Let’s play a quick game of word association. What comes to mind when I say, “Vitality?”
- Energy?
- Life?
- Forceful?
- Vigor?
- Youth?
Whatever words come to mind, they’re sure to be strong and relevant. We all work to maintain our vitality.
Now, let’s talk about Brand Vitality. Despite record sums of money being spent on advertising, branding and marketing, brands are becoming increasingly less relevant and companies are struggling. Whether you look at a stock market that hasn’t moved in over 12 years, historically high unemployment, stalled growth, or the structural distrust within consumers today; it doesn’t take a genius to realize that traditional models and approaches aren’t sustainable.
Despite the challenges we are all dealing with, there are companies whose brands continue to grow – regardless of the economy. Companies like Patagonia, P&G, FedEx, Coca-Cola and Starbucks (not to mention Apple) illicit powerful emotions and corresponding profits.
These brands have vitality. Their vitality allows them to grow profits, and stock value, to grow revenue faster than their competition while:
- Decreasing their costs for customer acquisition and retention.
- Increasing the average value of their customer.
- Increasing the average lifetime of their customers.
Simply put, these brands are able to grow faster and faster – and it costs them less and less to do it.
What impact do these principles have on the bottom line?
To test this, we created The Brand Vitality Index™. The impact is eye opening. In the last 10 years, both the Dow and the S&P are up approximately 60%. In that time The Brand Vitality Index™ is up 696%.
While we certainly don’t believe that the world needs another blog, we do believe that there’s an important conversation that businesses aren’t having. It is our hope that you join us here, share your thoughts and contribute the conversation. We’ll share successes, insights, road maps and even the occasional rant.
We hope you enjoy, and benefit, from it.