Bonfire of the brands pwc.com/CISbrandscape Consumer Intelligence Series

pwc.com/CISbrandscape
Bonfire of
the brands
Consumer Intelligence Series
Contents:
Consumer Intelligence Series
“Bonfire of the brands”
I.
VI.
Defining a leader brand
The table stakes of brand leadership
II.
VII.
Executive summary
New rules to get ahead
III.
VIII.
Research methodology
Industry snapshot
IV.
US outlook
V.
Global outlook
• United Kingdom
• Brazil
• China
•
•
•
•
Technology
Retail and consumer goods
Entertainment, media and communications
Financial services
Defining a
leader brand
I.
Most business executives associate “leadership” with size and growth—but the
reality of brand leadership is much more complex. To capture the many variables
that make a leader brand, we created a model based on two criteria:
1
consumers had to agree that the brand is defined as a “leader”
2
these same brands had to exhibit brand strength, a highly vetted
metric that examines both brand relevance and differentiation
The brand strength metric drove our ranking system, because while some brands
are considered “leaders” (e.g., Amtrak), they aren’t necessarily strong brands.
The combination of brand strength and leader is synergistic, and leads to very
positive outcomes for brands at the top of the list.
For this study, we focused on for-profit brands that are parent brands
and/or corporate brands. Except where specifically noted, we did not include
sub-brands, product brands (unless it was also a parent brand), non-profit
brands or government institutions.
3
Executive
summary
II.
4
Being perceived as a leader has tremendous rewards.
Our study shows that over the past 15 years, brands that
consumers consider “leader brands” have grown in value at
nearly five times the rate of the average S&P 500 company.
66% of US consumers say the importance of acting like a
true leader brand is more important today than it was in the
past, and they believe leader brands will matter even more
in 10 years from now.
Moreover, perceived leadership is often an important
purchase consideration. 76% of US consumers say it’s
important to buy from a leader brand when purchasing
electronic and tech goods and services, 73% say it’s
important to buy from a leader brand when purchasing
health services, and 72% say it’s important to buy from a
leader brand when purchasing an automobile.
Securing a position as a leader is no easy feat.
55% of consumers say that the number of brands acting like
true leaders has decreased. In fact, between 1999 and 2014,
47% of brands fell off the list of top 100 leader brands.
(When we expanded our leader brand set to include product
brands, that attrition rate jumped even higher, to 72%.) Of
the top 20 leader brands in the US in 1999, only seven brands
remain on it today. This upheaval is echoed across the globe.
In the UK, the 15-year attrition rate among top 20 brands is
60%. In Brazil, it’s 50%. In China, it’s a whopping 95%.
Leader brands used to skew toward media, but today,
electronics and technology brands like Amazon, Facebook,
and Samsung are the most advanced when it comes to
leadership delivery. Health and financial services show the
weakest leadership and the most room to improve.
72% of consumers say they think technology and
electronics companies are showing strong brand leadership,
compared to just 57% who say this for automotive, the
next highest category. Only 49% and 47% of consumers
say entertainment and media companies and financial
services companies are delivering strong brand leadership,
respectively. Just 40% say that retail and consumer brands
show strong leadership.
Today, consumers have redefined “leader” to go beyond
just innovation.
In 1999, consumers identified leader brands as those they
saw as progressive, dynamic, innovative and up-to-date.
Today, weary from war and the recession, they see brand
leaders as those that are trustworthy, authentic, reliable
and, increasingly, visionary.
Being trustworthy, authentic and reliable is about more
than just good, consistent quality. It’s about showing your
values and sticking to them.
Today, consumers seek brands that are highly transparent
about the processes, labor, ingredients and materials they
use. They want to believe that brands are making every
II. Executive summary
effort possible to protect their privacy. They want brands
that treat employees well. And they relate to brands that
speak authentically.
Visionary is gaining in leadership importance.
Consumers say that being visionary today means bringing
truly new products and services to the market, not just
evolutions of existing ones. It means taking on challenges
and problems that competitors don’t. And it means smartly
anticipating their needs and identifying desires they didn’t
even know they had.
Old advertising models espoused single-minded
propositions. Our research consistently shows that
today’s successful brands excel at 3 to 6 capabilities.
Understanding what these competencies are is crucial to
creating a capabilities-driven strategy for success. PwC’s
Strategy& has a clearly defined process for helping to
identify the right capabilities. Brands can then outline
what’s needed to build those capabilities—where to invest
and reallocate funds; what talent and external vendors to
hire; which mergers and acquisitions to pursue; and so on.
This is increasingly critical at a time when the consumer
environment moves faster via new technology and media,
with more fluid connections across touchpoints. In this
environment, it is imperative that brands have a clear
purpose to stand out and build a sustained and meaningful
relationship with consumers. The value of a brand is
linked to the social connections it fosters. Managing
these connections at every scale is the fundamental task
of marketing today—but done right, it can move a brand
beyond a purely transaction-based relationship to one that
feels like friendship.
Today, there are new rules of leadership, and while they
may not apply universally to every brand, applying them
in relevant ways will help open the door to tomorrow.
Distribute authority
PwC’s research with the Katzenbach Center for
Organizational Excellence consistently shows that culture is
about mindsets and behaviors—it’s the way organizations
drive change in scenarios where the inclination may be
to inhibit it. Mindsets tend to follow behavior, so to get
an organization in the right mindset, it’s imperative to
exhibit the right behaviors. That could mean asking more
questions, rewarding failure, promoting people, or creating
“pride-builder networks” that bring A-list performers
together to tackle challenges. It also means flagging watchout behaviors—those that actively harm culture.
The key to managing the behavior behind your culture is to
create an infrastructure that has clearly defined capabilities,
so that employees understand clearly the role they play—
and feel empowered to make an impact through it. That
means shifting from what PwC calls “The Overmanaged
Organization,” one with multiple layers of management and
5
ensuing analysis paralysis, to “The Resilient Organization,”
one that can adapt quickly to external market shifts while
staying focused and aligned on a coherent business strategy.
Organizations must also be relentlessly consistent and
authentic with their message across all levels of the
organization. That message cannot be a script handed
out to everyone in the workforce; it must be understood,
internalized and appreciated across all levels and
departments. Too often, businesses are conditioned to
think vertically, anchored by hierarchical structures
that operate from top to bottom. By contrast, resilient
organizations break vertical boundaries, transferring best
practices, collaborating cross-functionally and promoting
laterally. The result is a more coordinated, efficient and
often savvier organization.
Diversify diversity
Across cultures and industries, managers strongly prize
“cultural fit”—the idea that the best employees are likeminded. In theory, culture fit leads to better productivity
and profitability. But too often, the process of identifying
culture fit is less about systematic analysis of who will thrive
in a given workplace and more about hiring people who are
similar to decision makers and rejecting people who are not.
At PwC, our Organizational DNA team often works with
companies plagued by the curse of agreement—that is,
firms where everyone agrees, yet nothing changes. We
refer to these as “Passive Aggressive Organizations.”
Working in an environment that is congenial and seemingly
conflict-free sounds lovely, but the result is often rampant
frustration that emerges from an inability to implement
agreed-upon plans.
By contrast, the aforementioned resilient organization
is able to embrace conflict and harness it to get clear,
smart results that drive action. One aspect of these
organizations is their ability to “listen to the complainers.”
These companies understand that complaints are also
opportunities to improve what isn’t working. They actively
seek to understand dissatisfaction in the ranks of both
customers and employees—creating an environment where
people can speak dissenting opinions and criticism without
fear of retribution, and then acting on those complaints to
make positive changes to the organization at large.
From insight to farsight
Among all age groups in our research, the quality that
most defined the most visionary brands was the ability to
“bring truly new products and services to market, not just
evolutions of existing ones.” Yet consumers are not good
at telling us about their future needs. Resilient brands
understand this, and they address it by entertaining the
inconceivable. They don’t just benchmark themselves
against specific industry competitors, they measure
themselves against human imagination.
II. Executive summary
They look far beyond the status quo to pave the path
to success in the future. How? By actively observing
consumers—not just within the walls of focus groups, but in
real life, unscripted and unbiased. They use Big Data from
web traffic, social, mobile and wearables to smartly predict
relevant products and services. They listen to complaints,
rather than just mitigating them. And they entertain ideas
that seem otherwise impossible.
Commit heresy
Our research showed that 45% of people believe that truly
visionary brands “take on challenges and problems that
their competitors don’t,” and millennial consumers are
twice as likely as older consumers to say that a brand stands
out as a leader if it is willing to take risks. This perception
also feeds into purchase consideration: younger consumers
are twice as likely older adults to say that buying from a
leader brand makes them feel “excited” and “innovative.”
Across all ages and regions, consumers say “being visionary”
is becoming more important—and with that comes social
responsibility (80% agree that social responsibility is
increasingly important to brand leadership).
For management seeking this kind of transformation, the
key is to consistently move the goal posts to keep the status
quo from taking its grip. These transformation agendas
are grounded in the foundational values and principles of
the organization—but the route is not mapped. Resilient
companies chart a strategic course based on their best
instincts and information, and they stay the course for as
long as their own market intelligence validates it.
Put a face on it
More and more, consumers are looking behind the label
to understand company values—and often, the leadership
is the first place they look. Millennials in particular felt
strongly that “having a charismatic leader” is becoming
more important in defining a brand leader—they are twice
as likely as older consumers to agree with this statement.
Accountability matters, and when consumers see that they
have someone to hold accountable for a brand’s actions,
they are more likely to trust the brand and hold a more
favorable opinion of it. Jack Ma, Richard Branson, Mark
Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett— all of these executives have a
positive impact on the brands they lead.
