The unique aspect of BrandTrust consulting: We link a broad range of brand knowledge gained in over 1,000 projects with in-depth business know-how. This special kind of BrandTrust knowledge is bundled in 0ur 11 "Industry Competence Centers".
Our business specialists know their clients' problems in detail. In many cases, they have decades of experience in operative business in the sector, and have gained a wealth of brand knowledge over the years. We research specific brand topics with our own studies and pass on the results: to our clients, in workshops, and in books.
This is one of our most exciting sectors – although the times of rapid growth are over. The markets are saturated, the sales channels increasingly unclear. Customers are growing more selective and price-conscious. New competitors keep appearing who also want to profit from the development. What is needed now is orientation and clarity, separating the wheat from the chaff.
Luxury and lifestyle brands are in the middle of the digital transformation, but they have little or no answers to this challenge. One thing is clear: The days of permanent double-digit growth are gone. Customers are becoming more critical again. And they want to see behind the façade built by costly marketing.
Luxury thrives on distance. But how can the fascination of luxury be maintained in digital channels – on platforms where everyone wants to put in their two cents worth? Can luxury companies afford to be active in the social web? And how do you create luxurious experiences in a web shop?
In just a few years, the retail business will look different than it does today. Shopping for daily needs will move to the internet, because that's where it is more convenient, cheaper, and more reliable. For retailers that means: They must reinvent the post-digital buying experience, the "high mass of the customer journey". It is about creating seamless online and offline experiences, understanding customers better, being closer to their wishes and dreams than the competition. Understanding themselves as seducers will be the new role of many retail systems. Formulating answers from a brand perspective will be the challenge for the future.
The same price battle is raging in the B2B and commodities sector. Anyone without the necessary scaling effects is quickly pushed to the periphery. Although peak performances are delivered constantly, most are inadequately communicated because the sector traditionally focuses on innovation and sales. The power of the brand and marketing is underestimated – so it is not used enough. This is where we regularly write our greatest success stories: by comprehensively introducing brand centered thinking and actions.
Sameness and interchangeability are the main challenges this sector faces. Everybody has it all — a competition that always ends in price wars. The antidote: Developing self-confidence, concentrating on one topic and asserting oneself. Specialization and a clear profile must start with the business model. Self-similar innovations are more credible, less risky, and bring new impulses. Closer customer relationships create competitive advantages and change the rules of the game, as long as the opportunities of digitalization are determinedly used.
Brand Impact: The Case Engadin St. Moritz "With a Two-Brand-Strategy into the Future"
This sector is marked by a ruinous price war at all value added levels. This once-proud high-interest business is often reduced to having a disadvantage to the customer built right into the business model, and it is extremely dependent on economic cycles. But investors want security and to avoid risks. Brands provide this security, which in its most distinct form leads to a permanent relationship of trust – with above-average customer loyalty and high price tolerance. What excites us: The first companies of this sector are beginning to use the power of the brand. They have decided to sell value instead of price.
By far the most important sector in the German-speaking market. Its credo: Innovation makes the difference – and an excellent sales department does the rest. The product is the hero and a good product sells itself. Marketing does a great fair exhibit and the main catalog. That is the doctrine of the business sector that determines the national economy like no other industry. The consequence: Customer centered actions and service-oriented customer journeys are still largely uncharted territory. It is waiting to be conquered by meaningful and assertive brands.
Pure high tech combined with extreme selling power makes for extraordinarily high margins. This model has been successful for many years, but regulators, disruption, and digitalization have begun to assail the system. They will destroy it or at least change it permanently. Customers and patients have never been as well informed as they are today. Pharmacists, doctors, and medical professionals are increasingly pressured to justify their actions. The innovation pipeline is brimming – but these new developments cannot be adequately imparted or understood. Brands can lower this transaction complexity by trying to gain and strengthen people's trust at every touchpoint. It is the only way this market can still be ruled and shaped.
Brand Impact: The Case AbZ Pharma "From pure function to emotional significance"
The gold rush days of this former glamour sector are over. Quality content is no longer perceived as such, because consumers are increasingly turning toward their own channels. Digitalization makes everyone a publisher – and everyone is publishing. Any product that can also be produced, sold, and paid for digitally is feeling gale force winds of change. And the winners will be: Strong, meaningful brands with clearly defined profiles that do not pursue their audience.
Money no longer has a price. Banks have largely discredited themselves: Their customers still have to go to the bank but haven't wanted to for a long time. The relationship between insurer and insured person has been limited to the bank details for decades – and digitalization is driving the rest. There can be no doubt that this sector is forced to completely reinvent itself. For the first time, the customer will take center stage. The surviving old and well-built new brands will be the steady points of orientation in these turbulent times.
Concentration and consolidation everywhere you turn. Everything is bundled, pushes prices to rock bottom, and robs the business of what once made it fascinating. Rationality and wastelands are the consequence. No place else is shopping as uneventful and interchangeable as in Germany. Innovations flop because they are based on changes that are implemented along outdated success patterns and vanish from the market much too quickly. A kind of hyper-competition results, which many mid-sized manufacturers simply cannot endure. Customers are confused because everyone does everything – producers do their own selling and retailers produce their own brands to drive brand-name manufacturers from their store shelves. Uninspired brand management geared toward short-term effects cannot break out of the vicious circle. All efforts end with the price. It is time to leave old behavior patterns behind and learn how brand management works in the digital age.
Brand Impact STABILO: With intelligent Brand Touchpoint Management to global Star Brand
