Blueprint for Brand Growth by Kantar reveals marketing prioritisation framework

Kantar has introduced ‘Blueprint for Brand Growth’— an analysis of more than 6.5 billion global attitudinal and shopper data points from the past decade, which reveals the key drivers of brand growth. Additionally, the analysis provides a decision-making framework for marketers to better control the levers of growth that shape their brand future.

According to the Blueprint, the brands grow through being meaningfully different to more people. Interestingly, brands that are meaningfully different to more people command five times market penetration today and have a real advantage in penetration growth over the next two years.

The three ‘growth accelerators’ and decision-making frameworks recommended are:

Predispose more people: Creativity, advertising and experience build meaningful difference as well as mental availability for your brand. When optimally executed, this drives 9X higher volume share, 2X higher average selling price, and a 4X likelihood of growing share in the future.

Be more present: Optimising distribution, customer journey, range, pack, pricing and promotions wins 7X more buyers vs those present in only half of buying occasions.

Find new space: Innovation focused on identifying incremental spaces (motivations, occasions, tangential categories and services) doubles a brand’s chance of growth. Increasing the number of usage occasions by 10 percent results in revenue growth of +17 percent.

The Blueprint builds upon and enhances existing industry research on how brands grow. It importantly proves that while market penetration growth is crucial, solely focusing on this is insufficient to holistically drive sustainable brand, revenue and margin growth. Kantar’s analysis underscores the role of differentiation – not just distinctiveness – in forging strong mental connections between consumers and brands as well as defending pricing power.

Jane Ostler, Kantar’s EVP of Thought Leadership and Blueprint project lead, said that the Blueprint sets a new standard for strategic marketing understanding and excellence. Every marketing leader can use this framework to evaluate their brand’s competitive positioning and then shape their strategic response and marketing investment priorities.

“Our newly revealed growth accelerators will, instinctively, feel familiar to CMOs. They are now, though, underpinned with new quantifiable evidence of their impact on brand and revenue growth. These are universal truths that every brand can use to focus their strategy and secure the budget for their highest impact activities, she said.

As a result of collaboration between Kantar’s experts, industry leaders and advanced analytics work combining Kantar’s unique BrandZ and Worldpanel data assets, the Blueprint, in a nutshell, is focused on how marketers can better drive growth.