Putting faces forward is a straightforward manifestation
of the commitments made by resilient organizations and
leader brands. Tying accountability directly—and publicly—
to members of the organization signals to consumers that
the brand holds itself to an established set of expectations,
and that it won’t settle for less.
6
Research
methodology
III.
7
Over the past four months, we’ve embarked on extensive
research to comprehend consumer attitudes towards brand
leadership. To do this, we worked with BAV Consulting,
a global leader in research and insights that is home to
the largest and longest-running quantitative empirical
study of brands and consumers, capturing decades of
consumer perceptions. Using BAV’s proprietary database,
we conducted an in-depth analysis of brand leadership over
the past 15 years in key markets across the globe.
In-depth analysis of brand
leadership over the past 15 years
in key markets across the globe
We also surveyed the general population and talked
candidly with thought leaders and business executives to
get their take on shifts in the brandscape. Collectively, this
research gave us a holistic view of what’s unfolding across
both business and consumer landscapes.
Historical analysis:
Using BAV Consulting’s proprietary model, we looked at
consumer attitudes toward over 6,700 brands and over
200,000 consumers from roughly 1999 to 2014.
The bulk of our analysis was done in the United States, with
additional analysis in the United Kingdom, Brazil and China.
We began by looking at the underlying characteristics of
leadership in each market. Using a proprietary leadership
metric, we determined which brands rose to the top as
brand leaders in 2014, and compared this list to data from
the turn of the century. We used data from both to assess
similarities and differences.
We examined more than
6,700
brands
200,000
III. Research methodology
consumers
8
Custom survey:
Our work within the BAV database informed the development of a custom global quantitative survey
that cut across age, income, region, and gender.
•
•
•
•
•
Markets: US, UK, China, Brazil
15 minute online survey to consumer panelists
N=4,000
Incentive: Panel Points
Fielded in April and May, 2015
Social listening:
Chatter on social media can often reveal changes in consumer attitudes and perceptions. To capture this, PwC
conducted software searches across “the social web”—including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, forums and online news
outlets with comment boards—by creating a search of relevant key words, fine-tuning and optimizing this list based
on results, and then analyzing the data against situational context.
Thought leader roundtables:
We held roundtable discussions in two cities—New York and San Francisco—where we invited pundits, professors and other
cross-industry thought leaders to weigh in on the state of brands today, and where brands are headed in the future. Our
panelists included:
Christina “CK” Kerley
Innovation Speaker and
Specialist
Ori Brafman
Author of Click, Sway and
The Chaos Imperative
Amanda Pouchot
Founder of Together10 &
LEVO work
Jonah Sachs
Co-founder, Free Range
Studios
Cindy Gallop
Founder and CEO,
IfWeRanTheWorld
Ted Rubin
Social Marketing
Strategist, Keynote Speaker,
and Acting CMO Brand
Innovators
Matthew Quint
Director at the Center on
Global Brand Leadership,
Columbia Business School
Bryan Kramer
CEO, PureMatter
Ann Clurman
EVP, The Futures Company,
and Co-author of “Rocking
the Ages”—The Yankelovich
Report on Generational
Marketing
Jackie Freiberg
Speaker and Author of
NUTS!, GUTS!, BOOM!,
Nanovation, Do Something
Now, and, Be a Person of
Impact
Rita Gunther McGrath
Professor of Management,
Columbia Business School,
and Author of The End of
Competitive Advantage: How
to Keep Your Strategy Moving
as Fast As Your Business
III. Research methodology
9
Deborah Bothun, PwC’s US Entertainment, Media and Communications lead, presents “Bonfire of the
Brands” at the 2015 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity
Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity:
In June, we presented our findings at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to an audience of advertising, marketing and technology executives. Their reactions, feedback and observations were applied to shape and refine this report.
One-on-one interviews with business executives:
We also sat down for one on one interviews with executives across industries to get their take on how the brandscape is
changing, and what they are doing in their organizations to stay ahead of the curve.
Randy Browning
PwC
US Consulting and Markets
Leader
Bennett Porter
SurveyMonkey
VP, Marketing
Communications
Carol Sawdye
PwC
Vice Chairman and Chief
Financial Officer
Tami Reller
Optum (UnitedHealth
Group)
EVP, Chief Marketing Officer
Richard Whittington
SAP
SVP, Media Solutions
John Kennedy
Xerox
Chief Marketing Officer
Clay Cowan
Gilt Groupe
Chief Marketing Officer
Johannes Hartmann
Estée Lauder Companies,
SVP, Consumer Insight
Greg Revelle
Best Buy
Chief Marketing Officer
III. Research methodology
10
US outlook
IV.
11
Illustrative 2014 leader brands
Amazon
Keurig
Apple
LG
Bose
Microsoft
Clorox
National Geographic
Coca-Cola
Netflix
Discovery Channel
Nike
Disney
Paypal
DreamWorks
PepsiCo
eBay
Rubbermaid
Facebook
Samsung
Google
Sony
Hallmark
Under Armour
HP
15-year attrition rate across:
Corporate and parent brands
47%
Corporate, parent and product brands
IV. US outlook
72%
12
The sooner executives realize this, the sooner they can
realize greater profits to their bottom line. Done right,
strong brands reap tremendous rewards. Our study shows
that over the past 15 years, brands that consumers consider
leader brands have grown in value at nearly five times the
rate of the average S&P 500 company.
Being perceived as a leader has tremendous rewards.
Brands have always been defined by a collection of
experiences, not simply a logo or an ad campaign.
Emotional and historical connections matter tremendously
in brand formation, defined by veteran adman David Ogilvy
as “the intangible sum of a product’s attributes,” something
that lived in consumers’ minds as objective facts blended
with subjective emotions and associations.
The trend is likely to continue. 66% of US consumers say
that the importance of acting like a true leader brand is
more important today than it was in the past, and they
believe leader brands will matter even more 10 years from
now. Moreover, perceived leadership is often an important
purchase consideration. 76% of US consumers say it’s
important to buy from a leader brand when purchasing
electronic and tech goods and services, 73% say it’s
important to buy from a leader brand when purchasing
health services, and 72% say it’s important to buy from a
leader brand when purchasing an automobile.
Today, in our highly social, interconnected and transparent
world, Ogilvy’s brand equation has become even more
complex, expanded to stand for everything that a company
is and does. Consumer behavior has evolved, and brands
must now engage with them in unprecedented ways at a
rapid pace. Increasingly, consumers look for leadership
from brands, and use brand relationships to form their own
identities. Brand leadership is now as much about shaping
the world as it is about helping consumers stake out a place
and a purpose within it.
66%
“You can be a leader one day and
you can be toppled from your perch
the next. Nothing is certain. There
has been very little consistent
leadership over time. And that is an
ever-present threat for everybody.”
of US consumers say that the
importance of acting like a true leader
brand is more important today than it
was in the past
— Cindy Gallop, Founder and CEO, IfWeRanTheWorld
Over the past 15 years, leader brands have grown in value at nearly
five times the rate of the average S&P 500 company.
600%
500%
400%
Average of top leader brands
300%
200%
S&P 500 average
100%
3/01/15
3/07/14
3/01/14
3/07/13
3/01/13
3/07/12
3/01/12
3/07/11
3/01/11
3/07/10
3/01/10
3/07/09
3/01/09
3/07/08
3/01/08
3/07/07
3/01/07
3/07/06
3/01/06
3/07/05
3/01/05
0%
For this analysis, we looked at top brands on our leadership metric and examined the ones that were the strongest publicly traded mono-brands in
the S&P 500: Microsoft, Google, Apple, Disney, Amazon, DreamWorks, Sony, Coca-Cola, Nike, Netflix, HP, Hershey’s, Lowe’s, GE and Bed Bath &
Beyond. We defined “monobrand” as a publicly traded firm where a single brand represents the bulk of the firm’s business.
IV. US outlook
13
Securing a position as a leader is no easy feat.
All this suggests a rosy life for leader brands. And yet:
securing a “leader” spot is harder than ever. 55% of
consumers say that the number of brands acting like true
leaders has decreased. In fact, between 1999 and 2014, 47%
of brands fell off our list of top 100 leader brands. When we
expand our list to include product brands, that attrition rate
jumps even higher, to 72%.
Illustrative top 10 brand
leaders by age:
Dramatic flux is the norm for brands, and much of this
change is negative. Roughly 40% of brands in our study saw
their brand equity change by 21 points or more. Of those,
one in three saw their brand equity change by 50 points or
more. Alarmingly, 75% of this movement is negative, with
the majority of brands losing on strength, stature or both.
Across the brandscape, brands are becoming more alike
in consumers’ minds: according to BAV data, growth in
perceptual redundancy of brands over the past 15 years
is up 200%. That means it is increasingly difficult to
differentiate from the competition—and increasingly
important to do so.
And while consumers say leadership is important to
purchase consideration, many categories fall short of
meeting consumers’ leadership expectations.
Leader brands used to skew toward media, but today,
electronics and technology brands like Amazon, Facebook
and Samsung are the most advanced when it comes to
leadership delivery. By contrast, health and financial
services show the weakest leadership and the most
room to improve.
Boomers
Millennials
Amazon
Amazon
Apple
Apple
Bose
Coca-Cola
Discovery Channel
Disney
Dreamworks
Facebook
Google
Google
Hallmark
Microsoft
Microsoft
Netflix
National Geographic
PepsiCo
Samsung
Samsung
Brand leadership by category
1
Electronics & Technology
Communications Services
How strongly categories
exhibit brand leadership,
according to consumers
0.5
Entertainment & Media
Food & Beverages
Retail Goods & Apparel
Automotive
Financial Services
Hospitality Services
Pharmaceutical Goods
Airline Tickets
0.1
0
0
0.1
0.5
1
Importance to purchase
IV. US outlook
14
Overall, of the top 20 leader brands in 1999, only seven
brands remain in the top 20 today.
