Benjamin Cawthray: “Benchmark within your category”

This year Kantar Worldpanel published the sixth edition of its Brand Footprint report and the ranking of the world’s most chosen brands. In this latest Perspectives video, Benjamin Cawthray, Global Thought Leadership Director at Kantar Worldpanel, considers how this can be used by global brand managers to help set realistic growth targets.

Looking first at the key learnings from this years’ report, the main one is the importance of in-market execution, looking specifically at the market or county. As Benjamin notes:

“It is staggering to me the level of growth within a country whether global or local compared to a global brand’s overall performance. I have a new-found appreciation for the work of global brand managers and just how hard it is to manage their brand across different countries. Achieving consistent growth is extremely difficult.”

Kantar Worldpanel has consistently talked about the fact that, in the case of nine out of ten brands, growth is delivered by finding new shoppers. Benjamin goes on to consider the fundamentals to growth:

“It’s important to set realistic penetration targets for your brand. We’ve got some great macro learnings from the study this year and there are three recommendations when setting your penetration target.

1. Always set targets within the market - this dictates the amount of penetration that is achievable.
2. Look at the size you are today, whether you are a small, medium or large brand will dictate how much penetration could be expected.
3. Think about what is your current performance. If you are a brand recovering from decline you should expect less penetration growth than a brand currently already in growth.”

Alongside the three areas outlined above, Benjamin then looks at what else can help set penetration targets.

“Look at your specific category. Everything in the fundamentals is global and macro and there are some great learnings there. As a brand manager I would look at what is the benchmark for shampoo, for laundry detergent, for tinned beans. These will be different from the global learnings. The first thing is to set a realistic target.

The other thing is to look at your brand and how big it has been. Go back further than just the last two years, how big has it been over the last five or even ten years. That will help dictate a realistic target going forward for 2019 and beyond.”

Watch the full interview by clicking on the video above.

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