We are very pleased to announce that we have appointed Nicola Baxter as Managing Director of BrandTrust and our Senior Consultants Dr. Judith Meyer, Sebastian Schäfer, Bernhard Scholz and Benedikt Streb as Partners, effective January 1, 2022. This gives BrandTrust the broadest partner base in our nearly 20-year history.
All of them have been with us for many years and carry the values of the BrandTrust brand.
Once again, we can count ourselves among "Germany's top consultants" when it comes to marketing/brand. The ranking comes from Focus Business, in cooperation with the research institute Fact Field.
We are thrilled about this award. Above-average customer ratings have contributed to this. In addition, decision-makers from companies and colleagues from the consulting industry were surveyed.
The Dutch trend consultancy TrendsActive has impressed us for a long time. The firm takes a unique, sensitive approach to analyzing consumer behavior. Now we have a stake in the company.
Since the early 2000s, TrendsActive has examined international socio-cultural trends and their impact on society and business development. This knowledge is invaluable in the world of brand management.
Now we can combine our in-depth understanding of brands with insights about the factors that influence the actions of people and enterprises. This elevates our promise "Enabling brands to attract people" to the next level and gives our customers a competitive edge.
Colin Fernando joins our group of partners. He is the first representative of Generation Y in our partner team. Welcome, Colin, we are thrilled to have you!
Colin, a business economist, has been with BrandTrust since 2012. Over the years, he has proven what enormous peak performances he is capable of, most recently working internationally as a Senior Brand Consultant. Colin is an expert for brand strategy development and implementation, primarily in the sporting goods, tourism and destination sectors, as well as B2B brands.
Why are some companies struggling to acquire employees, while others are swamped with applications without even trying, are essentially loved by millennials and Generation Y? We have no doubt: The brand is the reason. This is why we bundled our many years of know-how on the subject and are now sharing it in a two-day Employer Branding training. Complete with real practical cases and evening program, of course.
The following question has been on our minds since 2016: How can brand touchpoint management be digitized and optimized? To address this question, we even founded a software startup. To accelerate its development, we decided on a management buyout at the beginning of the year: Christoph Hack – a highly valued BrandTrust consultant for 16 years and passionate about brand touchpoint management from day one – takes over the young company. It is called brandification. We are proud of you, Christoph!
What does our societal and economic future look like? In order to find out, we are embarking on the "1st Learning Journey" – with customers who are just as inquisitive as we are.
Together we travel to Texas and visit the South by Southwest SXSW, the world's largest digital fair. We experience six days of powerful impulses: unfamiliar future industries, disruption, artificial intelligence, the end of the smart phone, or the 120-day rhythm at HomeAway – we come back with countless new ideas.
Our conclusion? The trip enormously enriched our thinking, knowledge, and actions. We look forward to the next one.
We are very proud: Brand eins and Statista rate BrandTrust among the best consultancies in Germany in the "Brand, marketing and pricing" segment, all thanks to our high customer recommendation rates.
This ranking is not based on revenue or number of employees, but on criteria like qualitative evaluations by other consultants and client opinions.
What a surprise! Our office in the old town center of Nuremberg wins the German Design Award for interior design. Our concept "working in a relaxed hotel lobby atmosphere" is a hit with experts and employees alike.
Our generously laid-out lobby is not just for welcoming guests. It is also where teams meet for discussions. Those who need some quiet time withdraw to comfortable booths or silent rooms. We want our employees to feel at home – so much so that they prefer working at the office to working from home.
We owe a great debt of gratitude to designfunktion in Nuremberg and the furniture retailer Wetscher in Fügen/Tyrol for their invaluable support.
Our office building, a landmark from the 60s, is turned into the home of the Bavarian Homeland Ministry. We have to get out, Markus Söder is moving in.
We use the move to our advantage: We design our new refuge on Pfannenschmiedgasse exactly the way we want it. Right down to the last square meter. Anyone who steps into our lobby knows immediately: This openness, these colors, this inviting staircase – this is the essence of BrandTrust.
We know: Without functioning leadership there can be no effective brand management. So we develop a method for brand centric leadership of companies – once again breaking new ground.
With this quantitative measurement system, we make brand success quantifiable in terms of added value. The brand can then influence decisions at the executive level based on these results. It becomes a real factor for increasing the company's value.
Meeting up and getting inspiration in a comfortable setting – no doubt, in Austria business meetings have a very special charm. With our exclusive BrandCircle, we now provide an occasion for the country's brand experts to meet and exchange ideas. BrandTrust's Austrian office manager Achim Feige invites them twice a year to our Living Room, on Lugeck in the heart of Vienna. The list of topics is diverse and ranges from "The Brand Austria" and "Stable and agile in disruptive markets" to "Getting out of the price spiral".
BrandTrust turns ten years old, and in that time we have achieved much with a great team. More than 200 customers, friends, and celebrities join us at a two-day conference, the "BrandTrust Future Circle" in Berlin Mitte to celebrate. We invite stars like Jochen Zeitz, Rolf Dobelli, Prof. Michael Sand, and Katharina Wagner, who let us in on "Strong Brands' Success Secrets". The conference is hosted by Tagesthemen presenter Caren Miosga. A wonderful event we look back on fondly to this day.
