Activate your topline growth potential

We create strategies to help clients uncover, create and execute sustainable topline growth. We do this with our industry leading capability in insights and analytics combined with our marketing and operations expertise.

SERVICES

Driving Topline Growth

For a business to survive, profitable growth is an imperative, not an option.

Only one in ten companies succeed in achieving sustained growth. With an industry-leading capability in Insights, Innovation & Marketing Strategy, we bring you a hands-on practical approach to maximize your business potential by identifying new revenue streams for long term growth.

Our practice is focused on four key GROWTH areas:

Brand Strategy

Maximizing your brand’s growth potential by providing the strategies, tools and creative concepts that inspire and connect with your core customers
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Strategic Innovation

Developing winning ideas for growth and shepherding them through stage gate process, from white space innovation frameworking through operational commercialization
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Marketing Plan Development

Creating a marketing plan that meets your brand and business objectives while maximizing the use of your budget
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New Acquisition Planning

Fueling growth ‘beyond the core’ to grow into new adjacencies through acquisitions, joint ventures or partnerships
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We are innovative operators. We blend creative thinking with 75 years of combined operational experience.

Brand Strategy

Brand Strategy is our core competency, it is at the heart of what we do.

We are able to approach your brand challenges and needs with the eye of a business partner. Though we utilize tried and true marketing frameworks and methodologies, we excel at customizing their use for your unique business needs and budget. We can work with you on discrete needs you have, or to examine your brand and business situation to set your priorities and create a brand improvement plan.

Our work together can help you to:

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Define Your Core Target

  • Segment the market and identify the core
  • Scope/size the targeting opportunity
  • Identify unmet needs & pain points
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Create Differentiation

  • Define the brand promise
  • Develop the brand narrative
  • Craft the value proposition for different target audiences
  • Customize the brand experience for each consumer touch point
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Maximize Brand Effectiveness

  • Integrate consumer touch points
  • Utilize social media & digital strategies
  • Build traffic generation tactics
  • Create loyalty building programs

Some examples of typical problems our clients face that are solved through brand strategy work include:

  • They don’t have well developed brands that are differentiated and will win in a competitive marketplace
  • They don’t understand their core target audience to develop winning strategies for communications and product development
  • Their current brand is dated and needs a re-fresh to compete or serve a new target audience
  • They have a proliferation of brands and/or product names they can’t support and that create customer confusion
  • They need to develop an effective communication strategy – website, advertising campaign, or winning sales strategy
  • They see an opportunity for direct-to-consumer sales as a profitable growth area but lack the right internal marketing capabilities

Market Strategy & Planning

We will help you create an operational marketing plan that can bring a real change in your business performance.  Or, if you are faced with challenges of improving cross functional alignment to drive the bottom line we can help you “Build best-in-class processes to support a go-to-market strategy that fits your business model?”

Our process for building Market Strategies uses our analytics and insights engine to assess the effectiveness of each GTM lever and identify areas in need of most attention.

 

 

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Core Business Maximization

A building block framework to access the effectiveness of GTM strategies and to maximize growth, pricing and margin potential.

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New Product Launch Planning

A comprehensive planning and performance analytics process to drive successful product launches. We provide expertise in the following channels:

  • E-commerce channels
  • National retail grocery,
  • Drug, Mass, Club & Natural/Organic Channel
  • Walmart & Warehouse Clubs
  • Electronic & Wireless Retail

RBS-ICONS_SerB_2Marketing Plan Development

We will develop comprehensive marketing plans and implement as much of it as you need:

  • Tactical marketing mix plans incl. online, offline, brand or direct marketing tactics
  • Recommended marketing calendar with budget allocations
  • Agency selection and/or management + written creative briefs and reviews
  • Media planning & coordination with agencies

Growth thru Innovation

Despite uncertainties In the economy (or, perhaps, because of it), we get asked a lot about growth through innovation. Executives want to know how to find new avenues to expand, how they can get their employees to think outside the box, how they can drive their companies forward into a strong & sustainable future.

