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Strategic Brand Positioning Brand MRI Process
Brand MRI Process
At Prodigal, we build, rehabilitate and advance brands. We typically:
- COLLABORATE with clients to develop strategic insight into core business opportunities and challenges.
- IDENTIFY which client opportunities and challenges require marketing-driven or marketing-related responses.
- FRAME solutions through the marketing science of Brand Positioning.
Clients often opt to engage Prodigal for marketing planning and the implementation of creative marketing tactics. However, the ideal initial engagement with our clients is utilizing our Brand MRI (Market Research Integration) Process to first better define and position the client’s brand.
Our Brand MRI Process can provide a strategic blueprint for marketing planning, messaging and tactical executions at virtually every level of a client’s business.
Brand MRI Process Overview
A brand’s position can be defined as the aggregate perception the market has of a particular company, product or service in relation to their perceptions of the competitors in the same category.
The marketing science of Brand Positioning is the undertaking of a systematic series of coherent actions to improve the position that a brand holds in the marketplace.
Prodigal’s Brand MRI Process is a collaborative effort with our clients, directed by an experienced team of Prodigal Brand Positioning practitioners.
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Elements of Prodigal’s MRI Process typically includes:
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MRI Process deliverables include:
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MRI Process Specifics
- Key Stakeholder Conversations
- Primary or Secondary Marketplace Research
- On-Site Session
- Identify key brand category attributes.
- Achieve group consensus on 10 key overall brand category attributes.
- Rank via group consensus key brand category attributes from 1 to 10.
- Competitive Mapping
- Brand Personality Exercise
- Brand Benefit Board Target Audience Online Survey or Focus Group
- Project Deliverables
- Key Brand Attributes and Rankings
- Key Leadership Focus Group Session Notes
- Winning Brand Benefit Boards
- Brand Benefit Board Respondents Observations & Insights
- Brand Positioning Statement
- Brand Personality Description
- Logo Design Implications and Tagline Assessment
- Messaging and Marketing Planning Implications
- Creative Prototypes
- Timeline
Prodigal conducts one-on-one conversations in person, via telephone or Skype with key stakeholder representatives. These conversations are approximately 30 minutes in length and will be for the purposes of gathering information about the company, target audiences, market conditions and core competitors; as well as perceptions of the business and the brand’s opportunities and challenges.
Immediately following the Key Stakeholder Conversations, Prodigal will engage in primary/original research, secondary research or some combination of the two. We gather additional information about prevailing trends in the industry and the perceived sales, marketing and brand communication efforts of core competitors. We do request the support of our clients in providing us with their own and any available competitor sales or marketing materials, as well as other business intelligence they may possess.
An approximately three-hour Focus Group with 8 to 12 client representatives is a key element of the Brand MRI Process. A three-person team from Prodigal will oversee the on-site process.
During the first 90 minutes of the session, participants will engage in a vigorous, structured conversation built upon answering a specifically worded Brand Attributes Preference Question (to be developed following the key stakeholder phone conversations). Participants will:
The listing and ranking of the attributes will be recorded via projected Excel spreadsheets. Additionally, notes will be taken of comments and insights shared during the discussion for potential use during Prodigal’s positioning and message development phase of the process.
Participants will then engage in a Competitive Mapping exercise, typically lasting 30-minutes, whereby the client is compared and rated against up to six core competitors in the context of the ranked brand category attributes.
The first four components of the on-site session predominantly focus on drawing out analytical insights into the positioning of the brand. In contrast, the Brand Personality exercise, seeks right-brain, intuitive and emotional impressions of the brand. Research demonstrates that a positive perception of the personality of a brand often has as much influence on customer and prospect preferences as specific product and price facts. Thus, findings from this approximately 30-minute portion of the session may often impact the tone and feel of the messaging and creative implications Prodigal provides as part of its project deliverables.
Prodigal translates the ranked brand category attributes into specific benefits of choosing the specific client brand.
These benefits are expressed through Brand Benefit Boards. See the accompanying diagram for an explanation of the board’s visual, rational and emotional attribute testing components.
These Brand Benefit Boards are more apt to elicit reactions rather than opinions from survey and focus groups.
Survey and focus group respondents are notorious for filtering and adjusting their opinions – it’s often been said that respondents think about the opinion they believe they should have, rather than offer their unfiltered views.
The benefit board ranking process itself, and the combination of rational and emotional information conveyed by a properly developed benefit board, better elicits true preferences than opinion-seeking questions, and frames responses more concretely than free-form focus group dialogue.
A sufficiently defined and properly positioned brand helps clients and their marketing firms distinguish between on-target, supportive communications and those that are inconsistent and non-supportive. The following are the fundamental building blocks of a well-defined and positioned brand that Prodigal submits to clients:
One paragraph in length, this is a statement that helps the organization’s leadership articulate the brand’s essence, functionality, differentiation and source of authority in the marketplace.
One sentence in length, this provides the tone and emotional quality of all marketing communications.
Designed directions for potential logo revisions, as well as rough and polished tagline possibilities.
Key message points drawn from the attribute rankings for likely use in future marketing and sales communications, as well as identification of potential marketing vehicles for message delivery.
A minimum of three ADLOBS (“ad-like objects”), which may take the form of print ads, Web site home pages, direct mail, etc. These are sufficiently designed and word-crafted to be of significant directional value, but should not be considered final, polished creative tactics.
The above elements are delivered in print form, via a bound 4 Color 11” x 17” Brand MRI Process Report, and via an in-person Presentation to Key Stakeholders.
Approximately six to eight weeks from the time of engagement, based primarily on the response time and availability of the client as well as the surveyed target audience sample.
