There are two strategic steps that have year after year proven to help brands outperform their competitors. It cannot be all that difficult to remember two of anything, and Bain & Company, a management consulting firm, regularly see so many companies failing to stick to those two steps. Examples from cosmetics in support.
Recently, Bain & Company revisited research that the firm conducted six years ago, when the study of more than 500 global brands in the US showed that 90 of them had consistently outperformed their categories between 1997 and 2001. That research found that any brand could win with a differential commitment to innovation and advertising significantly increasing the odds. But when Bain & Company looked again this year, it found that only 13 of the 90 brand winners from 2001 continued to outpace their categories through 2007.
It was clear that many once-leading brands allowed themselves to fall behind. But why? The simple answer is that it is difficult to sustain commitment to innovation and effective advertising. While few would dispute that logic, Bain & Company wanted to find out why proactive behavior was so hard to maintain. So, the consulting firm analyzed the experiences of those 13 brands that were at the top in the first study and were still at the top when the work was revisited.
Ultimately, Bain & Company identified two major missteps that endanger even very successful brands -missteps that the 13 winner brands seem to have avoided.
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