Unlocking Brand Growth: Insights from Kantar’s Decade-Long Study
In today’s competitive and fragmented market, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are under pressure to ensure their strategies drive growth despite limited budgets. A recent report by Kantar, based on ten years of data, sheds light on the most effective ways to achieve brand growth, emphasizing the importance of brand equity.
James Potter, Chief Brand Solutions Officer at Kantar North America, highlights the comprehensive nature of their study: “One of the distinctions of the brand blueprint that we’ve created…is it looks across years worth of data. So when you look at brand growth, you truly can understand before, middle and after and that helps you come up with a prescription for what the right methods to drive brand growth would be.”
Kantar's "Blueprint For Brand Growth" report breaks down the data into two primary categories: attitudinal and purchase. The attitudinal segment encompasses 5.4 billion data points from 21,000 brands, 540 categories, and 54 markets, while the purchase segment includes 1.1 billion data points from 20,000 brands, 100 categories, and 25 markets. Collected over a decade, this data reveals a three-pronged approach to brand growth: predisposing more consumers to a brand, maintaining a strong presence in the consumer lifecycle, and exploring new growth opportunities.
Meaningful Differentiation: The Heart of Market Penetration
Market penetration is crucial for brand growth, but standing out in a crowded market is challenging. The report underscores that meaningful differentiation—creating strong emotional and functional connections with consumers—can significantly enhance market penetration. Brands that achieve meaningful differentiation enjoy five times the market penetration compared to those that do not.
Meaningful differentiation can predispose consumers to a brand, increasing purchase intent. According to the study, brands with higher predisposition among consumers have nine times the market volume share, twice the price premium, and four times the likelihood of value share (earning more revenue than competitors from a product).
“Being meaningful is actually addressing your consumer…if you’re meaningful to the right consumers, the right buyers, that’s going to set you up for success,” said Potter.
To build meaningful differentiation, brands must be present across all points where buying decisions are made—from online searches to physical store shelves. Brands that maintain a consistent presence across these touchpoints attract seven times more buyers than those present only half the time.
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Expanding Horizons: Exploring New Growth Spaces
Reaching new consumers can be achieved by expanding into new markets or finding additional uses for existing products. Brands that successfully find new applications for their products have twice the growth potential compared to those that do not. Moreover, a 10% increase in product usage can drive 17% growth.
Entering new spaces requires time and effort, with successful strategies including meaningful and differentiating innovation, expanded distribution, and effective communication. Potter cites Dove’s expansion from soap into healthcare and skincare as an example of leveraging product reputation and brand strength to enter new categories.
“You can imagine extending into new categories like Dove moving from soap into healthcare, skincare, because they had a product and a reputation and brand that could extend properly,” said Potter.
Conclusion
Kantar’s extensive report highlights that brand growth hinges on understanding consumer behavior and market dynamics over time. By focusing on meaningful differentiation, maintaining a strong market presence, and exploring new growth opportunities, brands can navigate the challenges of modern marketing and drive sustained growth.
