Navigator – A Guide for Brands to negotiate the Maze
More questions of this kind are bugging every marketer / brand manager every hour of the waking day and there seems no concrete answer to all his questions. Is there a panacea for all his problems?
There is no single answer to all the questions, because the customers are fragmented and they all are either oblivious or actively avoiding any brand’s message which is shouted out at them. Marketers are finding that customers are becoming numb to advertising messages. TV advertisements used to be a sure shot method to build a brand, which is not the case any more. People avoid TVC’s or they do something else during the commercial breaks.
Various researches especially in the South East Asian context reveal that the common consumer acts and reacts more for peer pressure / reassurances than to an advertisement message shouted out at him / her.
From the industry stand point, creative teams and servicing teams do not make the Ad agency anymore. Media, which used to be relegated to a support function has now come up to the forefront and has evolved as a separate industry by itself. Moreover, Media has now started complementing the client with their strategic planning divisions, which offer a complete solution depending on the brand, the channels & the consumer and the various connectors. NavigatorTM is an offering from Mediaedge:cia which offers strategic solution in a structured manner to its clients.
Navigator works on four different phases which may be called the four I’s:
· Insight
· Innovation
· Implementation
· Investments return.
The solution is akin to the entire marketing strategy getting outsourced to professionals armed with research, creative, strategy & execution capabilities. The solution adopts the entire brand marketing communication process into its own system with proprietary tools. The objective of this solution is to deliver a circle of objective, solutions – neutral, consumer centric brand growth. To me, it means taking complete responsibility of the brand and its growth including the communications strategy.
Insight
The solution takes a top down approach on brand communication. Since the consumer is fragmented and actively avoids brand messages, and there are so many distractions and so much clutter, it becomes important to decide first, the where and who to be targeted, than what actually is going to be said. This is a solution where the content of the communication depends on the carrier of the communication. Hence, it is imperative that the insights on the consumer behavior are first arrived at. A knowledge audit using research programmes to arrive at the consumer insights is performed. A full mutual understanding of the brand, market and consumer dynamics follows this. All knowledge thus gathered is tabulated and growth plan is arrived at. The key performance indicators (KPI’s) thus arrived at gets fine-tunes as the process progresses.
Innovation
This stage involved Idea generation and connection planning where the task is to deliver connectivity. The connection between the Brand, Consumer and the Channels is arrived at this is a highly collaborative process. This involves the brand owner’s marketing team, ad agency creatives, channel & the discipline specialists. The session generates a pool of ideas and concepts basis which potential innovation areas are identified. Channel, budgets and the master communication plan is thus arrived as a fall out of these sessions. The result becomes the input for the discipline and channel briefs. The content brief is also arrived at using the ideas from the collaborative sessions.
Implementation
Evaluation, negotiation, Channel and Discipline plans, placement and management of the channel plan arrived at is taken care of in this stage. This would be within the framework of the investment agreed upon by the brand marketer.
Investment Return
This addresses the accountable and measurable results. Typically marketers have never been able to get their budgets sanctioned since the return on the investment made in marketing is more often than not intangible. It would make tremendous negotiation power within the organization for the marketing man, if he can promise measurable results. The Navigator promises exactly that. To provide the return on the investment made, post the execution phase. The findings of this cycle of events would provide a base for the marketing plan / strategy for the next year. Pre- and post-campaign analysis using brand tracking studies, sales analyses, customer acquisition data would help the marketer win influencers within the organisation and show concrete results.
In effect, Navigator summarised would provide:
· Insights (Unlocks the opportunity for brand growth)
· Innovation (Breakthrough connectivity)
· Implementation (Complete channel management to ensure cost effective delivery
· Investment Return (Measurable / Accountable results)
The idea is to Maximise (Do the right things) and Optimise (Do the things right).
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Hi ,
I think this is the first very good collaborative blog I have come across on blogspot from India. I hope u will join here too.
May I invite you to join Indusnexus.com – social & business networking | Community Blogging | IndiaI would be highly obliged if you can contribute and share your knowledge there. The community blog section is related to business, science & technology related activities in India. See if it interests you.
Regards,
Santosh Kumar
http://sanspeak.blogspot.com