Post by Trade facilitator on Dec 4, 2017 11:56:19 GMT 1
Market leadership is a strategic decision, planned for and excellently executed. It is not an accidental occurrence but the product of a series of well-crafted incidents. A brand can therefore desire or wish for market leadership, but until the wish is translated into sound actionable strategies; it will remain just a wish.
A brand is a tactic of business. Decisions for market leadership by brands do not therefore start with the brand; it starts with the business. The foundation is ingrained in the business strategy where a conscious strategic choice on how the organization wants to compete is made. The business needs to determine if it wants to compete for volume or value. Straddling the divide is risky and may lead to brand failure.
Once the business has made the strategic choice on where and how it wants to compete, then we can get down to the brands it chooses to fight. The first area of leadership that any brand that wants to be a market leader must focus on is, understanding the consumer better than competitors. Insight is the bedrock of sound strategy. Insight informs the brand’s ability to develop differentiated, relevant and compelling value proposition packages that consumers will try, purchase and for which they would develop loyalty.
Quite a number of brands pay lip service to the issue of consumer insight. Rooms and hard drives filled with data do not translate to insights. Weekly, monthly and even daily tracking studies do not equate to insight, it is beyond data. It is deeper than basic analytics. Few brands have developed and perfected the skill set and techniques for extracting insights from raw data. Brands that do this well are better positioned to begin the journey to market leadership by using the insights to develop propositions, define innovative routes to market and consumer engagement strategies with high impact.
Market leadership demands that the managers of such brands are visionary. They must see the role of the brand beyond just selling volumes or making huge margins. There must be a bigger goal that is transformational and beyond the immediate gratification of volume and value numbers. It must have a philosophy that is greater than the financials but which ultimately guarantees the financial into the long term. This big vision when pursued makes the brand integral to the life of the consumer and elevates the brand’s consumer discourse and relationship beyond the mundane.
Brands focused on market leadership are not weak brands and weaklings do not manage them. Managing for market leadership demands courage and boldness to tread where other brands are afraid to venture. The brand must be daring enough to chart new courses, challenge the norms and push the frontiers of tradition. It must not be risk averse' and the managers must be disciplined risk takers. If a brand is too safety conscious, the likelihood of market leadership is nil.
Investment choices require a lot of courage and guts. This is especially true in the developing economies where uncertainty is the only certainty. The risks of losses due to an unstable polity or irrational government policies are usually high. For instance, when MTN took the decision to invest in Nigeria in the early years of our fledgling democracy when nobody was sure that the army would not come back, analysts saw it as an insane decision. The stock market’s reaction in South Africa was negative. The share price was negatively impacted when the decision became public but a few years down the line, the story changed when the risk paid off. The brand’s decision and success story has since emboldened other global brands to invest in Nigeria.
1 had the opportunity of being at a telecommunication conference in Cape Town, South Africa once and a senior manager in a Nigerian bank almost slapped an industry analyst that had predicted that the Nigerian market was too volatile for investments and warned prospects about investing in the Nigerian telecom industry. Unfortunately, for the leader of the firm of industry analysts, he was now at this particular conference eulogizing MTN and its success story when the banker took him on. The anger of the banker was palpable. It was apparent that his company had held back from investing in the Nigerian telecommunication industry based on the analyst’s report. His bank was scared to take the risk and so lost the opportunity to partake in the success story. MTN did. The brand dared to invest in Nigeria when others were scared and today it is an indisputable market leader.
Courage is also required in proposition development. Given the globally recognized low success rate for innovations or new products, it takes guts and a clear vision of market leadership to invest in research and development to develop innovative products with a high risk of failure. Some other brands are content to copy and mass customize. They are not interested in taking risks and so cannot savour the thrill of victory. Innovative creativity is required to effectively communicate the brand values and benefits of value proposition packages to prospects. Normal threadbare and safe creativity resides in the realm of the ordinary. Breaking parity in a cluttered environment requires some boldness to embrace innovative creativity that breaks the norm and pushes the brand to the edge. Bold concepts, bold formats, bold executions and hallmark market leaders. To be big and bold is a mantra with market leaders when it comes to engaging their customers and building brand affinity.
Market leaders define practice by what they do. They set category or industry standards. One of such ways is the redefinition of route to market. Market leaders change the game by creating new routes to market that leave competitors breathless. One of the ways to discomfit competition is by changing the rules of engagement. Changing market structure and trade remuneration structure can significantly upset market equilibrium to the aggressor brand’s advantage.
