We have reached an inflection point right now, not least due to the pandemic, which has accelerated digitization and companies need to consider a different, more agile strategic approach and different business models not only to survive but also to grow. Here are the four recommendations about innovation, transformation, value creation, and cultivation that our experts left us with:

INFLECTION POINTS – YOUR BUSINESS IS NOT DESTINED TO FAIL  

Innovative companies need to discover when and how to pivot their businesses, especially in the current social and economic climate. Building resilience for companies against the known and the unknown requires planning techniques and leadership recommendations. Rita McGrath gave us insights into avenues of innovation opportunity, the centricity of trust in value creation, and salvation from the discovery-driven approach.

THE INVERTED FIRM – PLATFORM IS THE NEW NORM 

As consumerism migrates online en masse as a result of the inflection point, businesses turn to digital transformation as an imminent need. The movement promotes the idea of the inverted firm and how Platform Strategies can allow swift responsiveness and adaptation. Geoff Parker gave us insights into looking at scaling your business with a different lens, how traditional metrics of evaluating business growth may not apply in the platform economy, and how businesses can learn to operate in this Post-COVID world.

BRINGING STRATEGY BACK TO LIFE  

Transforming to the digital platform through the inverted firm presents new obstacles that the old practice of Strategy does not address. Harvard Business School professor with research emphasis on corporate strategy, industry analysis, and global competition, David Collis invited us to think about the different value types and what strategy really is today. He shared insights into modernizing strategy, tackling digitalization problems, and how value should not just be about capture but also creation and realization to achieve business success.

IS YOUR BUSINESS SMART ENOUGH TO GROW? 

Growing your company while acclimating your business to the digital platform may seem impossible, but you may come out a champion if you know the paths to get there. The key element of what helps the best companies grow today is taking advantage of internal and external levers to position themselves for explosive growth. Tiffani Bova taught us the importance of focusing on getting the job done, fostering company culture, working with competitors, and the positive business outcomes of social responsibility.

CONCLUSION 

Adapting to the modernization and digitalization of businesses requires new approaches, leadership, and strategies— especially in the pandemic era. Identifying inflection points is critical for leadership to steer the ship towards innovation through phased trial and error. As businesses join the digital platform economy, shifting traditional to digital strategies provides new opportunities for production alterations, rapid reception, and customer reach. With a growing progressive audience, thinking in different value structuring types will allow businesses to become resilient as the landscape continually evolves. Growing during digital development may seem daunting, but by positioning your business in the ecosystem through co-opetition and customer co-creation, your business will successfully transform and dominate the field.

This was the recap of The Interaction Field Series of our LinkedIn Live Events. Please connect with us on our LinkedIn page to stay updated with our upcoming conversations.

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Some key Growth principles from Tiffany Bova:

1. The way to hack growth is to shift the mindset from focusing on the product alone to getting the job done. Growth is a thinking game. It is thinking about the competition, the engagement that can be formed from the product, and decoupling services to respond to what customers need today. Shifting the company mindset from pushing the product to solving for the problem across the landscape allows companies to disrupt the industry and create distinctive value.

Tiffani shared how Apple has made a disruption by thinking about customers’ pain points who use mp3 players such as their own iPod. By combining the two things people always carry which are the iPod and their phone, they created an innovative solution. It has become a standard for every phone in the market today. Still, they remain dominant because of the created value and culture they orchestrated along with the outstanding product.

“If you look at anyone who has really disrupted, it’s the one that has looked out across the landscape. They had the ability to think about what was someone going to need five or ten years from now.” – Tiffani Bova

2. Working with competitors or Co-opetition can solve systemic problems within the ecosystem. Co-opetition is cooperating with the perceived competitor through a partnership or a combined service. Looking at where companies overlap and don’t overlap in their products and services can help solve their shared audience’s problems while serving implicit problems within their landscape.

Tiffani gave us an example of how co-opetition played out within the airline industry. Recently, the one thing that travelers might not encounter as much as they did before is the inconvenience of transferring from a connecting flight by going through the second round of check-ins and luggage claims. It was solved by competing airlines cooperating and making the process more seamless for their travelers.

