Grow the Core: How to Focus on your Core Business for Brand Success

Chapter 12

Grow the core – getting started

 Headlines

A Grow the Core project has four key stages. This starts with an insight phase to create fuel to ignite idea creation. The lead ideas can then be brought to life and explored before being ‘pitched’ to the team. The final selection of ideas is based on brand and business-building potential, with these ideas being used to create the brand's marketing chapter plan.

This final chapter is designed to show you what a Growing the Core project looks like, based on the projects done by my consultancy, the brandgym. A typical Grow the Core project is based on four key stages: Insight, Ideas, Exploration and Action. You will see each of these in turn. An overview of the workouts is given in Figure 12.1, along with a rough idea of how long each stage should take.

Figure 12.1 Grow the Core project workplan example.

Before launching into the work, there are a few things to get right from the start to increase the chances of success:

• Who: a cross-functional team of c.10–12 people is ideal to have a spread of talent without being so big it becomes unwieldy. This will typically cover marketing, sales, product development, consumer insight, finance and sometimes one or two people from the creative agencies on your brand. Book these people ...