Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

224 BRAND RELEVANCE
Recall how information need areas identifi ed by a promising
trend, technology, application, segment, or other driver of
a potential new category or subcategory can be prioritized by
assessing their immediacy and their impact on the business, as
discussed in Chapter Six . For a concept that has promise but
is not ready, the prudent course is to associate it with an information
need area and have a team actively analyze or simply
monitor it over time.
A business should have a portfolio of concepts at various
levels of development, in recognition of the reality that there
will be a series of decisions as the concepts advance toward
market introductions and that each will result in attrition. In
addition to managing the attrition, a concept portfolio will
best employ organizational assets that then can be spread over
different phases. If too many projects are clumped in a single
phase such as market introduction, the marketing team may be
stretched and the R & D team might be short of projects.
Key Takeaways
Evaluation is based on three questions. The fi rst, Is there a market?
hinges on evaluating the strength of underlying trends,
understanding the rosy picture and gloomy picture biases, determining
if small or niche markets can go mainstream, employing
a test - and - learn strategy on an ongoing basis, and knowing the
value proposition. The second, Can we compete? asks whether
the fi rm is capable of supporting the concept, which will depend
in part on whether it fi ts the fi rm ’ s strategy and creates synergy
and whether the fi rm has the assets and competencies to deliver
the offering and bring it to the market. The third question, Does
it have legs? involves determining if overcrowding is likely,
predicting competitor strategies, and evaluating the barriers to
entry.