This comprehensive web-based solution delivers insights aligned with how marketing-driven organizations analyze, plan, track [image-nocss] and adjust their marketing and pricing strategies throughout the year in order to stay relevant and ahead of competition. The announcement was made at the "Summit 2010: Reinventing CPG & Retail Conference," held at the J.W. Marriott San Antonio Hill Country.
Marketing activities have faced increased scrutiny during the last two to three years as a result of recessionary pressures on CPG bottom lines, a general decline in the effectiveness of traditional media spending as well as the dramatic rise in the influence of online campaigns. Additionally, the increasing importance of online marketing has added complexity with analyzing effectiveness, since marketers must study both the efficacy of online efforts alone as well as the combined influence traditional and online activities have on shoppers.
"Too often, in the past, marketing planning was limited to using analytics once a year, usually during the up-front planning process," said SymphonyIRI executive vice president and division president of modeling and analytics solutions Patrick Cummings. "Today's marketers need to not only optimize their plans up front, but they must also be flexible and nimble in the face of economic and environmental shifts that include declines in television audience size and the increasing impact of online and social media. Analytic solutions need to provide organizations with continuous, repeatable capability, enabling them to improve their effectiveness and drive efficiency with their marketing plans throughout the year."
Another challenge CPG companies face today is the need to quantify the impact of pricing and marketing activities in concert with and independent of each other. This requires sales and marketing organizations to collaborate effectively and more directly link price and trade planning, and execution to media and consumer programs. SymphonyIRI's proprietary modeling platforms, inherent in Brand Advantage, allow CPG companies to produce marketing mix as well as price and trade results with aligned data and modeling sources to deliver "one point of truth" to the organization and pave the way for improved collaboration and alignment between marketing and sales.
"The current environment demands that companies innovate to achieve competitive advantage," added Cummings. "Analytics must support teams across the organization in order to find ways to achieve ongoing return on investment (ROI) improvements. Brand Advantage provides an increased level of flexibility that enables marketers to successfully evaluate their programs on an ongoing basis to maximize effectiveness and seize opportunities."
Through an approach based on a combination of SymphonyIRI's expertise and technology, Brand Advantage enables users to simulate and optimize multiple brand and media scenarios. It also supports user-friendly and relevant online dashboards, reports and simulated plans. This holistic solution provides CPG companies with a 360-degree view of their brand performance against past marketing plans.
Brand Advantage also provides the ability to identify areas of improvement and pinpoint optimization opportunities by volume or profit through the following modules:
Marketing Evaluation: Companies can effectively establish the current market environment and drive the annual planning process with insights into current best practices, analysis and reports. These insights help evaluate current market situations and translate available data and resources to develop annual plans to increase revenue and market share. Simulation and What-if Planning: A combination of brand marketing simulation capabilities enable forward-looking insights into how well various marketing plans will perform against different groups of target markets and enable companies to efficiently adapt to and address potential future business challenges. Optimization: In today's ever-shifting environment, an avant-garde media optimization and planning tool is essential to pinpoint the most effective marketing medium and help companies maximize their ROI by delivering analytics insights into the implications of business constraints. Brand Advantage empowers CPG companies to have a proactive and collaborative approach to marketing and sales planning so appropriate course corrections can be identified throughout the year, the firm said.
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