SKIMspiration blog

How can a global organization improve strategic decision-making, align all stakeholders around an action plan, and accelerate deployment?

These were the exact questions Danone faced last year in its plant-based acceleration unit of the specialized nutrition division.

As one of the top global food companies, adapting to changing consumer behavior is always a key challenge for Danone. Consumer demand was rising for plant-based products. Danone wanted to continue to grow infant nutrition by leveraging plant-based assets from the company. Danone’s global strategy and insights team saw an opportunity to use business wargaming to help accelerate strategic decision-making and growth for its plant-based portfolio.

Business wargaming is a data-driven, agile decision-making approach that helps companies make faster and more holistic and bold decisions.

I recently sat down with our clients at Danone to discuss their new approach for agile, cross-functional and collective decision-making. Read on to learn how Danone used business wargaming to transform strategic decision-making and lead the business into a promising new market. 

How organizations can turn “intent” to act sustainably into “action”

Consumers are becoming increasingly vocal about a need for sustainable change in society. While it is encouraging to see this growth in people’s intent to act and buy more sustainably, their actual behavior is lagging.

How can organizations help inspire this behavior? Through consumer psychology, SKIM’s psychological distance framework can help explain why this lag is happening and offer tangible communication guidelines on how to turn intent into action to build a more sustainable world.

A fun and holistic process that uncovers the right decisions FAST

“More data, more problems.” That’s how a Product Insights Lead recently described to us the reality many brands face when it comes to making decisions today. Holistic, data-driven decision making is more complex than ever before, thanks to a variety of competing realities:

• Business intelligence is often siloed in different departments and data sources
• Different data sources may give conflicting insights
• Stakeholders have differing concerns and perspectives
• The competitive landscape may not be well understood
• Decisions need to be made quickly in response to changing markets and priorities

These realities impede your ability to make the best decisions to achieve your company’s goals.

So how can you bring together various data sources, information, insights, and stakeholders to make holistic and agile decisions?

Given today’s increasingly green-washed competitive landscape, it’s difficult to stand out, remain relevant, and drive consideration and conversion at the same time. Optimizing sustainability product communications is one way to help your brand achieve these simultaneous goals.

There is also an inherent conflict many marketers face when developing sustainability-related messaging: Sustainable products and services primarily benefit society in the long-term, rather than individual consumers in the short term.

How can brands reconcile this conflicting duality between personal short-term goals and broader long-term goals? How can your brand best provide product sustainability information to consumers in an authentic and impactful way?

Uncovering more accurate and actionable consumer decision journeys

Nearly all consumer decision journeys have shifted over the past year – new journeys have emerged, while others have been reshaped.

You may be wondering how to best drive consideration and purchase of your brand. For many of our clients, the answer lies in untangling the messy omnichannel decision journey.

With an abundance of online and offline triggers, touchpoints, transitions, and interactions, that means an equal number of paths-to-purchases for consumers. How can you gain clarity here and take action to influence their decisions?

Psychographics offer brands valuable, but often overlooked, clues about how consumers make decisions online.

When looking to understand and influence the online shopper journey, there is often a tendency to focus on touchpoints, like social media, reviews and online retailers. However, there is another alternative view of segmentation digital marketers could consider – psychographics.

Because consumer journeys are highly personal – as they are dependent on traits, habits and context – consumer behaviors aren’t homogenous. Psychographic segmentation (personality traits, beliefs, values, etc.) can add another level of accuracy to predicting online decision behavior. Your digital marketing strategies and spend could be more impactful, generating greater online conversion and loyalty, when truly customized to “best fit” your audience.

Read on to learn how different personality traits can affect online decision making. Understanding and applying these insights can give you a competitive edge to ensure consumers choose your brand online.

2020 has seen a significant acceleration in the digitization of healthcare. Telehealth, in particular, is playing bigger role than ever before – impacting patients, healthcare professionals (HCPs), hospitals and pharma companies alike. To explore the effects and implications of COVID-19 on pharma marketing strategies, our healthcare team conducted research on how patients experienced this change to a more digital health system.

How do you best develop compelling B2B messaging that will motivate customers globally – in a crowded online marketplace?

Such was the challenge Google faced when it set out to improve its marketing communications for retailers last year – to make its messaging approach more consistent across its various channels.

In preparing for a global retail marketing campaign, Google realized it needed to make it easier for retailers to understand what the company could offer and why they were the best partner to help them grow.

Why do people choose one product or service over another? What needs or objectives are tapped into when you consider buying or recommending one brand over another?

Whether your brand targets consumers or professionals, understanding how decision behavior works and systematically applying its principles can help you build more effective strategies to drive customer acquisition, brand loyalty and continued growth.

We recommend you tap into “habitual” behavior to reinforce positive habits or break the ones that don’t benefit your brand and analyze “deliberate” behavior to assess how, where and when your brand can intervene.

Here we explain how decision-making works and the behavioral steps that are involved in making choices. Read on to learn how leveraging these insights to reinforce or disrupt habits can help your brand grow.

Online service providers have enjoyed a boom in sales over the past several months. Consumers have either increased their consumption or have been forced to try services ranging from media streaming and online subscriptions to food delivery apps.

As we gradually return to “normalcy,” many companies are wondering: which services will consumers continue to subscribe to, and which will be abandoned? Will these new habits stick?