The 7S McKinsey model

Most of us grew up learning about 'the 4Ps' of the marketing mix: product, price, place, promotion. And this model still works when the focus is on product marketing. However most developed economies have moved on, with an ever-increasing focus on service businesses, and therefore service marketing. To better represent the challenges of service marketing, McKinsey developed a new framework for analyzing and improving organizational effectiveness, the 7S model:

The 3Ss across the top of the model are described as 'Hard Ss':

• Strategy: The direction and scope of the company over the long term. • Structure: The basic organization of the company, its departments, reporting lines, areas of expertise, and responsibility (and how they inter-relate). • Systems: Formal and informal procedures that govern everyday activity, covering everything from management information systems, through to the systems at the point of contact with the customer (retail systems, call centre systems, online systems, etc).

The 4Ss across the bottom of the model are less tangible, more cultural in nature, and were termed 'Soft Ss' by McKinsey:

• Skills: The capabilities and competencies that exist within the company. What it does best. • Shared values: The values and beliefs of the company. Ultimately they guide employees towards 'valued' behavior. • Staff: The company's people resources and how they are developed, trained, and motivated. • Style: The leadership approach of top management and the company's overall operating approach.

In combination they provide another effective framework for analyzing the organization and its activities. In a marketing-led company they can be used to explore the extent to which the company is working coherently towards a distinctive and motivating place in the mind of consumer.

Brand asset valuator (BAV)

The Brand Asset Valuator (BAV) is a database of consumer perception of brands created and managed by BrandAsset Consulting, a division of Young & Rubicam Brands to provide information to enable firms to improve the marketing decision-making process and to manage brands better. Brand Asset Valuator and BAV also describe the Y&R group managing the database.

BAV measures the value of a brand along four dimensions: "Differentiation," "Relevance," "Esteem," and "Knowledge." Differentiation and Relevance build up to "Brand Strength." Esteem and Knowledge are used to calculate "Brand Stature." BAV defines these terms as follows.

• "Differentiation" quantifies the brand's point of difference.
• "Relevance" how appropriate the brand is to you.
• "Esteem" how well the regarded the brand is.
• "Knowledge" an intimate understanding of the brand.
• "Brand Strength" describes the brand's growth potential.
• "Brand Stature" describes the brand's current power.

BAV's database is the result of the world's most extensive research project on branding, based on data on 30,000 brands across 400,000 consumers in 48 countries through 240 studies.

Young & Rubicam’s BAV IN INDIA

Young & Rubicam's proprietary Brand Asset Valuator (BAV) has studied brands worldwide since 1993, and was introduced in India in 2003.

The BAV demonstrates how brands gain and lose strength, based on the strength of the perceptions that consumers have about brands. So it can be used to evaluate how a brand is doing in relation to the entire universe of brands, and not just in relation to similar products. Its database comprises 13,000 brands as perceived by 90,000 consumers across 32 countries; it is conducted every two to three years.

In India, the fieldwork was done in the first quarter of the year across 3,000 respondents in eight centres for about 1,400 brands. It will help marketers understand the brand in totality, at a "diagnostic, analytical and predictive level," and evaluate brands against actual competition, for a better understanding of the maturity of the market and the product life cycle, said Mr K. Subramanian, Planning Director, Rediffusion DYR.

The BAV measures all brands on a set of 48 image and personality parameters on a seven-point semantic scale (`agree,' `strongly agree'... ). These attributes are then correlated to four key parameters: differentiation, or, how distinct the brand is; relevance, or how appropriate the brand is to the target consumer; esteem, or how highly the consumer regards the brand; and knowledge, or how well the consumer knows the brand.

The BAV then constructs a power grid that plots Emerging Brands (strong differentiation), Unrealised Potential (strong differentiation, with increasing relevance and esteem), Declining Leaders (with decreasing differentiation and esteem), and Eroding Potential (low on differentiation and relevance).