How many times have you heard management say, “We all need to be on the same page”? That phrase, “on the same page,” seems to be the Holy Grail for marketers, managers, and executive teams regardless of the type of business. Yet rarely do organizations create that “one page” of purpose, actions, and metrics to which all can adhere. A Plan to Win (PTW) does just that: It puts the purpose, promise, actions, and performance metrics on a single page so that everyone can be on the same page.
The purpose of the PTW is to achieve organizational alignment, which is so important for brand revitalization. We need to change the brand culture from playing not to lose, to committing to a roadmap that defines how we will win.
The PTW ensures the integration of brand actions across the Eight Ps: purpose, promise, people, product, place, price, promotion, and performance.
People need a sense of purpose: They want to know that their work makes a difference. What is the shared sense of purpose, the common direction that will align us all? To revitalize a brand, we need to refocus and re-inspire the organization around a common sense of purpose.
The PTW begins with defining the brand purpose and brand promise. This means answering these questions: What are we trying to achieve and what is the promised experience for our customers?
Brand purpose is the first P in our PTW. A brand purpose is a compelling statement of the overarching brand intent or mission. It must define a clear sense of direction, an overarching goal for the organization and the brand.
Brand promise is the second P in our PTW. The brand promise is the contract we make with our customers. It summarizes that special bond between the customer and brand and expresses the promise that if you buy our brand, you will get a distinctive brand experience.
Brand purpose and brand promise provide the focused direction for the PTW. Once the purpose and promise are defined, what are the actions we will take to deliver the brand promise to achieve the brand purpose? Effectiveness of a brand purpose and promise are not determined by good intentions. Effectiveness is achieved by the actions we take.
This brings us to the five action Ps—people, products, place, price, and promotion. The five action Ps define how we will deliver our brand promise to yield more customers, more often, more brand loyalty, and more profit.
These define our action priorities for bringing the brand promise to life. Brand revitalization means reinvention across all the five action Ps.
Creating a results culture means creating a culture that is evaluated based on producing measurable results. Defining measurable milestones and rewarding people based on business and brand performance are imperative.
Creating a PTW requires top management visible and verbal support. This is essential. Anything that affects how people are evaluated and compensated is a volatile issue. Top management must deliver the clarion call for alignment and be the leaders of the inspiration that will affect behaviors.
To alleviate reluctance to work from a common set of guidelines and standards, it is imperative to set a realistic and workable timetable. When people are asked to “get on board,” that means now. This train has a schedule.
Here is a summary of the benefits of galvanizing the organization behind a common PTW:
• A Plan to Win is a common platform for rebuilding brand value. It provides the necessary list of priorities for success. A Plan to Win creates the platform for renewal.
• A Plan to Win outlines the critical brand components from purpose and promise through the five action areas to the measurement of progress. Inconsistent business and brand building creates internal global chaos. People should have the freedom to do what is best locally within the global framework.
• A Plan to Win creates a common clarity encouraging everyone to aim in the same direction by having the same brand goals and priorities. You cannot be successful if you are unfocused. Focus is fundamental.
• A Plan to Win helps an organization act as an integrated global team breaking down functional and geographic silos. Isolationism is limiting: It stifles creative thinking by limiting return on global learning.
The Three Sections of the Plan to Win
A Plan to Win has three sections:
• Section 1: Brand Direction—This section articulates the brand purpose and brand promise. Brand purpose answers the questions “Why does this brand exist? And what is the overarching goal of the brand?”
• Section 2: Brand Action—The PTW defines the priority actions for implementing the brand direction. These activities are called the five action Ps: people, product, place, price, and promotion. The PTW defines the high-priority activities defined for each of the Ps.
• Section 3: Brand Performance—The measurable milestones need to be clearly defined. These metrics will be used to evaluate the progress toward the achievement of the brand purpose and brand promise through implementation of the activities of the five action Ps.
There are two critical components for doing this well. First, you must have a passionate, dedicated group in top management.
Second, achieving organizational alignment behind the brand destination is critical to brand success. This means alignment across functions and across geographies.
KIDDO Garden Foods
To illustrate what a Plan to Win might look like, we created an example for a hypothetical fresh food purveyor (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 Example: Kiddo Garden Foods Plan to Win
The brand’s purpose states: “Our dream is that people stay healthy and genuinely enjoy living.” This is not a generic statement. It reflects a vision for the future...a vision about people and how they can live their lives.
The brand promises that it is passionate and dedicated to human healthfulness; that it is creative and is a pioneer in the marketplace of fresh food. This is captured in its brand essence: the real way to eat.