Among these seven remaining brands are Disney, Discovery
Channel and Microsoft. These are tried and true brands—and
their secret may be just that: they’ve never stopped trying.
In 1995, the Chicago Tribune wrote an article
commemorating Discovery Channel’s 10th anniversary with
the headline, “Discovery Channel’s Success Is Decidedly Out
Of This World.”1 The cable channel had bucked network
convention by giving prominence to a type of programming
considered all but dead—the documentary.
Today, that bet has paid off for Discovery Channel and its
parent company, Discovery Communications. President and
chief executive David Zaslav is now the highest-paid CEO in
America with compensation reaching $156 million in 2014.
The past two decades haven’t been totally smooth waters.
Last year, the company took a beating for pushing popular
Shark Week programming into “mockumentary” territory
with entirely contrived footage for shows like “Shark of
Darkness: Wrath of Submarine.” But smart programming
changes prompted a quick turnaround in the eyes of
consumers and investor analysts. In April, the channel
recorded its best-ever month for its target viewing
audience, men ages 25 to 54, and in July, analysts heralded
“Rich’s Revival,” a nod to Rich Ross, the former Disney
executive who joined Discovery in January as new channel
chief, who is pushing to broaden the channel’s appeal and
diversify its programming.
The 1995 Tribune article wrote in closing: “The Discovery
Channel’s task in the coming years will be to keep the faith
with its core viewers amid a corporate growth spurt....
Staying unspoiled will be both a challenge and a duty.” The
channel’s coveted spot on today’s brand leadership list is
proof that it’s not backing away from that challenge.
Disney is no stranger to the challenge of staying unspoiled,
particularly in the shiny, bedazzled world of entertainment.
Its core promise—creating happiness through magical
experiences—is as fresh in 2015 as it was in 2000 and 1923,
when the company began.
What Disney has wrestled with over the years, mostly with
success, is how to deliver on this promise in ways that are
consistently relevant to consumers. Whereas many brands
have departments dedicated to “Customer Relationship
Management,” Disney refers to it as “Customer Managed
Relationships”—a subtle nuance that keeps the Disney
dynamic customer-centric and ensures that what’s truly
important in a Disney experience is recognized and
addressed, every day.
1
In this spirit, Disney has embraced the magic of technology,
using it to enhance the customer experience. MagicBand,
introduced in 2013, is a multifaceted wearable band that
expedites access and payment for all rides and activities
in the park—alleviating the long lines that were known
to be a significant pain point for both consumers and for
Disney’s margins. As of April 2015, according to Disney, the
MagicBand had cut turnstile transaction time by 30%.
On the technology front, Microsoft has for years taken a
beating from the press and an army of dissenters within
the tech community, including competitors. For nearly a
decade, Apple baited Microsoft with a playful-but-cutting
ad war, beginning with the “Hi, I’m a Mac; Hi, I’m a PC”
television spots from the late 2000s that depicted Mac as
young, casual and cool, and PC as overly sensible and nerdy.
For nearly a decade, Apple baited
Microsoft with a playful-butcutting ad war, beginning with
the “Hi, I’m a Mac; Hi, I’m a PC”
television spots.
In the years since, competitors like Apple and Google have
risen to enormous prominence in the consumer psyche. Yet
Microsoft still holds a prominent spot on the leader list. And
the company is still arguably the world’s largest software
maker. Even as consumers swipe their iPads and click on
Google ads, Microsoft still looms large as a powerful player.
So what gives?
Instead of trading on “exciting,” Microsoft’s core brand
has been one that wins on reliability. After being mocked
by the cool kids, Microsoft has embraced the stereotype.
(Its offices are now plastered with “I’m a PC” stickers.)
Microsoft may not be as innovative as Apple or Google in
consumers’ minds—and for now, at least, that’s okay. The
company is instead trading on being seen as useful and
empowering, refining and adapting its most authentic
products to build a ubiquitous brand. To stay relevant, its
new CEO, Satya Nadella, is making a dramatic departure
from his predecessors by pushing the company to open its
platforms and lead in the cloud.
Are Microsoft, Disney and Discovery Channel shoo-in
candidates for spots on the 2030 leader brand list? Not
necessarily. But at a time when growth in perceptual
redundancy of brands is higher than ever, these three
brands tell a remarkable story of scrappiness and resilience
that will undoubtedly be as critical to success in the next
decade as they have been in the past.
Chicago Tribune, June 10, 1995, “Discovery Channel’s Success Is Decidedly Out Of This World”
IV. US outlook
15
Today, consumers have redefined “leader” to go beyond
just innovation.
improved—and showing that the brand is taking action to
improve them.
In addition to Microsoft, Disney and Discovery Channel, the
2014 brand leader list includes well-regarded 21st century
tech innovators like Amazon, YouTube and Facebook.
Apple issues its annual “Supplier Responsibility Report” to
openly share with consumers what is happening to improve
supplier sustainability—an internal ombudsman designed
to keep the company accountable and on track in its efforts.
In 1999, consumers identified leader brands as those they
saw as progressive, dynamic, innovative and up-to-date.
Today, weary from war and the recession, they see brand
leaders as those that are trustworthy, authentic, reliable
and, increasingly, visionary.
Panera Bread has recently made headlines with its “No No
list,” a comprehensive list of every artificial additive the
fast-casual chain intends to remove from its menu by the
end of 2016. Similarly, Nestlé USA has said it will remove
Words most associated with leader brands
Trustworthy
Affordable
Authentic
Responsible
Visionary
Unique
Being trustworthy, authentic and reliable is about more
than just good, consistent quality. It’s about showing your
values and sticking to them.
The notion of “trustworthy” today has pushed beyond
reliability and loyalty. Things that used to be market
advantages, like massive scale, established distribution and
closely guarded customer relationships—that is, the very
things that once engendered trust—are no longer
seen as impenetrable barriers to entry. New technologies
are paving the way for agile innovators to penetrate and
disrupt markets.
In this new world of constant disruption, a few key
values stand out as new measures of trust:
Consumers seek brands that are highly transparent about
the processes, labor, ingredients and materials they use.
Acknowledging wrongdoing when it happens is increasingly
surfacing as a driver of brand leadership. So too is
openly recognizing areas of the business that need to be
IV. US outlook
Smart
Socially responsible
Creative
Dependable
Reliable
Caring Transparent
Honest
Fair
artificial flavorings and colors from its chocolate candy
products, Hershey’s has vowed to replace high-fructose corn
syrup in many of its sweets, and Kraft has announced plans
to replace the orange artificial colorings in its Macaroni &
Cheese—all part of an effort to fulfill consumers’ desires
for more straightforward, easy-to-understand ingredients.
For companies like Kraft and Nestlé, these are small but
important steps to mitigate eroding brand usage and
reframe the brands as ones that are aligned with modern
consumer values.
Consumers want to believe that brands are making every
effort possible to protect their privacy.
The quest for privacy is a complicated one. Brands like
Apple, Google and Facebook are among the largest players
in Big Data, and their challenge is to consistently navigate
the often-murky line between consumer privacy and
consumer benefit.
16
In June of this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook put a stake in
the ground for the company when he said to an audience
at an event run by EPIC, a not-for-profit civil rights and
privacy group:
“I’m speaking to you from Silicon Valley, where some of the
most prominent and successful companies have built their
businesses by lulling their customers into complacency about
their personal information. They’re gobbling up everything
they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think
that’s wrong. And it’s not the kind of company that Apple
wants to be. We believe the customer should be in control of
their own information.”
Between 1999 and 2014,
100
47%
of brands fell off the list of
top 100 leader brands
1999
2014
geographical or nostalgic labels—like “traditional cajun” or
“grandma’s zucchini cookies”—diners were more likely to
purchase them and more likely to say they tasted better.3
Much of authenticity can be delivered through experience—
actions, not just words. Apple didn’t just run “Think
Different” as an ad campaign; it delivered a different way
of thinking across the customer experience, from
unforeseen products to fluid retail spaces. Zappos is
“Powered by Service,” and the brand experience helps win
customer loyalty through two-way free shipping and a 365
day return policy.
Many energy drinks scream extreme in their advertising,
but when Red Bull “gives you wings,” it’s more than
positioning. The brand’s sponsored experiences like
Flugtag are designed interactions that engage consumers to
participate, making their preference for Red Bull stronger
and stickier than for competitors that rely on branded swag
rather than branded experience.
Visionary is gaining in leadership importance.
“Visionary”—it’s a favorite word in boardrooms and
conference rooms, and it is fast becoming part of consumer
lexicon, too, taking on increasing importance in how
consumers assess the brandscape.
They want brands that treat employees well.
Starbucks is one of the companies at the forefront of
employee well-being, most recently with its announcement
that it would expand its tuition reimbursement benefit for
workers. Facebook and Apple made headlines last year
with announcements that they would help pay for female
employees to freeze their eggs. Virgin gained buzz with its
seemingly unorthodox offer to provide a year of paternity
leave to eligible employees. And in April, a small credit card
processing company in Seattle, Gravity Payments, turned
heads when its CEO, Dan Price, announced he’d be taking
a $930,000 pay cut to help afford raising the company’s
minimum wage to $70,000. Out of his 120 employees, 70
got raises—and nearly half saw their incomes double.2
Consumers emphatically care about how employees
are treated, in part because it’s a reflection of values—a
way of visualizing how a company treats its own and, by
correlation, its customers—and in part because happy
employees often manifest in better service and thus greater
customer satisfaction.
