Has your business growth flattened or even decayed in your market, and no amount of marketing or sales seems to be able to help it? What do you do? Develop new solutions for this market? Try to enter adjacent markets? Here is a process that we have seen used successfully in a number of different technology companies to recharge growth in revenue and profits.

Start with re-examining the Mission and Vision of your company. Why does your company exist, and what would it look like in 5 years if it was more successful in fulfilling that Mission? Don’t accept some generic statement like “to increase shareholder value.” Your Mission statement should be unique to your company, and not apply just the same to General Motors, Apple Computer, or Mrs. Fields Cookies. What will you NOT do?

The Mission and Vision statements give you the framework to take the next steps, illustrated below:

Gather the Strategic Planning team to kick-off a Strategic Planning session. This team is usually composed of the Senior Executive Staff along with some company thought leaders and maybe a key outside partner or two. An expert facilitator (such as one from TrustedPeer.com) can really help focus the effort and move things along, but the CEO should be the main driver. Give yourselves enough time to develop a robust and validated plan – usually 2 to 4 months, depending upon people’s availability and the amount to market research undertaken.

The first four steps should be done in parallel:

1. Identify what must be done to defend your current market share. The plan may involve developing new solutions, refreshing older ones, and adding marketing and service resources to provide increasing value and love to your customers.
   
   
2. Identify opportunities to enter new or adjacent markets, where you don’t currently play. This exercise is challenging because the opportunities (and the work to find them) may seem endless. Fortunately, the Internet and search engines allow efficient ways of finding and researching many opportunities. Don’t be afraid to engage outside experts or buy professional reports in areas of potential interest. Don’t just look in the most obvious and familiar places – encourage creative thought and cast a wide net. And don’t just look at areas where you have a “core competency” (see the blog: Tenet #1 of Ten Tenets of Strategy: Your core competency is not your strategy). Needed core competencies can be acquired and unneeded ones can be divested. What is important is that the new opportunities optimally fulfill your Mission and Vision. For each opportunity identified, do a short SWOT and market sizing. Pick a person in the team to “champion” each one and write a brief business case.
   
   
3. Define the market criteria for markets you may want to pursue. What are the Total Available Market (TAM) and Segmented Addressable Market (SAM) sizes that you need to see to make it worthwhile? What are the minimum revenues and margin you would consider? How fast should the total market be growing before you would consider it? What barriers to entry would keep you from entering it? How much are you willing to invest to enter a new market? These criteria will be your filter for subsequent steps.
   

4. Do a capability assessment: What are your company’s Core Capabilities? (Not your Core Competencies; see Tenet #2 of Ten Tenets of Strategy: Compete on Core Capabilities). We advise you to seek outside experts to help you figure out what you do that makes you successful in the first place. It’s a bit like medical self-diagnosis – too easy to be fooled by your own self biases.

5. By this time, you should have identified 20 or 30 or more possible opportunities to either protect and grow your existing markets or grow into new ones. Now it is time to filter and prioritize. Look at the brief business case for each of those opportunities and apply your market criteria to them. How does each one stack-up against the others? Prioritize and pick the top 5 to 10 candidates.

6. Have the “champions” for each of the top opportunities lead a “deep dive” market research effort and write a more detailed business case. Give them the time and resources to do a proper job so that the market size, potential share, achievable margins, etc. are reasonably accurate and validated. The business case should contain potential Value Propositions for your company: what customers will you serve, what pain or unmet needs are you addressing, and what would your solution need to add to have them choose it over other available solutions?

7. Prioritize the opportunities based on comparing these business cases, and on your “bandwidth” – your appetite and resources available for such initiatives. Most companies cannot attempt more than 3 or 4 new such initiatives at the same time. The winning initiatives will form the basis of your market strategy; make sure that the whole team buys into pursuing them.

8. Study how your market strategy matches your capability assessment: what are your strengths and gaps for entering these markets? What do you need to do to fill the gaps and strengthen your core capabilities? These factors are critical in deciding your market strategy.

9. Validate your decision through further market studies, and develop a detailed market strategy plan, including goals, timing, investment, resources needed and scenario planning. Decide what events or metrics might trigger a change in your plans. Discuss these plans and tweak them until every member of the team is satisfied that it is a plan with the highest probability for success. This plan becomes the Plan of Record.

10. Present the Plan of Record to the Board or Executive Committee for approval or modification.

Of course, this process or any other Strategic Planning process cannot guarantee that you will be successful. It needs to be followed by excellent execution, inspirational leadership, and a fair measure of good luck. But it does give you the best chance of success.