OUR EXPERTISE:  Our stand-out expertise is our ability to understand your operational environment, your company’s core capabilities and combine it with our customer-centric creative framework to identify meaningful, and easily executable ideas with realistic investment. We will partner with you all the way – from conducting insightful research, developing a customized innovation framework, developing a prioritized pipeline of new ideas and creating executable products along with a practical go-to-market business plan and sales strategy

Our approach is iterative and immersive, anchored in “outcome based’ insights from consumers that are proven to open up “white spaces” to jumpstart innovation efforts.

 

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Strategic insights

  • Gather insights with “outcome based” research methodologies
  • Prioritize significant unmet needs using “jobs to be done” approach
  • Identify the strategic growth drivers “white spaces” for the business
  • Develop viable new platforms for innovation
  • Map out an innovation framework for ideation
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Create New Concepts

  • Design ideation exercises around ‘Breaking the compromise’
  • Facilitate team ideation to ‘solve’ and/or ‘disrupt’
  • Refine into tangible, viable product concepts
  • Vet for feasibility, impact and strategic fit
  • Create a multi-year prioritized roadmap
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Build Innovation Competency

  • Champion winning ideas through key decisions and stage-gates
  • Develop or change processes, governance and frameworks
  • Develop marketing elements: name, claims, messaging, creative briefs, and more
  • Scope the demand landscape, channel potential and map the proforma P&L
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Operationalize the plan

  • Ensure market readiness across brand, product, channel & sales teams
  • Help articulate/define go-to-market business plan and sales strategy
  • Identify external resources/co-packers as needed to accelerate launch
  • Design testing metrics and methodologies for a full scale launch.

Innovation is a passion for us! To learn more, reach us at sunita@reachbrandstrategy.com

Growth through Acquisitions & Partnerships

You’ve decided that the best way to grow your business is to enter an adjacent category which typically means acquiring or partnering with another company. You now need to build an adjacency strategy and craft a strong business case to demonstrate the strategic fit to your senior leadership before you can move ahead.

We will help you determine if the acquisition makes sense from a strategic standpoint.

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Adjacency strategy

  • Develop Strategic fit requirements
  • Identify Core capabilities matrices
  • Macro trend mapping
  • Synergy valuations
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Acquisition prospects

  • Find Best fit company targets
  • Conduct operational capability fit assessment
  • Ensure alignment of target with company culture and business model
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Strategic Investment Thesis

  • Craft Gameboard scenarios
  • Benchmark to best practices
  • Align with key stakeholders
  • Draft presentation for leadership decision making

Expertise

Three critical skillsets for driving growth

To maximize long term growth and sustained profitability, the three elements needed to work in symbiotic harmony are consumer insights & intelligence, operational business experience and paradigm-shifting creativity.

Organizations that have a core strength in all three of these capabilities are the ones that ultimately lead in the marketplace. This is where we come in…

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Strategic Insights

Robust, rich insights that come from layering predictive data analytics with qualitative and quantitative segmentation techniques

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Operational Expertise

Backed by operational excellence across multiple industries such as food & beverage, health & wellness, restaurants, retail, technology, wireless, internet, education and ingredient manufacturing

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Disruptive Creativity

Creative out of the box thinking blended with strategy planning skills to break through existing paradigms with disruptive ideas

No off-the-shelf solutions. Our proven custom process and methodologies generate game-changing solutions and accelerate decision making

ABOUT US

With deep knowledge and expertise in Market Research, Business Optimization and Innovation, we are the ultimate tool for businesses looking for more profitable and sustainable growth.