They relate to brands that speak authentically.
Jargon is out; plainspeak is in. Consumers say they
want brands that tell it like it is, adding humanity and
authenticity to their products and services, and speaking
in terms to which consumers can relate. For instance, a
Cornell University study found that when menu items had
2
3
“Because change is so seemingly
ubiquitous, you’re relying on trust.
When control dissipates, trust levels
have to go up.”
— Ori Brafman, Author of Click, Sway,
and The Chaos Imperative
Consumers say that being visionary today means bringing
truly new products and services to the market, not just
evolutions of existing ones. It means taking on challenges
and problems that competitors don’t. And it means smartly
anticipating their needs and identifying desires they didn’t
even know they had.
Consider Tesla, which transformed an electric car that no
one thought they needed into one of today’s most coveted
vehicles. More recently, the company pivoted to redefine
itself as more than a high-tech automaker, announcing
plans to make residential and business battery systems.
Called the Powerpack, CEO Elon Musk says the new
products are part of Tesla’s vision to help wean the world off
oil and gas.
New York Times, April 13, 2015, “One Company’s New Minimum Wage: $70,000 a Year”
The Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 68-72., Wansink, B. (n.d.). “Descriptive menu labels’ effect on sales.”
IV. US outlook
17
Patagonia has consistently positioned itself as a
challenger brand through its environmental advocacy,
taking competitors and consumers to task on needless
consumption. The brand’s “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign
is backed up by its highly-regarded Worn Wear program,
which offers a marketplace for used Patagonia goods.
And while brands like Uber and Airbnb are not yet on the
top leader brand list, they are quickly proving themselves to
be darlings of modern day disruption, using technology to
totally rethink and revamp the consumer experience.
“People are beginning to dream
again. They are beginning to
hope again. And they’re looking
to technology and business and
everybody else to kind of give them
a sense of progress and possibility
and potential.”
Will today’s leaders
prevail in the future?
Illustrative brands that consumers
expect to remain a leader in the next
10 years:
Amazon
Apple
Disney
Google
Microsoft
Samsung
— Ann Clurman, EVP, The Futures Company
Brands are getting points for being visionary, but
trustworthiness is still a shortcoming for many.
71%
64%
56%
51%
Percentage who agree the number of
visionary brands has increased
57%
42%
Percentage who agree the number of
trustworthy brands has increased
Ages 18 to 34
IV. US outlook
Ages 35 to 54
Ages
55 to 79
18
Global outlook
A look at brands in the United Kingdom,
Brazil and China
V.
United Kingdom
Only 40% of the top 20 leader brands in 1999 remain on the
list today.
Securing a leader brand spot is becoming increasingly
difficult in the UK. Of the top 20 leadership brands in the
UK in 2000, 60% have since been knocked off the list.
At the start of the 21st century, the leading brands in the UK
were dominated by consumer packaged goods companies
such as Heinz and Cadbury. Today, the leader list is topped
by technology brands such as Google, Apple and Facebook.
The brands that prevailed on the leader list between 2000
and today are Cadbury, Coca-Cola, Disney, Dyson, Lego,
Microsoft, Sony and Virgin.
72%
62%
69%
57%
66%
47%
In 2000, the attributes mainly associated with brand
leadership in the UK were “best brand,” “trustworthy,”
and “cares about customers.” Today, attributes like
“visionary,” “intelligent,” “progressive” and “daring” have
joined “trustworthy” as critical drivers of leadership.
Younger consumers are particularly optimistic about brand
trustworthiness: 62% of consumers ages 18 to 34 say they
feel the number of trustworthy brands has increased. For
British consumers, trust means being highly transparent,
protecting consumer privacy and treating employees well.
While other regions across the globe have seen brand trust
decline, trust in brands has increased 8% in the UK since the
turn of the century.
Percentage who agree the number of
visionary brands has increased
Percentage who agree the number of
trustworthy brands has increased
Ages 18 to 34
V. Global outlook
Ages 35 to 54
Ages
55 to 79
20
Brazil
Of the top 20 leadership brands in 1999, only ten remained
on the list in 2014.
Ten years ago, Brazil was known as the “country of the
future.” Today, that future appears to have arrived. Last year,
the country hosted the 2014 World Cup; next year, it will
host the Olympics. Brazil’s rapidly emerging middle class is
50 million people larger than it was a decade ago, and now
makes up more than half of the total Brazilian population.
As Brazil’s demographics have shifted, so too has the
country’s brandscape. Of the top 20 leadership brands in
Brazil in 1999, only ten remained on the list in 2014.
Brazilians overwhelming say that being trustworthy is
becoming more important for brands—95% of consumers
85%
79%
agreed with this statement. And yet Brazilians’ trust in
brands has declined a whopping 53% over the past 15 years.
For Brazilian consumers, trust is defined as delivering high
quality goods and services, being transparent and protecting
consumers’ privacy.
In keeping with global trends, Brazilians also cite “visionary”
as an increasingly critical driver of brand leadership. For
these consumers, being visionary means bringing truly
new products and services to market, smartly anticipating
consumer needs and offering superior user experiences.
85%
80%
71%
74%
Percentage who agree the number of
visionary brands has increased
Percentage who agree the number of
trustworthy brands has increased
Ages 18 to 34
V. Global outlook
Ages 35 to 54
Ages 55 to 79
21
China
Of the top 20 brands in China in 2001, only one made it
onto today’s list of leaders.
In 2014, China produced $17.6 trillion in GDP, edging out
the US to become the world’s largest economy, according
to the International Monetary Fund.4 The country’s rapid
growth over the past 15 years has also created huge
upheaval for brands. Of the top 20 brands in 2001, only one
made it onto today’s list of leaders.
And more volatility is expected. In part, this is because
overall regard for brands has increased—76% of Chinese
consumers say that more brands today are acting like true
leaders, making it harder for brands to jockey for esteem as
the rules of leadership are rewritten.
85%
75%
78%
85%
71%
Brands in China are also wrestling with trust. While
historical data shows that trust in brands has declined 31%
between 2001 and 2014, when asked, consumers today say
that the number of trusted brands in China has increased.
Why the disconnect? Because consumers are relying less
heavily on trusting the brands themselves—instead, they
are putting their faith in peer reviews and other modern,
consumer-led validations of brand reputation. “It gets
good reviews online” was a top driver of trust for Chinese
consumers. Peer reviews also strongly influence perceptions;
Chinese consumers listed “gets strong ratings from the
community” as the top of driver of visionary brands.
77%
Percentage who agree the number of
visionary brands has increased
Percentage who agree the number of
trustworthy brands has increased
Ages 18 to 34
4
Ages 35 to 54
Ages 55 to 79
MarketWatch, Dec. 4, 2014, “It’s official: America is now No. 2”
V. Global outlook
22
The table stakes of
brand leadership
VI.
For consumers today, it’s imperative
that brands deliver on the things
that matter most.
There are hundreds of variables that go into a brand’s
success—including the old marketing factors like price,
product, place and promotion. But none of this matters if
brands can’t nail the fundamental traits consumers seek. To
understand these traits, we cross-examined today’s leader
brands to identify patterns that consistently emerged. The
results show that today’s top brands fall into one or more of
the following archetypes:
Redefining-luxury leaders: Brands that reimagine status
Think Apple, which turned once-cumbersome technology
into sleek, coveted accessories. Or Airbnb, which is sidestepping traditional luxury hotels to bring consumers
unique, one-of-a-kind experiences that reflect a new form
of status. Or BMW, which has revamped the way its cars are
sold, having salesmen at German dealerships ditch the suit
and tie in favor of a more casual polo shirt and trousers to
go with the new sales title of “product genius.” BMW is also
recognizing that for many consumers, luxury is about access
rather than ownership. To address this shift, the company
introduced BMW DriveNow, a car sharing program now
launched in several US markets.
Empathetic leaders: Brands that put people first
Toms led the rallying cry for greater humanity in brands
with its “one for one” model, donating a pair of shoes
to children in need for every pair it sold. Warby Parker
followed a similar path in donating eyeglasses. Coca-Cola
broke from conventional product advertising in its 2015
Super Bowl ad to run a commercial that tackled the issue of
cyberbullying. More and more, brands are stepping beyond
the silo of Corporate Social Responsibility to demonstrate a
very tangible, very emotional connection with consumers.
Inspiring leaders: Brands that uplift spirits
Increasingly, upstart Under Armour is posing a challenge
to the sporting gear establishment. In 2014, the company
surpassed $3 billion in sales, sprinting past Adidas to
become the No. 2 sportswear brand in the US. The brand’s
tagline, “I will,” captures the passion, intensity and drive
of the Under Armour ethos. Last year, it introduced an ad
about ballerina Misty Copeland’s refusal to cow to criticism
over not having the “body of a ballerina”—successfully
expanding the company’s goodwill among women as it
seeks to reach new markets.
Entrenched brands like Ben & Jerry’s and Disney
consistently find ways to connect with and inspire
consumers. Ben & Jerry’s introduces new theme flavors that
speak to changes in our social fabric; it recently renamed its
chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream “I Dough, I Dough.”
Disney uses innovation—cue the MagicBand—to stay
VI. The table stakes of brand leadership
relevant and magical for its visitors, and introduces new
programming that addresses modern-day attitudes. Its 2014
blockbuster movie, Frozen, defied the typical hero-rescue
trope of princess movies, putting Anna and Elsa’s sisterhood
ahead of any romance and giving the two characters
enormous complexity and strength that resonated with both
children and adults.