To book an expert session with Scott, go to Scott's page on TrustedPeer.

Most product line extensions do not stray far from the original offering. For example, video games are commonly extended into movies, as shown by films like Mortal Kombat and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Similarly, television shows regularly prompt board game extensions, like the Simpsons® Monopoly® edition. Even the wildly popular internet video 'What Does the Fox Say?' is now being turned into a children's book! All of these examples are very natural extensions of the original product, because they fall under the general category of entertainment. This kind of closely-related extension is considered same-dimensional.

Rarer are extensions which are new-dimensional, representing a complete transformation into mediums which were not there at the start. A recent example comes from M&Ms®, the beloved chocolate candy, which will soon star in a movie! This is not the first line extension for this iconic brand: they have extended their original chocolate product to everything from pretzel and dark chocolate versions to Easter and mini-sized versions. They have also ventured further afield, making candy dispensers, mugs and even t-shirts celebrating their product. However, these extensions have all been in the food category or in the broader consumer packaged goods (CPG) arena. Their newest product bridges their offering from a food product to an entertainment vehicle.

This is not an easy feat, and it did not happen overnight. What first paved the way for this revenue-generating extension was the brand's commercials. Initially, the creative team came up with the idea to anthropomorphize the candies in ads to help sell more chocolate by fueling a sense of connection. One way to do this, they found, was to make the product relatable, by pumping up its personality. This early idea resulted in ads in which different colors of M&M® candies had different personas: fun, mischievous and sometimes cheeky. The life of these personalities continued to evolve in subsequent ads with ongoing storylines for each color of candy. Finally, there had been enough exposure to these ads that the characters had come alive to consumers. With this series of small steps, Mars built up consumer demand for a movie featuring their candies.

But how did the brand know that their characters were ready for the big screen? The key would have been observing how consumers perceived the brand. For example, in focus groups, did consumers talk about liking 'that color' – or did they mention liking 'that guy?' Consumers who thought of M&Ms® as 'guys' were seeing them as peers, for whom certain actions would be in- or out-of-character. This is why an M&M® movie is hitting theaters, but a gummy bear movie is not: you would be hard-pressed to name or assign characteristics to any individual bear. 

New-dimensional product extensions like this are very rare – and have great potential. Though it is difficult to predict how successful the transition will be for M&Ms®, it is an opportunity that not many brands have.

The important question is: will watching M&Ms® on the big screen increase or decrease M&M® sales at the theaters themselves? How will viewers see it: happy convergence or disturbing cannibalism?

If you need consulting on Product Life Cycle Management, contact TrustedPeer Expert Ted Judson.

Every business seeks new revenue, and extensions of a product line are a good bet for driving it. However, as I mentioned in 'Sequel Products:  When Are They a Good Idea?,' extensions are only a good idea in specific circumstances. So, what can you do if your product does not meet any of the criteria for being extended? When a sequel product is not advisable, a brand reinvention may be the right step.

What is the difference between the two?

• A line extension is when a new product is added to an existing brand portfolio without changing the brand identity. For example, a hockey team can sell a new style or size of fan jersey. This gives fans a reason to buy something new from the team, without changing the team's name, colors, roster or brand identity.
  
  
• A brand reinvention, on the other hand, is when an existing brand is redefined. This entails altering what consumers think the brand delivers for them. To achieve this, a hockey team would likely change names, trade players, movie cities, or change player behavior – to alter their image in the eyes of fans.

You may wonder why a brand would go through the work of reinventing itself, when they could make the potentially simpler move of producing new offerings under existing branding. After all, building a brand requires significant investments of time and money.

The answer is found in the product life cycle. If a brand is on the decline, management may not agree to fund a line extension. After all, a declining product may indicate a value proposition with decreasing relevance or a target audience with decreasing purchasing power.

However, even though your target or offering have lost relevance, your name may not have. In keeping the branding, you reap several benefits:

1. You retain the consumer name recognition you worked so hard to build with the original product. Over time, in a successful reinvention, this name comes to mean something different from what it did initially, without having to start from scratch.
2. You keep the value of the brand name among retailers or distributors. Using the name that they associate with a trusted supplier helps with distribution for your new offering.

What does a successful brand reinvention look like? One example comes from Banana Republic®. This brand was originally a travel-oriented store, supplying books about voyages and excess military clothing store. However, they redefined the brand to be a high-end casual clothing store, allowing them to target a more affluent audience. Though the original store might have conjured the feeling of walking into a safari, the new store experience is more about clean lines and elegance.

