WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BUILD BRAND BREAKTHROUGHS?

More companies want to invent the future faster. Companies need to grow NOW and are committing to building a breakthrough for the business. A breakthrough can take the form of a repositioned brand with a new brand story that is more aligned with who they are today; a new product or service that helps drive customer experience and engagement; Or, because of a merger or acquisition, companies need to get everyone aligned around a unified brand in order to work as one. So, breakthroughs come in the form of a brand evolution, brand repositioning or new product innovation. A  Finch Sprint can help a company solve any problem they’re wrestling with. It helps them go from blank slate to breakthrough in 5 weeks instead of 5 months or longer.

Finch Sprint is a customizable brand accelerator that uses empathy, energy, and ingenuity to help organizations of all sizes go from blank slate to breakthrough in five weeks.

CMOs and other decision-makers within organizations know they need to grow their business to stay in business but often don’t have a reliable way to innovate. Leaders know WHAT they need to do but are unsure HOW to do it. To be clear, brand breakthroughs often take the form of a new purpose-led brand story, positioning, go-to-market messaging, or new products or services that thrill and delight core customers and advance the customer experience. 

THREE BIG CHALLENGES OF BUILDING BRAND BREAKTHROUGHS

While the idea of brand innovations or breakthroughs sounds exciting, it’s fraught with inherent roadblocks that need to be overcome early in the process to be successful. 

1. Making Time

Everyone is busy, we get it. Everyone is going from meeting to meeting doing what is necessary to keep the business running yet is still somehow expected to do all the other things needed to grow the business. Prioritization matters and leaders need to make the time to do the things that matter to the business and to the growth of the organization. Sometimes this means bringing in an outside partner to help you articulate the goal, commit to the necessary time to work on it, and then make sure you get the most out the time you and your team devote to the project. Time and again experience has shown us that if you don’t make the time to do something right, you compromise your chances of success – and nobody wants that.

2. Making Decisions

How many times have you been part of a meeting where the only outcome of the meeting is an agreement to the date and time of the next meeting? You’re not alone. Breakthroughs are most certainly biased towards actions, and actions require decisions. That’s why it’s critical for participants to agree to not end the meeting without some decision being made. 

3. Making Progress

Moving the team forward with confidence to completion is the secret sauce to building breakthroughs. Making sure you’re making meaningful progress in a timely fashion and not just doing meetings after meetings is critical to success, and to the spirit of the team working on the project. Yet, why do so many teams struggle to maintain momentum?

FINCH SPRINTS HELP BRANDS THRIVE IN THE REAL WORLD…RAPIDLY

Over the past few years, the sprint model has grown in popularity because of its ability to pull the right people together quickly, focus attention and talent in the right places, and generate and activate powerful ideas in weeks instead of months or years.

In today’s world, we’ve found that brands don’t need more time, they need better tools. That’s where the Finch Sprint comes in.

A Finch Sprint is a customizable brand accelerator that incorporates rapid intelligence gathering, collaborative creativity, and timely decisions to advance ideas that advance a client’s business. Working closely with the client team, we move quickly along a prescribed strategic path to generate fresh, highly focused ideas based on customer insights, using strategic frameworks and high-impact tactics to drive success faster and more effectively than what you’re probably used to. 

In a Finch Sprint, the team moves fast in tight formation towards a defined destination using real-life listening, real-time co-creation, and real-world validation to get us there.

Real-life Listening

Using agile consumer insight gathering techniques, some traditional, some forward-facing, we quickly gain an insights base of consumer voices to build a foundation of truth around the work.

Real-time Co-Creation

Once we’ve built the strategic base and defined the brief, we co-create with internal teams, external teams and/or with clients to generate a wide range of focused ideas quickly. We do this through a curated set of creative exercises and visual thinking techniques honed with some of the world’s most recognized brands. Whether it’s remote or live in-room, our sessions are facilitated to be highly charged experiences of rigorous what-iffing.

Real-world Validation

Once we’ve landed on the preferred solution, we ‘reality check’ it with live consumers. It’s not a meandering or one-sided ‘focus group,’ but more of a quick conversation with users meant to pressure-test the idea, validate it, nurture it, and ideally take it from good to great through the eyes of the people it’s meant to influence. 

Are you building your next breakthrough? Let’s talk. Let’s Sprint.

Calling all innovators, upstarts, and change agents in charge, let’s work together to help invent the future faster and keep your brand moving forward no matter the climate. For more information about Finch Sprints, let’s schedule a quick call and listen to our Real World Branding Podcast episode,  Ready, Set, Sprint! with Gary Kopervas, SVP, Creative Strategy at Finch Brands. We’d love to explain how we can help your business go from a blank slate to breakthrough in 5 weeks. 

“Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye. “ 

    Dorothy Parker, American Poet