Power leaders: Brands that do something best
Starbucks continues to be a brand leader not because
it excels at coffee, but because it excels at the coffee
experience. And to the extent that much of that experience
is shaped by the baristas behind the counter, Starbucks
has paved the way for out-of-the-box employee benefits,
including college tuition reimbursement.
On and off the road, Harley-Davidson is a company
that receives praise from both motorcycle enthusiasts
and branding experts. Why? Because Harley knows that
its product is not just about transportation—it’s about
lifestyle. To that end, the brand typically spends less
than 20% of its marketing budget on traditional media,
instead pursuing more nontraditional marketing to reach
motorcycle customers.
Disruptive leaders: Brands that deliver what you didn’t
know you wanted
Tesla, Uber, Facebook. These are just a few of the
brands that have disrupted the world as we know it with
products and services we never even imagined. Today,
Tesla is morphing from an electric car manufacturer into
an expanding energy empire. Uber has reframed how
consumers think about both transportation models and
employment models. And Facebook has become a fixture
in society, changing how we interact with peers, consume
content and view the world.
“They’re enriching, not pitching. I
think that’s kind of the tagline that
we have to start to hold onto as we
think about the future. Apple is
enriching lives. Jobs is famous for
saying, look, people want to live
better, happier lives and don’t push
products at people, enrich lives.”
— Jackie Freiberg, Co-author of NUTS!, GUTS!, BOOM!,
Nanovation, and, Be a Person of Impact
24
True brand leadership lives at the
nexus of brand, capabilities and
culture.
Brand
These three capabilities are deeply interconnected, backed by
a culture that enables these capabilities to work seamlessly
and create a great brand experience. True brand leadership
lives at the nexus of brand, capabilities and culture.
“Experience is huge and it runs
through these companies….It’s just
taking something old and making
it better, new and great for the
consumer.”
Culture
— Bryan Kramer, CEO, PureMatter
Capabilities
Old advertising models espoused single-minded
propositions—brands had to figure out what they did
best, and drill that point home with consumers. Today,
companies don’t win on a single core competency—and
they don’t they win on 100, 20 or 10 core competencies.
Our research consistently shows that successful brands
excel at three to six capabilities. Understanding what these
competencies are is crucial to creating a capabilities-driven
strategy for success.
Brand leaders know that a brand can only be effectively
managed if there is a capabilities system in place to support
it. PwC’s Strategy& has a clearly defined process for helping
to identify the right capabilities—including a “Coherence”
test, “Right to Win” exercise and “Way to Play” tool. (To try
these tools, visit http://pwc.to/1i7TWD1) Aligned with a
clear capabilities understanding, brands can then outline
what’s needed to build those capabilities—where to invest
and reallocate funds; what talent and external vendors to
hire; which mergers and acquisitions to pursue; and so on.
Every action can be filtered off of the capability system.
This is increasingly critical at a time when the consumer
environment moves faster via new technology and media,
with more fluid connections across touchpoints. Word of
mouth travels more quickly, inviting consumers to share
experiences with each other and with brands. The result
is a tapestry of conversations that is visible, searchable,
sharable and editable. Aspects of brand identity that were
once hidden now have a tangible place in the market. In
this environment, it is imperative that brands have a clear
purpose to stand out and build a sustained and meaningful
relationship with consumers.
It also requires rethinking content, shifting the strategy
from paid media to content-led experiences. Cue call center
scripts, packaging, social media posts, emails, websites—
whatever the medium, content today defines how
consumers engage with brands. One-way messages are no
longer sufficient. Instead, social connections are imperative
to engagement. Marketers who effectively manage these
connections at every scale can elicit bonds between
consumers and brands that feel more like friendship than
transactional relationships.
Consider Apple, which has earned its right to
win through four clearly defined capabilities:
1
Consumer insight: the ability to spot a burgeoning consumer need,
based on a deep understanding of how people live, work, and play
2
Intuitively accessible design: of products, software, the retail store
experience (including the Genius Bar), and online environments
3
Technological integration: combining superior technology to bear
(including that developed by other companies) in ways that work as a
seamless whole
4
Breakthrough innovation of products, services, and software:
packaged and delivered with elegance and flair
VI. The table stakes of brand leadership
25
New rules to
get ahead
VII.
Understanding what a brand should be today is one
thing—navigating how to embody those traits is another
challenge. The reality is that the new playbook for brand
success is being rewritten every minute as consumer values
and attitudes evolve more quickly than ever. Within it, key
themes are emerging—ones that executives should carefully
consider in their road map to future success. These are
the new rules of leadership, and while they may not apply
universally to every brand, applying them in relevant ways
will help open the door to tomorrow.
way, the aspirational brand becomes congruent with the
experience it delivers—and the culture enables it.
Distribute authority
Given today’s heightened transparency, organizations must
be relentlessly consistent and authentic with their message
across all levels of the organization. That message cannot
be a script handed out to everyone in the workforce; it must
be understood, internalized and appreciated. Done right,
culture effectively does this. It shapes what people think,
feel and believe about what your business stands for and
how your people lead, innovate and create value against
that vision.
Across the globe, the floodgates to information sharing are
being pushed open in both directions—and for brands, it
should usher in a wave of change about how to manage and
empower the workforce as well as consumers. Here, culture
is the operative word. It helps reinforce the brand through
the behaviors of front line employees.
Today’s workforce is increasingly purpose-driven, powered
largely by millennials who value meaningful work over
financial rewards. In this context, companies need to
inspire workers to take pride in the brand. When employees
want to work for an organization, the word spreads,
creating a positive halo effect about the brand experience.
“Employee advocacy is huge….
Putting your employee out in front
and saying, here’s what we think,
that’s a huge step for everybody.”
— Bryan Kramer, CEO, PureMatter
Our research with the Katzenbach Center for Organizational
Excellence consistently shows that culture is about mindsets
and behaviors—it’s the way organizations drive change in
scenarios where the inclination may be to inhibit it. Culture
is a north star of purpose. Consumers admire brands like
Apple, Warby Parker and Toms because they make them
feel like they are at the vanguard of creativity. Employees at
these companies not only know this, they perpetuate it.
The key is to understand that all organizations have
behaviors—some are good, some get in the way. Mindsets
tend to follow behavior, so to get an organization in the
right mindset, it’s imperative to exhibit the right behaviors.
That could mean asking more questions, rewarding failure,
promoting people, or creating “pride-builder networks” that
bring A-list performers together to tackle challenges. It also
means flagging watch-out behaviors—those that actively
harm culture.
Hiring the right talent is important. But the culture must
enable that talent to be successful—imbuing every level
of the organization with the authority to execute on that
culture in a way that bolsters the brand. Consider, for
example, a healthcare company seeking to re-imagine
its customer experience. The reality is that, like many
companies in its category, the brand doesn’t stand for
customer experience. Consumers don’t see it as a company
that will go to bat for them. To shift the brand experience,
the healthcare company must shift the culture by tapping
into employees’ desire to help people in need. In this
VII. New rules to get ahead
Our research showed that 81% of people believe that
“treating employees well” is becoming a more important
aspect of brand leadership. For millennials, this is a
particularly important driver of trust in brands.
According to a PwC report on the Future of Work, 65%
of millennials feel that rigid hierarchies and outdated
management styles fail to get the most out of younger
recruits. Their intuition is correct: studies by PwC and
Gallup show that when employees are engaged in the work
they’re doing, they perform better—and so do companies.
When employees are engaged in their work, it leads to:
70%
33%
Improved process
turnaround times
Higher profitability
30%
20%
Uptick in innovation
ideas
Increase in productivity
The key to managing the behavior behind your culture is to
create an infrastructure that has clearly defined capabilities,
so that employees understand clearly the role they play—
and feel empowered to make an impact through it. That
means shifting from what PwC calls “The Overmanaged
Organization,” one with multiple layers of management and
ensuing analysis paralysis, to “The Resilient Organization,”
one that can adapt quickly to external market shifts while
staying focused and aligned on a coherent business strategy.
27
One key trait of resilient organizations—and of resilient
brand leadership—is the ability to think horizontally.
Too often, businesses are conditioned to think vertically,
anchored by hierarchical structures that operate from top to
bottom. By contrast, resilient organizations break vertical
boundaries, transferring best practices, collaborating crossfunctionally and promoting laterally. These behaviors can
be motivated through shared objectives, common metrics or
collaboration incentives. The result is a more coordinated,
efficient and often savvier organization.
More and more companies are recognizing that
empowering employees by distributing authority is critical
to leadership success. At Zappos, Tony Hsieh has embraced
the “Holacracy” movement, a system of self-governance
that effectively eliminated all management. Under this
approach, Zappos customer service agents can spend as
much time as they need on the phone to help customers
through their problems and even send them gift baskets—
all without first consulting a manager for approval.
The fundamental tenets of holacracy are individual
autonomy and self-governance. In a holacracy, there’s no
mandate for how employees should work; instead, they
self-govern through voluntary “circles,” groups of peers
who help talk through new ideas or problems. Rather than
being evaluated and rewarded by a manager, employees are
evaluated by peers in their circle.
Other companies are carving out their own approaches to
empowering employees to self-organize and take charge of
their work goals and problems. Spotify flattens its business
by dividing the company into mini-companies known as
“squads.” Across the three countries Spotify operates in,
there are 30 squads of roughly 250 people, each with its
own workplace and flat management structures. In financial
services, Morningstar, which has seen double-digit growth
for the past 20 years, has no managers.
And at one of Brazil’s largest companies, the industrial
manufacturing company Semco, employees set their
own work hours and pay levels, and even elect corporate
leadership. Semco doesn’t have written policies, nor
does it have an organization chart or a human resources
department. Instead, employees are empowered to choose
their own managers and decide how much they’re paid and
when they work. Salaries are made public. Yet
instead of succumbing to chaos, Semco has consistently
sustained growth and profitability. Semco CEO Ricardo
Semler credits the company’s success to his radical concept
of non-management.
