How We Help Clients Apply Our Intelligence to Impact Business Results
A corporate client chose to use our Decision Forum™ service to translate our intelligence on a new dynamic into action. Using our three-phase approach, the client examined the implications of change for their business, defined the marketing program impact, and developed an action plan to respond to this change.
Decision Forum™ in Action: A Financial Services Client



Discovery
We Review the Intelligence and the New Dynamic

The Dynamic Described: Beginning in early 2001, we picked up the signs of a new dynamic we call "Sustainability". Individuals were piecing together "tools" that would help them remain viable in the long term. A preference for balance and moderation, an attraction to authenticity, a need for accountability, and a new aversion to risk emerged as part of a contemporary-life tool kit to help individuals guide decisions affecting family, finances, careers, services, products and leisure. The personal responses to the attacks of September 11 fit into and confirmed this new mode of operating by individuals.
The Intelligence on Consumer Financial Behavior
As a financial services firm, the client’s interest is Sustainability impact on consumer financial practices and standard of living:

Movement from equities into money markets, bond funds
Rise in sales of fixed annuities
Increase in bank savings accounts
Interest income under siege
Prepaid tuition program sales up
Second job increases
Greater customer scrutiny for suitability for IPO offerings
Credit card delinquencies up
Unemployment at 5.7%
Credit card usage down, debit card usage up
Experimentation
We worked with the client to define Sustainability implications for their:

Customers
Looking for guarantees
Reevaluating risk in household balance sheet
If a retiree, looking for cash flow
Products
New ways to talk about risk
Return to assest allocation
New solutions to new problems
Advertising/Messages
Communicate safety, comfort...
Address uncertainty
Position the firm as problem solver
We used guided brainstorming to generate a set of opportunities:

Repackage and relaunch fixed annuity product
Maintain successful existing brand imagery; change advertising messages
Develop retiree financial audit for branch use
  Portfolio
  Household balance sheet
Bundle asset allocation tools and funds and relaunch
Execute new marketing program for automatic investing service
Repackage and rename core cash account with new features that emphasize stability and liquidity
Decision Trials
Opportunity Selection
Using a prioritization activity the client chose to develop an opportunity that involved bundling an existing product with several existing and new features.
Opportunity Action Plan
The client marketing team developed an Action Plan:
Product Management Team
Handle technical htmlects of bundling new features
Refine positioning and create packaging
Customer Marketing Team
Modify customer screening process
Provide representatives in field with new sales approach
Marketing Communications Team
Develop marketing campaign and sales support materials
Integrate with brand advertising
Outcome
Launched within three months