“For me, as a customer, as a passenger, it’s much better if the airlines work together because it makes a better experience for me. While they may overlap in very small markets, the bigger part of the pie that they don’t— that gives me a better experience.” – Tiffani Bova

3. “Doing well by doing good— if you can, then you should!” Borrowing the principles of nonprofit organizations, using the mindset of giving back to society could open new opportunities and unexpected partnerships. By starting with the customer, there is a prospect to create a platform of change.

Salesforce’s partnership with CVS is a great example. During the pandemic’s height, the CEO of CVS committed to provide and donate personal protective equipment to those in need. Through this response, Salesforce secured a partnership with CVS to help workers get back to the office safely.

“It isn’t just that we drive the profits— we drive the growth, and we compete in a marketplace. Here is a strategy to make more money, and if we feel good, we donate or have some social purpose to the business. I think that’s important in this day and age—we are all connected.” – Erich Joachimsthaler

Intelligent Growth Tips:

• Fostering company culture translates to customer experience: Companies must take care of both their employees and customers. The result of how the company cultivates its employees’ culture ultimately translates to how customers perceive the service or product offered by the company.
• Beat competitors through capitalizing uniqueness and make it memorable: Capturing a particular way your company could serve the customers should be capitalized. It’s not about being unique in product variation. It’s about keeping collaboration and communication with customers open and fluid.
• Identify the conflict of interest to overcome stagnant growth: Whether the conflict of interest is about regulatory, brand, or control conflicts, determining and deconstructing the dominant obstruction will clear growth roadblocks.

Conclusion
In Growth IQ, Tiffani, a self-identified Growth Anthropologist, wrote 30 short stories and case stories about businesses who have succeeded and learned from decisions that affected their business growth model. Today’s companies can learn from each other and benefit from blurring the traditional lines across organizations, customers, and competitors. The idea of companies understanding their ecosystem players and mindfully increasing connectivity to solve big problems for consumers is based on the interaction field business model. Companies that deconstruct obstacles may help brands create opportunities for unlikely co-opetition or partnerships.

Watch the full event here:

• 7:55 – Taking a hard look at people & process for the right kind of growth 
• 11:40 – Solution to stagnant growth 
• 13:57 – Thinking shift from product to the job needs to be done  
• 14:32 – Growth is a thinking game– think iPods 
• 15:30 – Importance of fostering an innovation culture 
• 16:09 – Employee happiness translates to customer experience 
• 17:00 – You need a company that has no organizational boundaries 
• 17:42 – Role of silos and the importance of connection  
• 19:00 – Tiffani explains how to blur boundary lines bet customers and employees 
• 19:55 – Understand what makes your company unique and capitalize it  
• 24:40 – Use the not for profit model to give back 
• 28:15 – Explanation of Co-opetition and airline example 
• 31:32 – Amazon as a co-opetition example 
• 32:51 – Importance of looking into the supply chain especially during the pandemic 
• 33:40 – Salesforce’s unexpected partnership with CVS led to new opportunities 
• 37:10 – Proprietary planning and alignment with consumers (where she holds up the USB cord) 
• 39:36 – Policy and regulation changes can be changed through partnerships 
• 41:33 – Value creation is made through collaboration, participation, and connection— not through competition 
• 42:01 – Decoupling a stack of services 
• 43:55 – Investigate company workflows 

This segment was part of The Interaction Field Series of our LinkedIn Live Events. Please connect with us on our LinkedIn page to stay updated with our upcoming conversations.

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In 2013, Vivaldi_ CEO Erich Joachimsthaler met with FiveMileRiver Marketing to discuss the importance of staying on top of the ever-changing nature of consumerism and got to the nitty-gritty of what innovation truly means. Read the full article here.

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“Today, we now have not only an economic crisis, we have a health crisis, and we have an emerging social crisis—all together at one time, which challenges our fundamental assumptions of how we thought the world of business would unfold less than a year ago.”

– Dr. Peter Evans 

In the face of an unprecedented threefold crisis, marketers and executives must reassess their strategic planning and not simply hope for the best. Given this dramatic shift a large portion of companies state their plans could use a change to reflect the changing global environment.