REACH PROMISE

We relate—We have been in your shoes. So we understand your needs, pressures and demand on time. Our experiences are yours to leverage so you can win the game strategically

We act swiftly—our team is small, hence agile and flexible. So we make the “go-to market” process quick, efficient and affordable for you

We are senior practitioners—who have no junior staff to delegate your projects

We enable decision-making at senior management levels—Our practical “go forward” solutions makes cross functional alignments and leadership decisions easy

THE REACH TEAM

SUNITA

Managing Partner

  • Blends technical expertise with strategic thought leadership
  • Deep analytics, insights & brand savvy with passion for innovation
  • 24 years of CPG, Foodservice and Retail experiences
  • A valuable asset in global operating environments with extensive international experience in ME, Americas, Asia Pacific

NICK

Managing Partner

  • 20+ years of marketing & operational leadership experience in CPG, wireless, internet & entertainment
  • Technology Product Marketing Expertise
  • New Product & innovation leader across multiple industries
  • Advisor to multiple digital media & mobile start-ups

KRIS

Managing Partner

  • Hands on experience leading marketing departments in 20 year corporate career
  • Deep marketing and brand strategy expertise for new and existing businesses
  • CPG and Financial Services background with recent Healthcare emphasis
  • Skilled in consumerization of complex, regulated industries

OUR CLIENT PORTFOLIO

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highmark

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CASE STUDIES

Challenge

  • Bob Evans needed to re-engineer its brand positioning as well as communications and operations to become on-trend and more relevant brand to a larger subset of casual restaurant diners

Solution

  • Anchored in consumer insights, segmentation and brand positioning research the brand positioning and experience was made more relevant and aligned to ‘farm-fresh goodness’
  • Worked with agency partners to continually refine and tweak creatives to appeal not just to core consumers but also bring the new millennial families into the brand’s core target

Results

  • New positioning has reinvigorated not just the brand and the store locations but re-energized a whole new core of younger families to embrace the brand’s promise.
Bob Evans:Re-positioning to be more on-trend and relevant

Challenge

  • AOL generated multiple ideas for launching new premium services but needed a consistent process for vetting potentials and prioritizing development efforts

Solution

  • A Stage-Gate innovation process and governance structure was developed and a consistent early stage concept development and testing process utilized to understand concept interest and brand fit along with other metrics essential for successful launch
  • Initial business case process created with standards for filtering ideas to later development stages where product features, business systems and pricing models were vetted

Results

  • More than 350 concepts were vetted in the first two years, enabling focus on high performing concepts for speed to market and investment efficiency
  • Resulting top performers launched in market generated $75 million in revenue the first year
AOL:Vetting innovations thru a stagegate process

Challenge

  • Chaotic environment for creative development and product naming led to inefficient /ineffective marketing materials and unwanted complexity. There was no consistency across TV advertising, collateral and other creative materials, and the quality was often dated

Solution

  • Partnered with internal stakeholders and agency partners to develop brand positioning, creative standards/brand book, and brand architecture, naming and voice standards for all Highmark and affiliate offerings
  • Conducted multi-phased training and coaching of marketing, agency, and creative services team
  • Developed corporate wide roll-out along with excitement building events

Results

  • Night and day improvements in quality and consistency of brand presentation around the updated brand positioning and personality
  • Improved recognition to stakeholders of the relationship between the Highmark masterbrand and associated businesses, products and services
Highmark:Creating brand standards for consistency

Challenge

  • Cigna identified direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales and marketing of Dental, Medicare Supplement, Accident and Critical illness insurance as a profitable growth opportunity. But, they had no expertise to understand how to create a sustainable DTC business

Solution

  • A marketing plan was developed to test and learn the effectiveness of different marketing vehicles to generate response, conversion and profitable long term returns
  • DTC website was created, and a multi-channel test and learn online and offline marketing programs were implemented

Results

  • DTC channel outpaced the established broker channel for Dental in year1.
  • DTC proved to be considerably more profitable than the broker channel, and a sustainable business model was created
Cigna:Creating a sustainable DTC model for supplemental insurance services