Austria becomes our fourth home in 2013. We have always supported Austrian companies and brands from Vienna – we maintained a whole team there for Uniqa, for instance – but until now we didn't have an office there. Because we keep adding more and more clients, we open our branch office on Lugeck in the center of Vienna in 2013. It is a popular meeting point for customers, partners, and anyone interested in brands.
BrandTrust and Slovenia are connected by a long history. As early as 2000 – even before BrandTrust was founded in 2003 – our Managing Partner Klaus-Dieter Koch advised the Slovenian sporting goods manufacturer Elan.
Elan's Marketing Manager at the time, Metka Hrovat, couldn't stand him at first – Koch's brand perspective was too unfamiliar. But the results of their cooperation were so compelling that Metka later joined BrandTrust. She is still our Country Representative for Slovenia. Together we tackle the challenge of building the Slovenian market.
Switzerland has always been an important market for us. That is why we found Brand Trust Schweiz GmbH headquartered in Zurich. An employee who wanted to stay in her home town Zurich builds the company. Every year we look forward to the New Year's Apéro and our BrandCircle with joyful anticipation.
Become a brand manager in just one hour! Such empty promises are a dime a dozen – and some actually believe them. Fact is: Excellent knowledge takes time, needs to mature.
Since 2010 we have been opposing the widespread superficiality in the event segment: with our intensive brand training program. It consists of three days packed with depth and practical relevance, with exercises involving real B2C and B2B brands. Evening events included.
To express this intensity, we use the rather uncommon term "Lehrgang" (training program) rather than "seminar" or "course"
The 4 Ps of marketing – price, product, place, promotion – are no longer applicable in the digital age. We develop an innovative control system: a concept for brand touchpoint management, to be used in combination with our concept of normative brand programs.
The result is a management tool that evaluates customer journeys not according to commonly used criteria, but according to brand-specific factors. To make brand touchpoint management easier, we develop a web application for our clients. It comes with a 3-day training program introducing companies to brand touchpoint management.
After 5 years of doing business as an "e.K." (registered merchant), we have reached a size that forces us to react. The time is right for additional partners. So we found Brand Trust GmbH, to allow us to keep on growing. Jürgen Gietl, on board since day one, joins as partner, 6 years later Achim Feige follows suit. BrandTrust is still led by Koch, Gietl and Feige to this day.
All three BrandTrust partners write books, and with passion. Why? Of course they are motivated by considerations of credibility and dominance – but that's not everything. Their true goal is to set benchmarks and impose their own very special perspective on the market: the BrandTrust perspective.
In 2007, the first two books are released: "Reiz ist geil" by Klaus-Dieter Koch (now standard reading in brand management) and "Brand Future" by Achim Feige. By 2019, 8 books are on the market.
Our first study is entitled "New Luxury and Brands". It is the first in a series of further examinations, including destination brands, finance brands, brand touchpoints and brand resilience. Digging up new insights that will benefit everyone – that's what drives us. We want to close knowledge gaps and keep advancing the field of brand management.
How do customer service and customer acquisition work? With shrill events, huge programs, as many people as possible? We know from the start: That's not who we are.
So we try – as we have been known to do – the opposite: a very small, exclusive event. With just one high-profile speaker. With just one socially relevant topic we want to discuss in depth. Not in Berlin, but in a quaint little town called Aschau on Chiemsee. Not in a conference venue, but in a 5-star hotel with 3-star restaurant, which we book in its entirety. We call the event the BrandTrust Future Circle (BTFC).
Dr. Frank Schirrmacher, co-publisher of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, is our first guest. He is followed by greats such as Peter Sloterdijk, Beatrice Weder di Mauro, Tomáš Sedlácek, or Evgeny Morozov.
The participants of the 2005 BTFC are thrilled. To this day, it is a meeting for brand experts who want to escape everyday business and develop new, forward-looking approaches. The BTFC becomes a tradition.
At first it was pure curiosity: Our Managing Partner Klaus-Dieter Koch wanted to find out whether his innovative thoughts and solutions revolving around brands would be helpful to companies. These first ideas quickly turn into a polished consulting concept. BrandTrust is born.
From the start, Koch doesn't want it to be all about him, names like Klaus Koch Brand Consultants or Koch & Partner are taboo. He wants to establish an enterprise independently of its initiator. He choses an English name, because even in "pre-BrandTrust-days" he advised international clients and English-language projects.
The main problem of brands with too little revenue is not awareness. The problem is a lack of desirability, attractiveness. Klaus-Dieter Koch illustrates this insight in a simple matrix – a seemingly small thing, but with huge significance: To this day, increasing brand attractiveness is at the core of all our efforts.
We call the matrix the BrandTrust Performance Monitor (BPM). In concrete terms, it is a model that analyses the level of awareness and attractiveness of a brand in its competitive environment. The BPM is a useful tool for determining a brand's status quo and defining its strategic thrust and goals. The BPM is frequently quoted in specialist literature.
