Our brand momentum study features in CEO Today

A Quar­ter Of Busi­ness­es Lack For­ward Momen­tum, But Why?

Mar­keters sur­veyed for a new report that reveals how busi­ness­es lose their way – and how they can find it again.

A quar­ter of UK mar­keters feel their busi­ness­es lack for­ward momen­tum. That’s accord­ing to a new report by Our Design Agency (ODA), which reveals the steps com­pa­nies of any size can take to regain lost brand momentum.

The ODA Brand Momen­tum report sur­veyed more than 80 UK mar­keters to find out why brands get stuck – and what the impact is on busi­ness­es when pre­cious momen­tum is lost.

The research showed that there are numer­ous poten­tial rea­sons for brands los­ing momen­tum, from deal­ing with a major change such as a takeover, to los­ing touch with core cus­tomer groups, fail­ing to inno­vate, or grad­u­al­ly drift­ing into irrelevance.

Sarah West­wood, Cre­ative Strate­gist, ODA, says: Our research high­lights some reveal­ing trends. Near­ly a third of our respon­dents feel their mar­ket­ing lacks real trac­tion and more than 40% feel that they are not inno­vat­ing enough to dis­cov­er unful­filled cus­tomer needs. This sug­gests that there are plen­ty of com­pa­nies out there who feel stuck – but don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly know what to do about it. Per­haps most cru­cial­ly of all, one quar­ter of busi­ness­es feel their brands lack for­ward momentum.”

Los­ing momen­tum – and regain­ing it

The report fea­tures exam­ples of brands that lost their way for var­i­ous rea­sons and then found it again. For care home provider HC-One, for exam­ple, the chal­lenge was to gal­vanise col­leagues and embed an ethos of kind­ness through­out the busi­ness to move them for­ward from turn­around to transformation.

For Voli­tion, a life sci­ences firm focused on devel­op­ing blood tests to diag­nose a range of can­cers, the root of the prob­lem lay in a dis­crep­an­cy between the rather cool, detached pub­lic face of the com­pa­ny and the warm and car­ing per­son­al­i­ty at its heart.

Both com­pa­nies were suf­fer­ing from a lack of momen­tum and in both cas­es, this was hold­ing them back. both found ways to inject fresh ener­gy and pur­pose into their brands and moved for­ward with renewed vigour. The ODA report shows how these and oth­er brands regained their momen­tum and offers advice to mar­keters about how they can do the same for their brands.

Sarah West­wood says: Los­ing momen­tum is frus­trat­ing and can be poten­tial­ly dam­ag­ing for any busi­ness. And when you’re in the thick of it, some­times it’s dif­fi­cult to see the best path back to health. The caus­es can be com­plex and inter­twined and dif­fi­cult to unrav­el with­out fresh per­spec­tive. But our mes­sage is that you’re not alone – and there are steps any busi­ness can take to regain lost momen­tum. Tak­ing these steps will help to rein­vig­o­rate your brand, it will gal­vanise your peo­ple, and it will inject fresh ener­gy into every­thing you do.”

Check out the full arti­cle here

15 Jan­u­ary, 2019