Availability at every point of purchase is critical especially if the business chose to compete for volume market leadership. This calls for both depth and width of distribution and significant investment in tools, systems and processes. It also demands significant head count within the sales force as either direct staff or indirect staff members. A market leader can also differentiate in the way it’s logistics is managed from inbound to outbound to ensure that the pipeline is always filled and issues of stock-out do not occur. Stock-outs give room for trials of competing brands, which could lead to conversion. To prevent accidental conversions, availability at every point of purchase becomes a must.
Internal efficiencies that deliver savings that can be passed on to the consumers is a critical lever that can be leveraged by a brand in pursuit of volume market leadership. Lean and fit operations that translate to lower costs of production can be used as the strategy to deliver good quality at affordable prices that will generate volume push when the savings are passed on to the consumer.
Stingy brands cannot make the list of market leaders when it comes to marketing investments. While wastage is not advocated, effective budget is required to drive excellent marketing ideas. Stingy brands end up as idea incubators for aggressive brands focused on effective investments to gain share. Brilliant marketing campaigns with insufficient budget to deliver effective frequencies in exposure end up as dumb campaigns with frustrated writers. A certain level of investment is required to guarantee effective reach at the right frequency. Well planned and executed brand campaigns backed with sufficient budget gives the brand gravitas. Media clutter can be broken by investing in innovative media platforms that confers clout on the brand.
Sometimes, brands can use the media to create impressions and manage perceptions as market leaders when indeed they are not. Such brands aggressively communicate market leadership intentions but do so in very smart ways that give off the impression of reality. Such perception management conditions people’s thinking about the brand. If the brand is strategically focused enough and scales up its services or product portfolio to deliver on its expressed intentions, the market can forgive its claims and possible puffery. Such campaigns of intentions can destroy the brand if it fails to deliver consistently.
Big brands do big things in big ways. Ambitious brands do the same. Such brands send signals to the market about their ambitions. They may express this in their customer engagement strategies and the kind of sponsorship platforms in which they invest. A young brand that chooses to invest in sponsorship properties like the Barclays English Premier League, the Champions League or the World Cup as a platform for engaging her customers has clearly indicated its ambitions and intentions.
True market leadership is however not measured in intentions. It is also not measured in perceptions. It is measured in numbers. The amount of returns either in customer count, volume purchase and or margin percentage is what determines true leadership, if a brand has leadership in perception, an asset it can leverage for volume or value growth. If it is not leveraged for real growth, it is a waste. To borrow wisdom from the financial world, perception and intentions not leveraged is insanity. Hard numbers in volume sales and or significant margin advantage is sanity.
A brand is a tactic of business. Decisions for market leadership by brands do not therefore start with the brand; it starts with the business. The foundation is ingrained in the business strategy where a conscious strategic choice on how the organization wants to compete is made. The business needs to determine if it wants to compete for volume or value. Straddling the divide is risky and may lead to brand failure.
Once the business has made the strategic choice on where and how it wants to compete, then we can get down to the brands it chooses to fight. The first area of leadership that any brand that wants to be a market leader must focus on is, understanding the consumer better than competitors. Insight is the bedrock of sound strategy. Insight informs the brand’s ability to develop differentiated, relevant and compelling value proposition packages that consumers will try, purchase and for which they would develop loyalty.
Quite a number of brands pay lip service to the issue of consumer insight. Rooms and hard drives filled with data do not translate to insights. Weekly, monthly and even daily tracking studies do not equate to insight, it is beyond data. It is deeper than basic analytics. Few brands have developed and perfected the skill set and techniques for extracting insights from raw data. Brands that do this well are better positioned to begin the journey to market leadership by using the insights to develop propositions, define innovative routes to market and consumer engagement strategies with high impact.
Market leadership demands that the managers of such brands are visionary. They must see the role of the brand beyond just selling volumes or making huge margins. There must be a bigger goal that is transformational and beyond the immediate gratification of volume and value numbers. It must have a philosophy that is greater than the financials but which ultimately guarantees the financial into the long term. This big vision when pursued makes the brand integral to the life of the consumer and elevates the brand’s consumer discourse and relationship beyond the mundane.
Brands focused on market leadership are not weak brands and weaklings do not manage them. Managing for market leadership demands courage and boldness to tread where other brands are afraid to venture. The brand must be daring enough to chart new courses, challenge the norms and push the frontiers of tradition. It must not be risk averse' and the managers must be disciplined risk takers. If a brand is too safety conscious, the likelihood of market leadership is nil.