It was with this perfect storm of challenges in mind, that we hosted a live webinar to discuss the current demands on strategic planning  and recommendations for future planning. Our very own Anne Knecht, facilitated a conversation between Vivaldi CEO Dr. Erich Joachimsthaler and the Platform Strategy Institute managing partner, Dr. Peter Evans on the perils of conducting business as usual and how to approach future planning. Find discussion highlights and the webinar recording below: 

Approaches to Planning – is the old planning process fit for these extreme conditions?

We kicked-off our discussion by noting that traditional frameworks like a SWOT analysis are being phased out as a reliable technique for planning today. Strategic planning may typically require focus on first-order analysis, but good strategic planning is second, third and fourth-order analysis. Good strategic planning should reveal multiple chains involved in planning. Further, both our brand experts agreed that an enduring methodology will include looking at the following four components: 

• Megatrends (customer behavior, market derived, etc.) 
• Shocks (unpredictable events)
• Constraints (ex. talent, information, demand, regulatory) 
• Enablers (ex. new technology, new intelligence, new insights). 

 The approach to strategic planning needs to change. Erich and Peter discussed the following four areas that require rethinking for strategic planners:   

• Data – What data is necessary to insert in the process? What are alternative data sources?
• Methodologies – Do you want to shift from forecasting to scenario planning? What is the confidence level of the forecasts?
• People – Do you have the right team and talent involved in the process? 
• Process – Have you reimagined the planning process itself given our new virtual working environment?

Recommendations – The Future of Planning

In a live poll, 98% of our audience indicated that their strategic planning needs some changes or a complete overhaul. With this being such a hot topic Erich and Peter discussed three ways for businesses to not only survive, but exceed the challenges of today’s world: 

1. Recognize that this year’s process will require more resources to be deployed and will include more stakeholders to put together a strategic plan. As social disruption evolves, stakeholders such as line of business owners in supply-chain managers, CSR, and HR will form a bigger part of the strategic plan than ever before. Good strategic planning will reveal the real tensions and trade offs between stakeholders and business units company wide and help eliminate instances of one half of the company not knowing what the other side is doing.
2. Traditional inputs to strategic planning are inadequate, the KPI’s set last year will not be measures of success this year. Getting as close to where the consumer is/ wants to be is going to be critical. Sign-posts that indicate the company is preceding on the right track and give warning that the company is departing the track set by the plan will be reliant on “first party data” that comes directly from consumers. 
3. The data and expertise you relied on in the past might not be adequate for current needs. “Left-field” information, or information not normally considered, will have to be included – like healthcare data and data from your ecosystem partners. 
4. Consider what your plan is relative to other companies in your industry. Identify relevant ecosystem partners and draw information and inspiration from them. This perspective can help companies think through and build competitive advantage.

It can be easy to fall into the gravitational pull towards the cyclical loop of “analysis paralysis” or planning towards one set goal; however, now is the time to focus on proactively engaging with customers with the intention of building shared value. How do you plan to shift your strategic planning? 

Interested to learn more about how to remain prepared for the future? Stay tuned for our next conversation on how to best navigate today’s world of business of brands by subscribing here. 

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In a world where everyone wants more, business as usual tactics have lost their effectiveness. Customer satisfaction depends on a more sophisticated and immediate experience. The market calls for more innovation. Companies seek more accountability and a greater impact on the bottom line.

Market intelligence is the answer to each of these challenges which puts CMOs front and center. Businesses will expect them to rise to the challenge and capitalise on new opportunities for value creation.

New rules demand new skill sets and fresh approaches

Download The New CMO Game Plan and discover:

• Three key capabilities for CMOs intent on leading from the front in a connected world where strategy is determined in real-time.
• How to transform five core business functions to deliver long-term equity that focuses on customer value.
• How platform thinking can put your brand in a different league to the competition.

Today’s business challenges demand unconventional thinking about business strategy and brand positioning. In this age of disruption, product and service innovations are not enough. Brands need to think like a platform business to connect more deeply with diverse partners. They also need to rethink their category and relationships.