Of course, not every company needs to embrace such radical
management styles. But the principles of empowerment
through autonomous decision-making and clear access to
information are powerful tools—and can be applied smartly
to get ahead in the pursuit of brand leadership.
Diversify diversity
Across cultures and industries, managers strongly prize
“cultural fit”—the idea that the best employees are likeminded. More than 80% of employers worldwide name
cultural fit as a top hiring priority.4
In theory, culture fit leads to better productivity and
profitability. But too often, the process of identifying culture
fit is less about systematic analysis of who will thrive in a
given workplace and more about hiring people who are
similar to decision makers and rejecting people who are not.
As our research shows, brands must be visionary to survive
as leaders—and vision requires having people with radically
different perspectives in the room. Meaningful diversity
isn’t just about checking the boxes across race and gender.
It’s about bringing diverse backgrounds, opinions and ideas
to the table for creative combustion.
“True innovation and disruption
is the result of many different
mindsets, world views, perspectives,
insights coming together in
constructive, creative conflict to get
to a place no one could have gotten
to on their own.”
— Cindy Gallop, Founder and CEO, IfWeRanTheWorld
According to research from the Kellogg School of
Management, in jobs involving complex decisions and
creativity, more diverse teams typically outperform less
diverse ones. By contrast, too much similarity among peers
can lead to teams that are overconfident, blind to critical
information and prone to poor decision-making.4
Moreover, according to a recent Harvard Business Review
article, firms with both “inherent” diversity (i.e., a mix
of age, gender and other demographics) and “acquired”
diversity (i.e., varying life experiences) are 45% likelier to
report a growth in market share over the previous year and
70% likelier to report that the firm captured a new market.5
At PwC, our Organizational DNA team often works with
companies plagued by the curse of agreement—that is,
firms where everyone agrees, yet nothing changes. We
refer to these as “Passive Aggressive Organizations.”
Working in an environment that is congenial and seemingly
conflict-free sounds lovely, but the result is often rampant
frustration that emerges from an inability to implement
agreed-upon plans.
Kellogg School of Business Management, “Better decisions through diversity: Heterogeneity can boost group performance,” October 1, 2010, based on the
research of Katherine W. Phillips, Katie A. Liljenquist and Margaret A. Neale
5
Harvard Business Review, December 2013, “How Diversity Can Drive Innovation”
4
VII. New rules to get ahead
28
By contrast, the aforementioned resilient organization
is able to embrace conflict and harness it to get clear,
smart results that drive action. One aspect of these
organizations is their ability to “listen to the complainers.”
These companies understand that complaints are also
opportunities to improve what isn’t working. They actively
seek to understand dissatisfaction in the ranks of both
customers and employees—creating an environment where
people can speak dissenting opinions and criticism without
fear of retribution, and then acting on those complaints to
make positive changes to the organization at large.
From insight to farsight
Target audience. Consumer profiles. Carefully crafted
personas. These are standards in the marketing world,
designed to bring personalities and behaviors to life. And
yet they can often be confining. Today’s consumers are
as complex as they are diverse, and companies seeking
to be visionary need to reach beyond demographic and
geographic composition to anticipate consumers’ wants
before they even know they want them.
Among all age groups in our research, the quality that
most defined the most visionary brands was the ability to
“bring truly new products and services to market, not just
evolutions of existing ones.” That means going beyond the
table stakes of innovation to develop new, unimaginable
products. (The iPhone.) Creating new, unthinkable services.
(Airbnb.) Or getting ahead of the curve on values that
matter. (Starbucks’ tuition reimbursement program.)
“It used to be, ‘We’re going to give
you something that’s going to make
life easier.’ Now it’s, ‘We’re going
to give you something that’s going
to give you a whole new way to live
your life.’ That’s what leadership
looks like today.”
— Ori Brafman, Author of Click, Sway
and The Chaos Imperative
Consumers are not good at telling us about their future
needs. Resilient brands understand this, and they address
it by entertaining the inconceivable. They don’t just
benchmark themselves against specific industry competitors,
they measure themselves against human imagination.
6
They look far beyond the status quo to pave the path
to success in the future. How? By actively observing
consumers—not just within the walls of focus groups, but in
real life, unscripted and unbiased. They use Big Data from
web traffic, social, mobile and wearables to smartly predict
relevant products and services. They listen to complaints,
rather than just mitigating them. And they entertain ideas
that seem otherwise impossible.
Consider Netflix, which has completely transformed the
way we consume television and video. They started with
an insight—going to the video store is a chore—and shifted
to a farsight: consumers want all the choices, right at their
fingertips. As a result, streaming is now standard—a once
unknown need has become an everyday reality. Today,
much of Netflix’s success is attributed to the company’s
wizardry with Big Data. Powered by enormous amounts of
information that the company collects, Netflix’s algorithms
predict everything from what a particular consumer might
want to watch at a particular time of day to which actors it
should cast in original programming.
Yet even Netflix recognizes the limitations of Big Data.
To better understand the why of behaviors, the company
hired cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken to create
ethnographic accounts of Netflix viewers across the globe,
adding a layer of experiential observation to Netflix’s hard
data. For example, his studies have shown that viewers
tolerate spoilers more than they typically admit.6
Take Facebook as another example. Over a decade ago,
Mark Zuckerberg created the thing that no one needed...
and yet today, no one can part with. And they haven’t
stopped reaching ahead of time to anticipate the changing
consumer. More than a year before Caitlyn Jenner filled
the news feeds, Facebook changed its settings to allow for
50 gender options, highlighting a prescience that helps the
company stay relevant with consumers in a space where it is
all too easy to become dated.
Over a decade ago,
Mark Zuckerberg
created the thing
that no one needed...
and yet today, no
one can part with.
Slate, May 2015, “The Case of the Ornamental Anthropologist”
VII. New rules to get ahead
29
In 2011, Tesco began rolling out “virtual” grocery stores in
South Korea’s subway stations. The inspiration: commuters
waiting for their train have time on their hands and
presumably have jobs—meaning they’re short on time, but
not on disposable income. The resulting subway stores
captured consumers’ imaginations, getting them to think
unconventionally about how they can purchase things more
conveniently. The subway station “aisles” look like typical
grocery store aisles; each photographed item is tagged with a
QR code which shoppers scan with their phone to purchase.
Money is automatically deducted from their bank account,
and the groceries are quickly delivered to their home.
Given that many farsight ideas seem improbable, getting
them through organizations often takes perseverance and
determination. But brands that encourage these visions—
and pursue the viable ones even if it means overcoming
obstacles—are the ones that will get ahead in this cluttered
world of everyday innovation.
Commit heresy
Conventional wisdom often sounds good and makes
sense—but when everyone is following it, it doesn’t do
anything to differentiate your brand. Leader brands are the
ones that consistently question conventional wisdom and
actively look for rules to break and obstacles to leap.
Our research showed that 45% of people believe that truly
visionary brands “take on challenges and problems that
their competitors don’t,” and millennial consumers are
twice as likely as older consumers to say that a brand stands
out as a leader if it is willing to take risks. This perception
also feeds into purchase consideration: younger consumers
are twice as likely older adults to say that buying from a
leader brand makes them feel “excited” and “innovative.”
Across all ages and regions, consumers say “being visionary”
is becoming more important—and with that comes social
responsibility (80% agree that social responsibility is
increasingly important to brand leadership).
Brands are catching on. Last year, CVS Health became
the first major pharmacy chain to stop selling tobacco,
effectively conceding $2 billion in annual tobacco sales
from its bottom line. By most standard business metrics,
this was heresy. Yet its decision to embrace an anti-cigarette
advocacy role was carefully calculated and designed to
capitalize on the trends of the future, not the past. Already,
CVS had rebranded itself as a healthcare company, and in an
era where consumers crave authenticity and accountability,
they saw more profits in handling prescription drugs than
in plying people with goods to puff. Last year, roughly 97%
of CVS Health’s revenue came from prescription drugs or
pharmacy services.7
by advising consumers to think twice about the goods they
need, and the footprint their purchases leave. The result?
Annual sales in the following two years grew by almost 40%.
And last summer, Tesla dropped jaws when CEO Elon Musk
announced that the company was doing the unthinkable by
opening all its electric car patents to outside use.
In a blog post revealing the news, Musk wrote: “We felt
compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car
companies would copy our technology and then use their
massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to
overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. The
unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or
programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons)
at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent,
constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total
vehicle sales.”8
The decision isn’t entirely altruistic. After all, making
electric charging technology more ubiquitous could speed
up Tesla’s rate of adoption and support its growth. But
the root of the decision is well-founded. When brands go
against accepted business dogma, they risk the comfort of
the status quo—but the results can be transformative.
For management seeking this kind of smart-butcontroversial transformation, the key is to consistently
move the goal posts to keep the status quo from taking its
grip. These transformation agendas are grounded in the
foundational values and principles of the organization—
but the route is not mapped. Resilient companies chart
a strategic course based on their best instincts and
information, and they stay the course for as long as their
own market intelligence validates it. Yet they’ll defy
convention if instinct and information proves otherwise.
Put a face on it
Across age and regions, our data shows that when
consumers have favorable perceptions of company leaders,
it translates directly to favorable perceptions of the brand.
More and more, consumers are looking behind the label
to understand company values—and often, the leadership
is the first place they look. Millennials in particular felt
strongly that “having a charismatic leader” is becoming
more important in defining a brand leader—they are twice
In 2011, Patagonia made waves with its Black Friday anticonsumerism campaign—seemingly shooting sales in the foot
7
8
Millennials in particular
felt strongly that “having
a charismatic leader” is
becoming more important
in defining a brand leader.
