Strategic element:  the consumer is central

The first reason why this element is strategic is that placing the consumer centrally is a key element in reaching our vision of creating the future of play.

The consumer is our future, without consumers, no business.  We do need answer not only to what the consumer likes today, but also what he will like tomorrow.

We live in a very changing world, with very well informed consumers, influenced by many impulses. Disconnecting from this reality and not having it as a strategic pillar would be a big mistake.

Secondly, the consumers are key decision makers. The consumer is the one that decide if he is buying our product or not, it is the consumer that likes or dislikes, it is the consumer that enjoys yes or not his children discovering and playing with our toys, it is the consumer that shares opinions; it is the consumer that compares prices…

We can develop several work areas around this strategic element that are very valuable:

ü  making sure our consumer understands our brand messages

ü  making sure our consumer has a clear understanding on our pricing policy

ü  making sure we connect in the wright way with the consumer

ü  making sure we have a clear objective of who we want to reach

ü  making sure we will engage the consumers in the following 5 years with our actions

ü  making sure we are recognizable for the consumers, on every single contact point

ü  making sure we bring innovation to our consumer

ü  making sure we bring the emotion to our consumer

ü  making sure we bring added value for our consumer

ü  making sure we are available for our consumer

ü  making sure we adapt locally to the needs of the consumer

We are a marketing company with strong brands and our mission is to connect our consumers for lifetime.  If we want to reach this goal, we need to place him centrally and make a strategic priority of this element.

Creativity and innovation

This is to me a key driver for growth. We operate in the imaginary and fantastic industry of toys.

A business that is very sensitive to trends and waves. To be successful in such an environment, we need to give space to the teams and stimulate them to be creative and innovative.

It is a daily task to think innovative and creative, but this is not enough to me to generate maximum growth out of it for the company.

To make it enter in as a mindset and making sure it becomes a real growth driver, I would set up a creativity and innovation process.

I would initiative a competitive spirit in the regional teams to come up with innovative & creative ideas to grow the business. 

To make it work, I would develop a common framework with clear measurable elements in it:

ü  Business idea

ü  Sponsor

ü  Department

ü  Action

ü  Timing

ü  Investment

ü  Growth

ü  ROI

Each team would have the chance to defend its new idea and explain in detail how they would grow the business with their innovative plan.  I would set clear expectations in terms of ROI and for shore the ideas must match our overall strategies.

This will help us to change business approach and to think more openly about growing the business in a different way.

The impulse of the competition would generate also more discussion between departments in the company. It would create a new dynamic and growth would be much more central in business discussions.

The best practices could be shared between the regions in Europe (or even outsight) and we could duplicate several initiatives.

Important success driver would be that we dare to invest in this process and also in tools and resources for the projects that won the competition, based on clear measurable elements.

16-06-2014 om 00:00 geschreven door maertend