The power of platform thinking

Platformization presents a clear opportunity for brand leadership. By harnessing technology and data, a platform creates an ecosystem that facilitates interactions and collaboration at an unprecedented scale. Platforms fuel innovation and generate customer insights that spark value creation.

Marketing is the fulcrum of the platform economy. It extracts the intelligence required to uncover the organization’s next play and enables customer experience management. Technology makes it easier than ever to measure customers’ data and track their progress through the customer journey. However, more data doesn’t automatically confer greater insight.

Tasked with being cognizant of the bigger picture, CMOs have their finger on the pulse of developing customer needs. From their position at the centre, the CMO’s analytical acumen is critical.

Their customer data is not only vital to the marketing plan. It can uncover new growth opportunities, direct corporate culture and shape mindsets as the game evolves. A focus on generating business-building competitive advantage will naturally shape the strategy and agenda of the management team.

Platform thinking requires all the diverse capabilities of an organization to be in play and moving in the same direction. Success depends on an organisational culture that celebrates cross-functional collaboration and integration.

Build Your Business, Not Just Your Brand

CMOs who have set their sights on building the business, not just the brand, will need to transcend traditional silos. Without a willingness to lower barriers, the benefits of big data cannot permeate throughout the organization. Their job is to enable and orchestrate, using real-time observations and predictive analytics to inform and inspire. Empowering their C-suite colleagues, and other internal and external partners, to exceed customers expectations  is a top priority.

When activated by collaboration and well-honed commercial instincts, marketing’s continuous flow of intelligence makes CMOs vital for value creation and revenue growth.

It is time to rip up the playbook and redefine the field. From transaction to interaction. From competition to collaboration. From broadcast to participation.

Vivaldi has created brand strategies, experiences, innovations and platforms that have answered the questions posed in The New CMO Game Plan for some of the world’s most forward-thinking brands. If you have questions for us, we’d be pleased to hear from you.

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Does one generation alone warrant a new brand strategy? We think so. Gen-Z influences 93% of household purchases. In the U.S., 82%  of parents admit that their children influence their purchasing decisions. Win over Generation Z and you win over older generations of Gen Xers and baby boomers too. 

Our audience is changing—rapidly. Growing a business in today’s world means building a brand strategy that engages the unique expectations of Gen-Z.

Understanding Gen-Z Consumers

What makes this generation of consumers so different? While social media, smartphones, work from home, and other digital trends entered our lives as teenagers or adults, that is all Gen-Z has ever known. These young people are digital natives,  born into a world of online experiences—from social interactions to purchasing—and that is where they spend much of their time.

Gen Zers spend an around of 3 hours per day on social media, far more than any other group. They expect instant results; quick responses from friends, family, or businesses; and media that inspires.

Not to be confused as a generation that only seeks instant gratification and beautiful products, Gen Zers are conscious consumers. They were raised in a recession and are keenly aware of the social, political, and economic tension that has pervaded their young lives. Their decisions are not flippant, although they do value flexibility, change, and risk.

Finally, it is important to understand that members of Gen-Z value progress—politically, socially, and environmentally—and are willing to support businesses that are doing their part to drive change.

All of these distinguishing characteristics of this generation should play a role in the way we develop brand strategy. A strong brand strategy  doesn’t simply “appeal” to this new audience of consumers but engages them. In fact, there are 5 key insights into Gen-Z that must be acknowledged in order to build new business models that empower our brands to grow and expand.

Key Insights to Build a Better Brand Strategy

Our goal is to help brands look beyond basic marketing tactics and instead create brand experiences and strategies that reach the most influential audience: Gen-Z.

Innovative solutions to meet the expectations of a generation don’t always come easily. In fact, a new business model and innovation strategy require that businesses shift away from thinking in silos and pipelines and towards an integrated model. Brand strategy must be consumer-led, valuable, and seamlessly integrated. This approach allows brands to more effectively engage new audiences on every level, from the foundation of the strategy (consumer-led) to brand-consumer relationship, customer experience, and communication.

These 5 insights help us delve deeper into the Gen-Z audience, how to engage with them, and how to become trustworthy, customer-first brands.