New York Times, July 12, 2015, “How CVS Quit Smoking and Grew Into a Health Care Giant”
teslamotors.com, June 12, 2014, “All Our Patents Belong To You”
VII. New rules to get ahead
30
as likely as older consumers to agree with this statement.
According to a survey by Weber Shandwick and KRC
Research, chief executives need to be more, not less, in the
public eye if they want their company’s reputation to benefit:
81% of those surveyed said they considered what they called
“CEO visibility” as critical to a company’s reputation.10
The data proves the benefits—accountability matters,
and when consumers see that they have someone to hold
accountable for a brand’s actions, they are more likely to
trust the brand and hold a more favorable opinion of it. Jack
Ma, Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett—
all of these executives have a positive impact on the brands
they lead. Pope Francis has been one of the most public,
extroverted popes of our times, raising the profile of the
Catholic Church after years of flagging accountability.
Pope Francis
has been one of
the most public,
extroverted popes
of our times.
10
Still, many companies we work with are skittish about
putting their leaders out to engage with the public. But
the face of a brand doesn’t always have to belong to its
top leaders. For years, Best Buy ditched anonymous
Twitter handles in favor of a more personalized and highly
successful “Twelpforce.” Unlike traditional customer
support services, the Twelpforce was not restricted to a
select group of highly trained agents. Instead, it tapped into
a larger Best Buy talent pool and tied each response to an
individual employee, giving each Twelpforce rep a sense
of personal pride in their participation and driving greater
connectivity with consumers.
In Sweden, the Tourism Ministry ran an experiment in
which it handed over the official government Twitter
handle, @Sweden, to everyday Swedish citizens—lawyers,
priests, writers, teachers and more—making them the
voice of the nation for a week at a time. The results were
raw, often funny, and engaging posts that gave the country
a more authentic edge. The program derailed after some
commentary misfired, but the power of the concept lingers
as a compelling one.
Putting faces forward is a straightforward manifestation
of the commitments made by resilient organizations and
leader brands. When a company is unambiguous and
transparent, both internally and externally, there’s nowhere
to hide. Shifting blame is a futile exercise, so leaders own
it outright. Tying accountability directly—and publicly—to
members of the organization signals to consumers that the
brand holds itself to an established set of expectations, and
that it won’t settle for less.
Weber Shandwick, The CEO Reputation Premium: Gaining Advantage in the Engagement Era
VII. New rules to get ahead
31
Industry snapshot
VIII.
Technology
Microsoft. Google. Apple. Amazon. These companies take
up four of the top spots on our 2014 US brand leader list.
Technology is by the far the most highly regarded category
when it comes to brand leadership. 72% of consumers
say they think technology and electronics companies are
showing strong brand leadership, compared to just 57%
who say this for automotive, the next highest category. It’s
also the category in which consumers say brand leadership
is most critical—76% of consumers say brand leadership is
an important consideration when making technology and
electronics purchases.
72%
of consumers say they think
technology and electronics companies
are showing strong brand leadership
Microsoft, though often depicted by other tech companies
as stodgy and out of touch, is a resilient organization that
has adapted smartly amidst rapid change. Though many of
its products are ubiquitous, the company has made a point
not to be complacent in its strategy. Case in point: in June,
Microsoft released upgrades to Windows 10, the latest
version of its operating system, for free. The company’s
new CEO, Satya Nadella, is breaking from his predecessors’
convention by pushing Microsoft to open up its platforms
and lead in the cloud.
VIII. Industry snapshot
The decision to give away a product is a sign of how power
dynamics in the tech industry have changed. Companies
such as Google have upended the business with free
software and services—a cost offset by huge advertising
revenue. Similarly, Apple has offered free upgrades to its
applications and operating systems, thanks in large part
to revenue generated by independent hardware sales. This
has put pressure on traditional tech companies to find new,
alternative ways to generate revenue from their offerings.
Offering free upgrades may seem like heresy in the old tech
world, but the logic is not unlike Tesla’s decision to release
its patents for electric vehicles: just as Tesla needs more
people to adopt electric vehicles and build an infrastructure,
Microsoft needed people to start using Windows 10 to
combat a loss in momentum driven by smartphones and
tablets. More adoption generates more interest from
developers, which means more app creations and with it,
more consumer favorability.
In Silicon Valley, Google is dominating the brandscape
by dominating the landscape—pushing itself beyond the
boundaries of search and into cars (the much-anticipated
self-driving vehicles), wearable technology (Google Glass)
and even telecom. Google Fiber is now testing in 34 cities
across the US, offering the highest speeds of internet service
at low cost. In the spirit of “social good,” the behemoth
brand also has Project Loon, a network of balloons at the
edge of space to bring internet to remote places, thereby
filling the coverage gap. 81% of consumers say they expect
Google to continue as a brand leader, compared with 79%
who said the same for Amazon and 78% who said the
same for Apple.
33
As the Internet of Things turns from a catchphrase into a
very powerful reality, technology companies have to be
increasingly deliberate about the products they bring to
market—delivering vision with a purpose. Big Data will
only be intelligent if it’s fueled by farsight, a forward look
at real needs and opportunities, rather than a scramble to
innovate for the sake of appearing innovative. Google Glass
turned out to be premature—but Google’s self-driving cars
may be exactly the vehicle consumers covet.
Social responsibility will increasingly play a role in the
brand leadership algorithm of tech companies. For all the
wariness about brands having access to personal data,
consumers are inspired by the leadership tech companies
demonstrate when it comes to bettering the planet and
society. Tesla continues to pioneer innovations designed to
mitigate consumers’ dependency on gas. Companies such
as Facebook and Google offer increasingly progressive
benefits to employees. And new entrants like Uber and
Airbnb are radically changing the dynamics of access,
ownership and work.
The past two decades have been an exciting time to be a
leader in tech—and these companies are poised to pave
the way forward.
Illustrative technology brands
in the top 10% of all US brands:
VIII. Industry snapshot
Amazon
HP
Apple
Intel
eBay
LG
Facebook
Microsoft
GE
Samsung
Google
Sony
34
Retail and
consumer goods
The explosion of connected technology is continually
transforming the way we shop. Shifting notions of
convenience, access and reputation are continuously
upending how and where consumers make purchase
decisions. Today, all it takes to ferret out the best price
is a few taps on a handheld device. Product reviews are
abundant on online chat boards, review sites and retailers’
own sites. Brand ambassadors hawk their opinions on
Twitter, Pinterest and Vine. Deliveries arrive on the
doorstep, where consumers can try out their wares and send
them back—often free of charge. End to end, retail today is
radically different than it was at the turn of the century.
Consider Amazon, which was nowhere on the brand leader
list in 1999. At that time, the company was just five years
old, carving out its place in consumers’ minds as an online
bookstore. This summer, the much-diversified company
overtook Walmart to become the largest US retailer by
market capitalization. Its purview now includes online retail
across all categories, cloud computing and drone delivery.
Yes, retail is getting increasingly complicated—and
consumer brands are struggling to find their place within
it. Just 40% of consumers say that retail and consumer
brands show strong leadership. This figure skews higher for
millennials, who are 32% more likely than boomers to have
a favorable impression of brand leadership in this category.
Modern-day retailers have to run efficient e-commerce
operations along with, or in place of, bricks-and-mortar
stores. They must deliver goods to consumers’ doorsteps—
Amazon is now experimenting with two-hour delivery.
Consumers are demanding a more seamless shopping
experience, an expectation that requires brands to fluidly
VIII. Industry snapshot
Retail is getting increasingly
complicated—and consumer
brands are struggling to find their
place within it.
manage the customer journey across devices and channels.
“Friction-free” is now an entrenched part of corporate
lexicon. Consider Starbucks, which has had tremendous
success with its mobile app—and recently added a new layer
of convenience and access in a partnership with the New
York Times that offers free news articles through the app.
And brands must be prepared to address social media
backlash if things go wrong. Increasingly, consumer and
retail brands are finding themselves in a role reversal—
for all the emphasis on targeting consumers, brands are
suddenly finding themselves the target. According to BAV
data, 65% of consumers believe that they and their friends
can change corporate behavior by supporting companies
that do the right thing.
This means consumer-facing brands are not only on the
hook for delivering authentic, good-for-you products. (Cue
the flood of food brands—Panera Bread, Hershey, Kraft
and Chipotle among them—that have sworn off GMOs and
other artificial ingredients.) They are also being challenged
to deliver social reform. Oreo is consistently applauded for
its progressive, open-minded advertising. Coca-Cola tackled
the rising issue of cyberbullying in its 2015 Super Bowl ad.
Ben & Jerry’s, a leader in sustainability, committed itself fully
35
to social responsibility when it pledged B-Corporation status
in 2012. Costco and Starbucks have been leaders in paying
workers above minimum wage—a trend that consumers now
say heavily influences their purchase decisions.
The challenge of selling across so many touchpoints—
online, mobile, in-store or by way of social media—is that
the brand can easily lose consistency in its messaging.
In this setting, the notion of distributing authority is
imperative. The floodgates of information are open—social
media is an open exchange for brands, their workforce and
consumers alike. The messages projected to employees
and consumers must be aligned, and employees must be
empowered to deliver on that message authentically. This
means that the top-down approach to retailing is over.
Central command is out; decentralization is in. Everything
matters, down to the smallest interactions.
Retail brands must also adapt to marked shifts that are
being ushered in by technology. Sharing economy and techdriven upstarts like Rent the Runway, Spinlister and Yerdle
are changing the dynamics of consumption, enabling people
to rent or borrow where they might otherwise buy. Another
looming game-changer: 3D printing. When people can
actually make products in their own living rooms, retailers
could be cut out of the process entirely.