Challenge

  • Kashi acquired Bear Naked Granola. Both brands targeted the same consumer profile and thus cannibalized each others portfolios. Alignment on future growth plans was a serious challenge

Solution

  • With a hi-touch anthropological research we examined both targets in-depth to find mindset and need state difference that were robust enough to differentiate brands and build incremental product strategies
  • A quantitative segmentation further validated the economic opportunity of pursuing these incremental targets. Grounded in these insights, both brands were able to create differentiating brand strategies and build innovation pipelines that allowed each brand to be incremental and stay on course

Results

  • Both Kashi and Bear Naked have developed these profitable consumer niches by catering to their needs with innovative product portfolios that are truly incremental to each other
Kashi:Uncovering Incremental Consumer Targets

Challenge

  • By 2001, the writing was on the wall. Wellness consciousness was setting in and health trends were here to stay. PepsiCo realized that without a Health & Wellness portfolio their businesses would become obsolete by the next decade. A radical transformation was needed to continue to drive topline growth for future

Solution

  • In-depth insights led by segmentation and white space modeling conducted to reveal need states and categories where PepsiCo brands could play profitably
  • Using this growth framework creative brainstorming led to new platforms, new product ideas and new go to market strategies. Products were engineered and validated, acquisition targets prospected for M&A and operationally new go-to-market strategies were executional to enable future growth for PepsiCo

Results

  • PepsiCo began to evolve their product portfolio, enter new sectors, and reach new targets, balancing new healthy snacks with more indulgent snack foods to delight their consumer base and retain their market leadership in the category
  • Today 58% of PepsiCo revenues come from their healthier portfolio of foods and beverages, the company has changed their vision and culture to ensure Profits are aligned with Performance and Purpose
Pepsico:Transforming to participate in the health & wellness movement

Challenge

  • Client was facing market challenges to continue to both growth and profitability, requiring the company to find alternate paths to sustainable growth “beyond the core”
  • It set its aspirations to transition from a award winning business as a single component manufacturer to a becoming a strategic partner to a diversified base of customers, through a portfolio of highly value added meal solutions. Its challenge was where to begin this process and how to develop a compelling strategy that enables senior leadership to give them the marching orders?

Solution

  • RBS started by mapping client’s core competencies with marketplace trends and exploring adjacency categories that could diversify the customer base yet maintain the same channel and manufacturing footprint and be the right strategic fit over the long term
  • RBS created a gameboard for a client to pursue by identifying and analyzing prospect targets to ensure they were a strategic fit, evaluating their potential to create synergy values and developing the financial & strategic thesis for management decision making

Results

  • Client is on its way to making acquisition a reality and diverting the price wars with a growth strategy that changes the category paradigm and establishes higher overall value in the company.
Multinational Food Manufacturer: Acquisition to Grow Beyond Core

Challenge

  • Mars Global Food SBU (which exists predominantly of rice) had been experiencing low topline growth. A new growth strategy was put into place to transform the business into a Asian meal solutions retail business. However, a go-to-market strategy and executional plan was needed to take concept to market

Solutions

  • An in-depth analytics Asian retail and take home businesses was conducted followed by a rigorous white space analysis of optimal business models that could succeed in this category. As part of the process, a number of quantitative studies were conducted with consumers to validate the highest potential business model and channel options.

The output of this work led to a development of a master brand through a three fold go-to-market strategy:

  1. acquiring an existing business in this category;
  2. forming a distribution joint-venture to enable significant and sustainable growth;
  3. launching new products and sub-lines to create a sizeable business

Results

  • Mars led an acquisition in this space, a large joint venture with one of the world’s largest cut produce manufacturers and distributors. Mars also launched 10 new products in a variety of categories – including the ambient and fresh grocery categories. Today, this business, supported by 6 countries, continues to serve as a growth platform for the Mars Food Business.
Mars:Enabling Growth With Multi Tiered Strategies

We measure our success by your wins in the marketplace.

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