Investment choices require a lot of courage and guts. This is especially true in the developing economies where uncertainty is the only certainty. The risks of losses due to an unstable polity or irrational government policies are usually high. For instance, when MTN took the decision to invest in Nigeria in the early years of our fledgling democracy when nobody was sure that the army would not come back, analysts saw it as an insane decision. The stock market’s reaction in South Africa was negative. The share price was negatively impacted when the decision became public but a few years down the line, the story changed when the risk paid off. The brand’s decision and success story has since emboldened other global brands to invest in Nigeria.
1 had the opportunity of being at a telecommunication conference in Cape Town, South Africa once and a senior manager in a Nigerian bank almost slapped an industry analyst that had predicted that the Nigerian market was too volatile for investments and warned prospects about investing in the Nigerian telecom industry. Unfortunately, for the leader of the firm of industry analysts, he was now at this particular conference eulogizing MTN and its success story when the banker took him on. The anger of the banker was palpable. It was apparent that his company had held back from investing in the Nigerian telecommunication industry based on the analyst’s report. His bank was scared to take the risk and so lost the opportunity to partake in the success story. MTN did. The brand dared to invest in Nigeria when others were scared and today it is an indisputable market leader.
Courage is also required in proposition development. Given the globally recognized low success rate for innovations or new products, it takes guts and a clear vision of market leadership to invest in research and development to develop innovative products with a high risk of failure. Some other brands are content to copy and mass customize. They are not interested in taking risks and so cannot savour the thrill of victory. Innovative creativity is required to effectively communicate the brand values and benefits of value proposition packages to prospects. Normal threadbare and safe creativity resides in the realm of the ordinary. Breaking parity in a cluttered environment requires some boldness to embrace innovative creativity that breaks the norm and pushes the brand to the edge. Bold concepts, bold formats, bold executions and hallmark market leaders. To be big and bold is a mantra with market leaders when it comes to engaging their customers and building brand affinity.
Market leaders define practice by what they do. They set category or industry standards. One of such ways is the redefinition of route to market. Market leaders change the game by creating new routes to market that leave competitors breathless. One of the ways to discomfit competition is by changing the rules of engagement. Changing market structure and trade remuneration structure can significantly upset market equilibrium to the aggressor brand’s advantage.
Availability at every point of purchase is critical especially if the business chose to compete for volume market leadership. This calls for both depth and width of distribution and significant investment in tools, systems and processes. It also demands significant head count within the sales force as either direct staff or indirect staff members. A market leader can also differentiate in the way it’s logistics is managed from inbound to outbound to ensure that the pipeline is always filled and issues of stock-out do not occur. Stock-outs give room for trials of competing brands, which could lead to conversion. To prevent accidental conversions, availability at every point of purchase becomes a must.
Internal efficiencies that deliver savings that can be passed on to the consumers is a critical lever that can be leveraged by a brand in pursuit of volume market leadership. Lean and fit operations that translate to lower costs of production can be used as the strategy to deliver good quality at affordable prices that will generate volume push when the savings are passed on to the consumer.
Stingy brands cannot make the list of market leaders when it comes to marketing investments. While wastage is not advocated, effective budget is required to drive excellent marketing ideas. Stingy brands end up as idea incubators for aggressive brands focused on effective investments to gain share. Brilliant marketing campaigns with insufficient budget to deliver effective frequencies in exposure end up as dumb campaigns with frustrated writers. A certain level of investment is required to guarantee effective reach at the right frequency. Well planned and executed brand campaigns backed with sufficient budget gives the brand gravitas. Media clutter can be broken by investing in innovative media platforms that confers clout on the brand.
Sometimes, brands can use the media to create impressions and manage perceptions as market leaders when indeed they are not. Such brands aggressively communicate market leadership intentions but do so in very smart ways that give off the impression of reality. Such perception management conditions people’s thinking about the brand. If the brand is strategically focused enough and scales up its services or product portfolio to deliver on its expressed intentions, the market can forgive its claims and possible puffery. Such campaigns of intentions can destroy the brand if it fails to deliver consistently.
Big brands do big things in big ways. Ambitious brands do the same. Such brands send signals to the market about their ambitions. They may express this in their customer engagement strategies and the kind of sponsorship platforms in which they invest. A young brand that chooses to invest in sponsorship properties like the Barclays English Premier League, the Champions League or the World Cup as a platform for engaging her customers has clearly indicated its ambitions and intentions.
True market leadership is however not measured in intentions. It is also not measured in perceptions. It is measured in numbers. The amount of returns either in customer count, volume purchase and or margin percentage is what determines true leadership, if a brand has leadership in perception, an asset it can leverage for volume or value growth. If it is not leveraged for real growth, it is a waste. To borrow wisdom from the financial world, perception and intentions not leveraged is insanity. Hard numbers in volume sales and or significant margin advantage is sanity.