For now, retailers and purveyors of consumer goods face
big but exciting challenges. Amazon may be dominant,
but the landscape is hospitable to those who are willing to
address consumer needs head-on in unconventional yet
approachable ways. Companies that can shepherd their
organizations through the change and align their workforce
to their vision stand a good chance at establishing a place
on the leader board of the future.
Illustrative retail and consumer brands in the
top 10% of all US brands:
VIII. Industry snapshot
Amazon
Hallmark
PepsiCo
Bed Bath & Beyond
Hershey’s
Rubbermaid
Bose
Home Depot
Starbucks
Clorox
Johnson & Johnson
Subway
Coca-Cola
Keurig
Under Armour
Colgate-Palmolive
Kraft
Walmart
Craftsman
Levi’s
Whirlpool
Crayola
Lowe’s
Cuisinart
Nike
36
Entertainment, media
and communications
Widespread internet access. On-demand programming.
Shortened attention spans. Instant gratification. Social
validation. These are just a handful of the remarkable shifts
that have occurred in the consumer landscape over the
past two decades—upending entertainment, media and
communications as we know it.
Today, the top 100 list of brand leaders includes 11
entertainment, media and communications brands. Of
those 11, six are legacies of the 1999 brand leader list.
Roughly one in two consumers say brand leadership is an
important consideration when they purchase entertainment
and media. For millennials, this is a bigger imperative:
they are 37% more likely than adults ages 55+ to say this
is important. Brand leadership plays an even bigger role in
choosing communication services—64% of consumers say
this is an important consideration.
When it comes to perceived leadership, entertainment,
media and communications brands fall in the middle of
the pack—49% of consumers say entertainment and media
companies are delivering brand leadership, and 55% say
communications companies are doing so.
49%
of consumers say
entertainment and media companies
are delivering brand leadership
VIII. Industry snapshot
The brands that are getting it right
and delivering consumers what they
want are those that consistently
break old conventions and are
playing by new rules.
That means exhibiting enormous farsight in a fast-changing
industry. Entertainment, media and communications
companies face increasing pressure from technology
companies that are encroaching on their space. On the one
hand, tech platforms present an opportunity to engage more
with consumers. On the other, these same tech platforms
are themselves forms of entertainment and media—creating
the brand equivalent of frenemies. Amazon, once a hybrid
of tech and retail, is today a growing media powerhouse
with its own streaming platform. CEO Jeff Bezos also
purchased the Washington Post, the most conventional of
old-guard media, as part of his empire.
In this competitive context, staying on pace with consumer
needs and wants requires thinking well outside the black
box. Last year’s consumer electronics show touted the
automobile as the fifth screen, and savvy media and
entertainment companies are figuring out how to hit the
road running. Pandora has forged automotive partnerships
to offer ad-free music in vehicles. As the promise of
autonomous cars grows more real, studios are meeting
with manufacturers to make deals on curated content for
in-car entertainment.
37
Consider Netflix, which has proved to be one of the most
farsighted and resilient organizations of its kind. Since
1997, the company has pioneered two markets without
precedent—first, online DVD rental, followed by video
streaming. In so doing, it has morphed from a traditional
pay-per-rental company to a subscription rental service,
then to a streaming service.
As the streaming marketplace becomes more crowded
and licensing deals expire, Netflix is forced to pay more
for content—so they are creating their own. Back in 2011,
CEO Reed Hastings told investors, “We’re better off letting
other people take creative risks” than investing in original
shows and movies.11 Not long after, Hastings willingly
committed heresy on his own model, giving birth to original
programming like “House of Cards” and “Orange Is the
New Black”—two of the most popular shows in media and
entertainment today.
Media companies have long battled issues of piracy. Those
issues aren’t going away, and they’re bringing up questions
about how authority should be distributed across the
content hierarchy. Brands like Apple and Spotify may
be leading brands for consumers, but entertainers are
increasingly challenging entrenched power models. A
popular musician pushed back publically against Apple
Music for what she argued was insufficient compensation.
Studios and media companies that can lead with greater
transparency in their revenue sharing models have an
opportunity to establish new ground that resonates with
both artists and consumers.
Managing talent and culture is another growing opportunity
for leaders to make a mark. Today, creativity happens both
inside and outside the organization. Brands are going
directly to celebrities and external vendors for content,
and they’re working outside and across the organization
to maximize talent and opportunities. YouTube stars
seem to effortlessly cross over to mainstream fame, often
outstripping traditional movie stars in fans and followers—
the very metrics that advertisers covet. Recognizing this
shift toward influence over affluence, Disney purchased the
YouTube multichannel network Maker Studios last year for
nearly $1 billion.
For Apple, open innovation hasn’t been a challenge to
culture; it has been a pillar of it. Even with a best-in-class
internal design team, Apple consistently reaches outside
its network for human-centered design. This is seen as one
of the brand’s strongest capabilities, helping to cement
its innovative ethos. In this way, the company effectively
outsources many of its curation challenges—and still comes
out winning.
As the old agency model for content and innovation
continues to give way to more nimble factions, brands that
succeed will be those that bring this talent together and
harness it for cutting edge, salient and actionable ideas.
That means figuring out the company’s core capabilities and
then investing in the right talent within, across and outside
the organization to effectively build on those capabilities
and drive the brand forward.
Illustrative entertainment, media and communications
brands in the top 10% of all US brands:
11
Discovery Channel
Fox Networks
Netflix
Disney
National Geographic
Weather Channel
DreamWorks
NBC
Fast Company, March 15, 2011, “Netflix May Offer Original Programming: Change of Heart for CEO Reed Hastings?”
VIII. Industry snapshot
38
Financial services
Consumers place more weight on brand leadership in
financial services than they do in most other categories:
66% of US consumers say brand leadership is very
important to their purchase consideration when choosing
financial services. Yet the industry is falling short on
expectations—only 47% think brands in the financial
services category are demonstrating this leadership.
The proof is in the rankings: only eight financial services
brands made it into the top 10% of brands today. PayPal is
the only financial services brand that has staked out a spot
in the top 100 brands overall.
Much of PayPal’s brand leadership hinges on its early mover
success in bringing convenience to life for consumers,
giving peers a more seamless way to manage what was
then otherwise a clunky repayment process. In short,
PayPal really began as a technology company—but they’ve
transcended boundaries to become a standout in the world
of financial services.
1/3
of all financial services
innovation is happening outside of
the category.
VIII. Industry snapshot
Here’s the reality plaguing banks today: one-third of all
financial services innovation is happening outside of the
category. For big banks, that means they can no longer win
simply by outspending regional and smaller banks. As a
result, many are establishing innovation groups and venture
arms. But truly visionary innovation may require letting go
of some of the tried-and-true banking tactics—shifting from
insight to farsight to better anticipate consumer needs.
In an era of cloud computing and services delivered to
smartphones, fintech start-ups have no need to duplicate
the retail branch networks that tied customers to banks, so
they aren’t saddled with sunk costs in back-office banking
systems. This is forcing established brands to reassess their
investment allocation, shifting money from old channels,
like retail branches, into more relevant, convenient
mediums like mobile banking.
Venmo, which is part of PayPal, has been one of the
most insurgent startups in the category. The peer-topeer payments app has put a social spin on the payments
process. Not only does it address a key consumer pain
point (allowing friends to send each other “bills” rather
than having to uncomfortably ask for repayment), it
also engenders creativity. Like a status update, these
transactions tell a story about what friends are up to—
explanations that are typically funny and engaging, enough
so that Venmo delivers a customized “Year in Review” to
each user for nostalgia and laughs.
39
Financial players also need to align with consumer values
to square off on trust gaps. Citigroup made a nod to
committing heresy last year when it introduced the Citi
Double Cash MasterCard, which breaks with category
convention by incentivizing consumers to pay off their bill
rather than collecting credit. The card rewards consumers
with 1% back when they make a purchase and another 1%
when they pay the bill. TransUnion, one of the three major
credit reporting agencies, has recently made efforts to make
the credit reports it provides consumers more transparent
and easier to comprehend. The company is also developing
a new credit score to help lenders better assess potential
borrowers, going beyond just on-time payment to factor in
things like whether a borrower pays more than the minimum.
At a time when consumers increasingly seek brands that “do
the right thing”—57% of US consumers say that they avoid
buying brands from companies whose values contradict
their own, according to BAV data—financial services may be
well to commit “do good” heresy.
Illustrative financial brands in
the top 10% of all US brands:
BlueCross BlueShield
MasterCard
NYSE
PayPal
State Farm
TurboTax
Visa
Wells Fargo
VIII. Industry snapshot
40
How PwC and Strategy& can help
To have a deeper discussion about brand leadership and your brand, please contact:
Deborah Bothun
Entertainment and Media and
Communications
(646) 471-9048
[email protected]
Steve Barr
Retail and Consumer
(415) 498-5190
[email protected]
Mary Lyons
People and Change
(617) 530-4863
[email protected]
Matthew Lieberman
Consumer Intelligence Series
(213) 217-3326
[email protected]
Matthew Egol
PwC Digital, Strategy&
(212) 551-6716
[email protected]
Andrea Fishman
PwC Digital
(713) 598-4401
[email protected]
Jeremy Fox-Geen
Financial Services
(646) 471-6398
[email protected]
Gary Neilson
Organizational Change, Strategy&
(312) 578-4727
[email protected]
Rik Reppe
Experience Center
(612) 596-4421
[email protected]
Pierre-Alain Sur
Technology
(501) 772-8067
[email protected]
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