Blog Archives

How to Successfully Upscale a Brand

5/26/2017

Corporate Challenge: A company wants to successfully move its products up-market.

Ironbound Strategy: Luxury retailers can sell goods at a discount, but discount retailers cannot successfully sell goods at luxury prices. In order to move up-market, a retailer needs to create an overwhelming and unprecedented amount of value forcustomers, employees, and society.

Ironbound Action: In 1980, Cuffy’s of Cape Cod sold misprinted t-shirts out of a car, and today it is the largest clothing retailer on Cape Cod. The secret to Cuffy’s success to move up-market came from their commitment to create an overwhelming amount of value for their customers, employees, and society. Marketing professionals may cite their textbooks that it is nearly impossible to successfully move a brand up-market. However, customers will always positively react when a brand goes out of their way to create more value for customers. By constantly creating value for customers, employees, and society, a brand can use their rapid growth to move to new market spaces.

4 Comments

Engaging the Next Generation of Consumers

5/19/2017

0 Comments

Image: Wall Street Journal on Snapchat

Corporate Challenge: A company requires a strategy to adopt new and younger customers.

Ironbound Strategy: Search for your prospective customer, and engage with them in their space. Younger customers are drawn to brands that create value forcustomers, employees, and society.

Ironbound Action: The Wall Street Journal had a goal to become more relevant among millennials. They partnered with Snapchat to provide free content that is generally reserved for subscribing members. Millennials responded well, and many users now read entire WSJ articles on Snapchat as their source of news. WSJ expects to increase millennial subscribership in the long term. In the short term, the Journal is using their time in millennial space to learn how to effectively tell a news story to a younger audience. To attract millennials, a brand needs to be engaging, and tell a good story. Successful brands in the future will be brands that value the platforms of their prospective customers, and understand how to effectively engage with them.

0 Comments

The Next Generation of Consumers Want More Value From Brands

5/12/2017

0 Comments

Image: First Bank

Corporate Challenge: Existing strategy fails to generate growth from shifting consumer mindset.

Ironbound Strategy: Companies seeking growth need to value all stakeholders if they want to quickly adopt relevant strategies for the new business environment. Powerful brands grow and capture market share by consistently focusing on jointly creating value for customers, employees, and society.

Ironbound Action: New incoming CEO Jim Reuter made the executive decision to focus on ‘Banking for Good’ as FirstBank’s strategic differentiator. In Jim’s own words, “we try to do good things for our customers, our communities, and our employees”. The new holistic approach to value creation is designed to attract Millennials who want their brands to be doing both good and right things. Powerful brands and their value driven efforts are the wave of the future.

0 Comments

When Customers Drive the Value Creation Process

5/5/2017

0 Comments

Image: Tapatio

Corporate Challenge: A company needs low-risk ways to expand its brand.

Ironbound Strategy: Engage in conversations with your customers, employees, and society for new ways to create value.

Ironbound Action: California based Tapatio began in 1971 with a mission to create the best possible hot sauce at the best possible price. Customers began sending in suggestions for product variations, which the small business acted on. The Tapatio brand soon experienced exponential growth, and become Americas #1 hot sauce. Customer driven innovation is rare, and usually only happens when a brand actively engages with their customers. Creating value for customers makes the difference between rapid growth and obsolescence.

~ Happy Cinco de Mayo, from our team ~

0 Comments

How to Successfully Upscale a Brand

Engaging the Next Generation of Consumers

The Next Generation of Consumers Want More Value From Brands

When Customers Drive the Value Creation Process

#BuildABetterWorld

Archives

Categories