I work with here and those we work with do not overlap.