If a line extension is not the right move for your brand, consider whether a brand reinvention would be worthwhile. If you have a mature brand with strong name recognition, but a declining product, you could be a good candidate.

If you need consulting on Product Life Cycle Management, contact TrustedPeer Expert Ted Judson.

In most cases, sequel products generate lower revenue than their original versions. Line extensions in new scents or flavors are rarely as successful as the flagship product.  Their sales are not meant to be as robust, as they are line extensions.  This is no less true of movies, where films with ‘two’ or ‘reloaded’ in the title expect to only attract a subset of the original’s audience. With each subsequent sequel, revenues continue to fall.

Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. Video games are an example with which I have extensive experience from my time at EA. The occasional success of sequel products in this arena is in part because the original games helped build the market to its current size. Initially, video gaming was a smaller business, but as console gaming advanced and early fans became advocates, the audience and revenues grew, as did the audience’s age! 

Given the stark view of sequel revenue potential, companies may wonder why to invest beyond the original product. Good question. There are three scenarios in which sequels are a wise investment:

1. If a line extension is a meaningful complement, rather than a substitute: For example, after The Sims® game was released, its popularity fed the desire for additional game play. Thus, The Sims Pet® edition, for example, was a profitable line extension, as it provided new accessories to enhance play among enthusiasts of the original The Sims® game.

2. If a line extension is a product improvement: This often occurs when technology advances after the release of the original product. To prevent being eclipsed by late entrants who can leverage the newer technology, a company can offer their own advanced version. Though the new product may replace the original on consumers’ lists, it also prevents the loss of overall share – and boosts reputation, by demonstrating innovation as a company value. (Don’t undervalue this attribute!). One example was the emergence of microwave ovens and the release of Orville Redenbacher’s Microwave Popcorn®. That could be an example where the new extension actually drove the technology; if you don’t believe me, check your microwave and see if there is a “Popcorn” setting!

3. If a line extension serves a new market: This occurs when factors like timing make the original product less appealing to the original audience. For example, in sports games, simulating play with the team roster from the year before is less fun: fervent players want the team to represent the one they see on the field. Rather than allowing the old game version to disappear, a company can re-package it for a more price-sensitive audience – and retailer. This was the case with EA’s complete line-up of video games: this robust content was repurposed for a new price-sensitive market.

When considering a line extension of an existing product, companies should evaluate whether it fits one of these scenarios. In so doing, they can ensure that the new product does not cannibalize their sales, but rather extends the life cycle of the original product.

If you need consulting on Product Lifecycle Management, contact TrustedPeer Expert Ted Judson.

The need for story runs deep in our species.

Cultures define themselves through stories called myths. Religions embody their values and beliefs in stories. Nations rely on stories – the Trojan War, the six wives of Henry the Eighth, the Great Depression – to conceptualize, understand, and pass down their histories from generation to generation. Parents tell stories to teach their children. Stories are what we use to try to make sense of the world and ourselves.

As the philosopher Kenneth Burke said, “Stories are equipment for living.” 

Stories are also highly effective equipment for professional communicators. Stories help us compare notes about being human.  In contrast to the proofs of logic or appeals to reason, stories speak to the heart and to the imagination. Stories go to our core. Stories drive home the point. Stories persuade. 

You can claim that your product or service is superior, but you can demonstrate its superiority through storytelling.

You can spell out your company's principles or cultural values, but you can illustrate and validate them through storytelling.

You can describe what differentiates your brand, but you can make your brand both unmistakable and unforgettable with stories.

You can suggest that people act or change, but with a well-told story, you can jolt them into action.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Some portions of Richard Butterfield's Corporate Storytelling were previously published on his website, www.butterfieldspeaks.com, or in his book, Richard Butterfield's Power of Persuasion: Communication and Presentation Skills for Every Profession.

Increased use of names beyond the United States require "world language" naming techniques, international trademark search and language analysis in multiple countries.

Successfully creating names to be used internationally requires familiarity with multiple languages and the idiosyncratic ways in which letters and letter combinations are pronounced by speakers of these languages. Not only that, but some words and names may have meanings that are positive in one language, but pejorative in another. "World language" is a way of naming that significantly increases the likelihood that a name will appeal to and be pronounceable by target audiences in many countries.  MiO, for example, is a name created by Idiom to identify a popular new water enhancer from Kraft Foods.   "Mio" means "mine" in Italian, but is readily recognized in America and all of the Romance language-speaking countries. So the name helps to communicate the product's position ("my water, my way") while transcending language barriers.

To read more by Rick on Brand and Product Name Development, click here