To bring this promise to life and make progress toward the vision, the five action Ps create the tasks that must be completed. So, for example:
• People—The people at Kiddo Garden Foods are responsible, knowledgeable believers who are gardening professionals.
• Product—Our fruits and vegetables are clean, favorite foods that are local, just picked, grown and handled sustainably, and from nature (meaning non-genetically modified organism [GMO], organically grown, and so on).
• Place—Our fruits and vegetables are sold in stores that share our ethical values and are packaged with wrappings or bags that are eco-friendly.
• Price—We support pricing with integrity so that customers can have affordable freshness.
• Promotion—We will have a consistent identity, a consistent ongoing brand message, with third-party endorsement and the support of community involvement.
• Performance—We will measure progress both internally and externally so there are measures for both. Kiddo Garden Foods will also conduct third-party safety testing on its products.
How do we put all of this together? What are the specific steps?
Step One: Brand Direction—Articulating the Brand Purpose and Brand Promise
Begin with a desktop review of pertinent information. This will start the process of answering the question: What do we know? The recommended desktop review helps evaluate the current situation. Examine, analyze, and synthesize the following kinds of information:
• Who are the customers in terms of their values, attitudes, beliefs, and so on? How do they feel about the category and the brands in the competitive set and our brand(s)?
• Data on customer perceptions of the brand. Problems? Drivers of choice.
• Is there a segmentation of any sort? What are the customer needs?
• Market dynamics information. Strengths. Weaknesses. Trends.
• Purchase/contractual behavior.
• As much as possible on competition, including annual reports, tracking data, and so on.
• Briefs issued at critical periods of time by founder, succeeding chairperson, and management.
• Any brand guidelines that exist. Anything from HQ to local operation regarding brand. Any local brand briefs.
• Any books written about the brand or the company’s history.
• Corporate vision/mission? A report of the work that led to this vision.
• Large macro environmental information such as broad social, economic, political, or cultural issues/trends that may have impact on brands.
• Any/all brand positioning statements and creative briefs. Reports, presentations, research, and other information that led to this direction.
• Catalogues; point of sales materials; advertising, promotional, logos, and public relations materials on corporation and individual products.
• What were the most effective campaigns/advertising/PR/other in the brand’s history? How did these depict the brand’s essence?
• Speeches by key, senior management and all media for last several years that reflect vision, values, and mission for the company.
Synthesizing information requires a different sort of person than just any research analyst. You will need a person who can see patterns and commonalities and be able to draw conclusions from whatever evidence is available, no matter how fragmentary or intangible.
Follow the desktop review with executive interviews. These can be conducted in person or over the phone, depending on geography, time, and money. The interview must be designed to capture the executive’s strategic intent for the brand and to fully understand the brand in the context of the specific project. Our aim is to develop a brand vision that will lead to brand revitalization.
The information from the review and the output of the interviews are combined. The synthesis of these interviews along with the information of the review will be the basis for the creation of the new brand purpose.
This brand purpose defines the future we want to create in which our brand will win. So, it is crucial not only to know where we are but also to clearly articulate what we see as the brand destination we will create.
This process defines the brand purpose and the definition of the brand promise.
Step Two: Creating the Five Action Ps
The five action Ps are the actions we must take to accomplish the mission articulated in our brand purpose and to bring our brand to life as defined in the brand promise.
In other words, the brand actions define the boundaries within which local markets are encouraged to be creative. Within the defined boundary lines we encourage creative, free-thinking thought and expression. We call this Freedom Within a Framework.
By knowing the organization and the stretch limits and by knowing the product capabilities—whether it be manufacturing or gardening or distribution—you will be able to define those specific priority actions necessary for delivering the promise and achieving the mission.
Step Three: Performance Measures
Performance measures can be a challenge, especially if measures are already established for calibrating such things as satisfaction, purchase intent, delivery of quality, or trust. In a global company, each country will support its own measures and phraseology. Each country will tell you that it has normative data.
A cross-geography team of researchers will have to review the agreed mission, agreed promise, and the deliverables of the five action Ps and generate the best common internal and external measures.
Implications of a Plan to Win
Enduring profitable growth is the fundamental goal of business. Becoming profitable by reducing costs, eliminating waste, and increasing productivity is important, but it is not a sustainable business growth strategy. It is a cliché, but it is true: You cannot cost-manage your way to the future.
Cost-cutting is not really a strategy for enduring prosperity. It is a strategy for profitable management of inevitable decline. We cannot have sustainable growth of the bottom line unless we create quality growth of the top line. To have quality revenue growth, we must profitably create more customers, convince them to come more often, and persuade them to be more brand loyal. The only way to enduring profitable growth is by achieving a sustainable brand advantage that profitably increases customer-perceived value.