Access Over Ownership

Gen-Z seeks access to products and services that will make life easier, but they don’t always pursue ownership. What does this look like tangibly? Gen-Z consumers are more likely to use platform-based products that allow them to rent—not own—the things they need. For example, electric scooters that allow them to get from point A to B without actually purchasing a scooter, or streaming services that establish a month-to-month purchase agreement and no long-term commitment.

For businesses, this requires enabling direct access to products. In particular, many brands are shifting to utilizing platforms and subscription-based services to make their products more easily accessible. By 2025, it is predicted that 30% o f the world economy will be platform-based. 

This challenge to the conventional pipeline of delivering products to consumers is especially important to businesses today. Taking the time now to develop platform and digital ecosystem strategies will prepare your brand to meet these changes head-on.

Hyper-Personalization

Growing up in a digital world means Gen-Z is accustomed to products, services and customer service experiences that are tailored to their specific needs. Having become accustomed to personalised music playlists, this generation will expect personalised shopping experiences and travel planning. More than half of Gen Zers are willing to pay more  for personalized options, which is significant for a generation that also values cost savings and financial planning.

Generic products and less attractive designs are having minimal impact on this up and coming generation. Adjusting a brand strategy to meet this expectation means exploring segmentation axes around the needs, values, and experiences of the consumer. It also means finding a way to either customize a product or personalize a service around the consumers’ values.

Anchored in Ethics

It should come as no surprise that Gen-Z values ethics. Growing up among climate change, the #metoo movement, and an increasingly global call for ethical manufacturing standards, they have taken up the call for change on almost every level of society. And they expect our brands to do the same. Gen-Z consumers are more willing to engage with brands that are sustainable, authentic, and pursuing a higher social purpose. 

In fact, a majority of Gen Zers refuse to purchase from a brand that is involved in a scandal. Our product and service branding must not only capture their attention, but our entire brand strategy must be established on trustworthy and ethical practices. Not only that but value propositions must look beyond the simple value of a product and focus on the value of the brand as a whole.

Seamless Experiences

If there is one thing Gen-Z has made clear, it is that they don’t have time for long, drawn-out processes. They live in a world that is constantly on the go, and they expect brands to meet them wherever they are in the world. Seamless experiences mean building branding solutions that are fast, smooth, and easy to use. If making a purchase or interacting with a company’s service is slow or has too many barriers, Gen Zers will move on quickly. 

A branding strategy that utilizes innovations and creates value-driven customer experiences, however, will keep them coming back again and again. The way we view value propositions must shift. Brand value lies in the overall experience of the consumer, and not only the value of our unique product or service. This transition impacts every layer of business and brand strategy, including the way we choose to build our platforms and interact with our customers.

Capturing Attention

Gen-Z decide in mere seconds if a brand is worth their time and attention. Short, to-the-point content that drives a conversation is how many brands are choosing to engage with Gen-Z. Think TikTok or Instagram Reels. These short video-based social media solutions quickly capture the attention of a young audience. 

Other social media brand strategy examples include Oreo’s “Show your playful side” campaign on Snapchat, which invites consumers to be part of the conversation and the brand as a whole.

The challenge brands face is establishing that they are worth the attention of their Gen-Z consumer audience. Building a dialogue with your audience is about more than just great digital marketing. Brand leadership starts with a business model and brand strategy that is integrated, micro-targeted, and tailored to meet the unique needs of your consumers.

Building the Future of Your Brand

Gen-Z is a force to be reckoned with. Understanding their unique consumer behaviors is a significant key to growing and building an effective and innovative strategy for even an established brand. Vivaldi helps companies hone in on the purchasing and lifestyle trends of Gen-Z—and other target audiences—to develop brand strategies and new business models that create extensive opportunities for growth. To build the future of your brand, download our in-depth guide the 5 challenges brands face in engaging Gen-Z, and how to solve them.

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Vivaldi’s Platformization Potential Study is a forward-looking, comprehensive report that introduces the top S&P 500 companies such as Netflix, Pfizer, MGM Resorts, Nike, etc. with the most potential to capture exponential growth. We built a case library of successful and unsuccessful companies that sought to become platform businesses, and after extensive research, we concluded that a number of key factors determine the potential for a traditional pipeline business to transform into a platform business.

