Brand Growth Story
To understand Brand Growth better, DVJ takes an integrated view. Via our Brand Growth Platform, we combine academic and practical expertise to understand the concept of brand growth better. It serves as a knowledge base, offering unique learnings tailored for marketing and insights professionals aiming to drive brand growth.
What is our Brand Growth Platform?
The platform includes the following key components
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Academic Collaboration including an Academic Brand Growth Board: We integrate academic insights with practical experience by partnering with universities and collaborating with academic boards for consultation. Through PhD sponsorships, we cultivate deep expertise and continuously advance our understanding.
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Visionary Interviews with Marketing Leaders: To gain a nuanced understanding of growth-driven marketing practices, we conduct in-depth interviews with industry leaders. These discussions, covering a wide range of topics, help shape our thinking, explore emerging trends, and identify gaps in current practices. Over recent years, we have engaged with hundreds of CMOs, CMIs, and CEOs from leading brands such as Vodafone, Domino’s, Volvo, Cloetta, Nestlé, and Unilever.
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Quantitative Studies with Marketing Professionals: For the past eight years, we have conducted an extensive quantitative study involving over 2,300 European marketers and professionals, as well as 3,000+ consumers per year. These studies validate our insights and highlight effective strategies and tactics. By measuring company success metrics, we distinguish high-performing companies and provide data-driven recommendations to help our clients develop winning strategies.
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Brand Growth Events: Based upon the findings of brand growth we organise master classes, round tables and in company trainings for our clients. We also organise an annual event with best practices from top brands and features recent academic insights presented by leading marketers and professors. The Brand Growth Event unites knowledge from research, academia, and industry practice, offering a comprehensive view of the learnings accumulated over the year.
The Brand Growth platform is a platform where the academic and the practical world come together to understand better what brands need to do to grow.
How we use the Brand Growth Platform
Guided by DVJ’s commitment to advancing research and helping clients grow, we developed the Brand Growth Platform to bring together all our learnings in one place. The platform’s objectives are as follows:
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Product and Solution Innovation: All our solutions are designed with our clients’ growth in mind. We constantly strive to enhance our products, using feedback from both academic and practical insights to create more effective tools and solutions.
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Internal Development and Training: Our researchers and consultants play a crucial role in every study, adding depth to the analysis and supporting clients in interpreting results. By fostering a deeper understanding of growth drivers and diverse growth strategies, we equip our team to better serve our clients.
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Knowledge Sharing Through Content, Workshops, and Events: We are dedicated to disseminating knowledge through various formats. This includes writing articles, collaborating with media partners, organising roundtables and workshops for in-depth discussions, and hosting our annual Brand Growth Event.
This makes the Brand Growth Platform a true source of inspiration for our people and clients resulting in a strong focus towards growth.
History of Brand Growth
In 2010, Byron Sharp published How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know, a book that brought decades of evidence-based research to the forefront for marketers aiming to expand their brands. Inspired by Sharp’s work, we began organising workshops and masterclasses to explore brand growth strategies, implement Ehrenberg-Bass Institute findings, and examine the broader implications of research on marketing practice.
From our initial learnings, we recognised several important insights:
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Numerous concepts support the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s findings, while some alternative perspectives emerged, offering new insights into brand growth. A good example is how the reasoning behind understanding CEPs, to replace traditional category definitions, is widely supported.
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Researchers worldwide are exploring growth, yet their findings often lack the widespread visibility enjoyed by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s work. By using our network of academic partners, we were able to understand brand growth even better resulting in a unique brand growth framework.
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Implementation of the Brand Growth thinking in proper and valid research is missing. That is why we have developed a new series of tools and techniques to measure all the elements of brand growth in a much better way.
We saw an opportunity to compile and share insights on Brand Growth from both academic and practical viewpoints, highlighting the depth and diversity of perspectives on this topic.
In 2016, DVJ launched the Brand Growth Platform, establishing a long-term programme designed to endure and evolve. Our goal was to create a central repository for insights, consistently sharing knowledge from professionals across various roles, industries, and geographies.
Today, the Brand Growth Platform has grown into a global initiative. Recognising the many facets of Brand Growth, we select one key focus area each year. These annual Ingredients for Brand Growth are chosen by our Brand Growth board, reflecting advancements in both academic research and industry practice.
Ingredients for Brand Growth
Each year, the Brand Growth Platform focuses on a unique, strategically chosen topic, allowing us to build comprehensive knowledge and provide deeper insights into critical areas of brand growth. By concentrating on one theme annually, we delve into the latest research, case studies, and best practices, ensuring an in-depth understanding that benefits our clients. This approach not only fosters continuous learning and innovation but also enables us to address evolving industry needs and provide actionable strategies tailored to the specific challenges and opportunities brands face today.
Promotions
Sales promotions boost short-term sales but rarely drive long-term growth or loyalty. How can promotions fit into a winning strategy? What does research say about their impact? Why are they so popular among brands?
CSR
Corporate Social Responsibility means integrating social and environmental concerns into business strategy. What can we learn from responsible businesses? How can we act and consume sustainably? How can CSR align with business goals?
Moment of Truth
The MoT is a critical point in the customer journey where impressions of a product, brand, or service shape purchase decisions. For many, the MoT is the moment of purchase. What is the most important Moment of Truth? How can it be influenced?
Data driven decision-making
As firms have more and more data, it becomes more and more important what they subsequently do with it.
To what extent are firms already data-driven? To what extent do they use data for important marketing decisions?
Creative Development
Creative development plays a crucial role in making advertising effective. Strong creative ads achieve the same impact with fewer GRPs compared to weaker ones.
How does the creative development process work? What challenges arise? When and how is research involved?
Innovation
Innovation, which can be both radical and incremental, appears to be one of the largest drivers of brand growth.
What are the sources of innovation and who is responsible for innovation? What does the innovation process look like and is research involved in it?
Media
Byron Sharp argues that you should always be visible as a brand and therefore, use an always-on strategy.
How much do firms prioritise branding versus sales activation? Are they following the 60/40 rule by Les Binet and Peter Field? What media channels are they using?
Brand
The brand is at the core of Brand Growth, which is why the first year, we focused on the brand and its strategy.
Is branding used throughout the organisation? Is there a brand policy? And is the brand used consistently?
History of Brand Growth
