Strategic planning :

Strategic

From an insight to a marketing strategy

Role Strategic Planning’s role at Brain Value.

Our ambition is to support brands in the definition of their marketing strategy.

Strategic Planning is embedded into and enriches our projects by furthering them via a range of specific tools aimed at facilitating the transformation of research results into decision-making marketing.

Our credo: elaborating marketing strategies relies on the understanding and analysis of the following fundamentals

The human and insights
The category
The brand DNA

Invented by British advertising firms, Strategic Planning in communication agencies reflects the need to bring consumer relevance into brand and market challenges.

We apply this philosophy and believe that cultural friction creates sparks. Our Strategic Planning team comes from the world of advertising agencies.

Consequently, and through synergy with research studies, strategic planning adds further insights into the fundamentals:

The category, trends, weak signals or a brand’s DNA, to facilitate the elaboration of your strategies.

the category, trends, weak signals or brand DNA; to facilitate the elaboration of your strategies.

Strategic Planning inspires you and positions itself as a partner, to help co-create with you a differentiated marketing & communication strategy.

Involvement Strategic Planning’s areas of involvement:

Workshops, at the heart
of our approach

Workshops are at the heart of our desire to transform research results into decision-making marketing. They are placed within a logic of marketing strategy co-creation, where the key stakeholders are involved, in order to generate a sense of ownership internally.
Our team has been trained in workshop moderation skills. Brain Value is a member of the International Association of Facilitators (IAF).
We work on different types of workshops, depending on your challenges:
     - Innovation, idea generation
     - Brand strategy
     - Storytelling
     - Target definition
We design co-creation sessions with a core team (3 to 5 people) or extended teams (up to 60 people) in France, or in China via our local team in Shanghai. These sessions can last from one to several days.

Prospective research to get a head’s start in the understanding of your targets and the way they consume

Under the influence of sociological shifts, targets change and their attitudes evolve: Gen Z, masculinity, seniors, HNWIs…
Technological changes revolutionise the way people buy, or the ways to enter into contact with targets (the digitalisation of shopping and of communication…)
Through prospective research, which can concern a target, a category or a way of consuming, Strategic Planning helps to understand and anticipate these changes, so as to pilot a brand better
And to evaluate the relevance of recommendations on the current marketing and advertising landscapes (local or international).

Strategic Planning to co-create strategic marketing pillars, downstream or independently from a study

To help you identify your marketing and projected target.
To select the insight on which to build your brand.
To identify together your mission, your vision.
To accompany you in the writing or rewriting of your marketing or communication positioning.
To find the basis of your brand storytelling.
To accompany your innovation actions (new targets, new markets, extension…).
To guide you in your brand challenges (for example: umbrella strategy, brand extension, e-influencer’s ecosystem, being premium, dealing with small emerging brands…).

We rely on a unique range of tools and methodologies to better answer your challenges

Desk research and multi-language data crunching
Social listening, qualitative analysis of social web references
A unique insight approach, in exploration, construction and expression
Subscription to sources, such as WGSN

A specific brand approach: we have published works on brand attachment, emotional brands, the ‘essentials’ of lovebrands and new relationships to brands
A specific approach to brand personality, based on Jung’s Thinking type and adapted to local socio-cultural particularities (China, USA…)
An expertise in target understanding through constant decryptions of key targets

A strong expertise on certain targets: masculinity (Observatory of male identities that has been ongoing for 12 years), Millennials, Parents (Observatory of families via ABC+), and femininity
White Papers on hot topics
- Millennials and their relationships with brands
- The emergence of small brands
- Trends in China / Food in China / The evolution of femininity in China

Hello Bank! BNP Paribas Business’s Case

Brief The brief

Hello bank! is a major player in the field of online banking. Hello bank! asked Brain Value to accompany them in the definition of their marketing strategy and evolution of their positioning, in order to avoid cannibalization by BNPP.

Step 1: A workshop aiming at defining BNPP and Hello Bank’s! profile targets so as to differentiate them
Step 2: A workshop aiming at building each brands’ positioning
Step 3: Qualitative research to evaluate insights which feed into Hello Bank’s! communication positioning
- Focus Groups
- In-home individual interviews, with video production output.
Step 4: A communication workshop: identification of several possible territories in order to help with writing agency briefs

Our deliverables have enabled to define a brand charter and to define the agency brief for future campaigns.

‘‘Throughout the various steps of the process, we initiated with Brain Value a true partnership. We appreciated their reactivity as well as their quality of analysis and workshop moderations. This project exemplifies the created value related to the synergy between strategic planning and research. This project has enabled us to unify our teams and management around a shared vision.‘‘

Ariel Steinmann

Marketing Director Hello Bank! and BNPP Digital