We divided our analysis into two lenses: (1) the brand relationship between a company and its stakeholders and (2) how the company performs across five factors, including: The “Customer Centricity PLUS” Mindset, Value through data and analytics, Social Currency, Industry Position and Ecosystem Potential, and Agile Experimentation with New Technologies. The relationship brands have with stakeholders is critically important, and such a strong determinant of platformization, that it deserved its own category. Below find a spotlight on how we define the brand relationship lens:

The extent to which the brand establishes a relationship with consumers and the nature of the relationship with other participants in the ecosystem is the first lens through which to understand the platformization potential. –

LENS 01: The Brand Relationship

Your brand is what consumers remember about you. It is a short-cut for consumers to understand what a business stands for, the value proposition delivered, and the promises made. It is the feelings, emotions, attributes, and experiences that consumers hold in memory about a company, product, or service.

Brand governs the relationship consumers have with a company. At Vivaldi, this governance is defined in the Brand Identity System. The Brand Identity System defines the timeless and enduring elements of the brand strategy and how it translates into a brand-customer relationship.

Our research shows that the type of brand relationship that a company has with consumers strongly determines the potential for building a platform business.

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Our CEO Erich Joachimsthaler spoke with Retail Dive in December 2018 to discuss the long-term potential of Farfetch’s acquisition of Stadium Goods. Read the full article here.

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Branding Magazine: Digital is such a broad topic. I know that you have invested in addressing it in a number of different ways, including your Digital Darwinism Summit, and your various digitally-related reports, such as your recent study on social currency. But I’d like to back up a bit and explore some of the thinking in “Bridging the CMO/CIO Gap,” which you produced in conjunction with SAP.

It raises five key issues, the first being new methods to understand customers and their use of technology. Since we often hear marketers dismiss digital insights gathering as merely “shiny new objects” for consumer research, can you share what you see as the most profitable or even transformative ways that digital is helping us understand customers?

Erich Joachimsthaler: Let me give you a good example. We work with a platform that is part mobile diary, part social network, and part community, with which we can actually track the daily life of consumers and interact with a large group in real time. The participants engage with each other, and we map how consumers really live and buy and shop.

BM: Your report also speaks to the second point, which is how digital creates new business models and ideas on how to generate sales. Do you have any favorite examples of this?

EJ: Yes, absolutely. What’s important is that business models need to be distinguished between demand side models and how you create new value on the supply side. These are two different things, and we always forget the supply side and how do you really capture the value.

A good example is the car industry. Almost every large car company today knows that consumers no longer want a car, they want somebody to sell them mobility. Everyone is experimenting with additional services, specifically mobility services, often times associated with the electric car.

Think about BMW and its i Division; it has a small car called the i3, and a larger car, the i8.

The point about these electric vehicles is not the cars themselves, even though they are amazingly beautiful (especially the i8, with its wing-style doors). The most beautiful part is that they are connected devices, like your mobile phone, connected to the cloud, wherever the car goes.

When you think of the business model here, you think of a future where the car is actually sold at cost, much as you buy a mobile phone today. BMW or other car companies make the money on the services that they sell over the months and years of usage of that car.

There are services such as DriveNow or ParkAtMyHouse, which are like Airbnb, but offered in a car. Now you can park at another person’s garage instead of in public parking, at a much cheaper rate. The service automatically identifies your car as you drive into Munich and tells you what private car garages are available for the day or for that weekend, so you can actually park share.

BM: So the whole paradigm of looking at people as customers — is that irrelevant now? Is that inherently too transactional if we need to connect to people as human beings on a more essential level?

EJ: Looking at people as customers is an outmoded notion. You need to look at people as humans. Today, one of the hardest topics in customer experience is customer journey mapping. Everybody maps a customer journey, whether they still map the funnel or they map several loops, a customer decision journey or whatever other methodology they use.

But 95% of a person’s day is not lived on that journey, so you’re really only studying the 5% when people are in a buying mode. That’s not where the action lies.

Click here for the full interview.

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