IN THE LAND OF THE BLIND THE 5I’s IS KING– Brand planning simplified

“Failing to plan, is planning to fail” – Alan Lakein once said.

It’s called by so many different terms in different businesses around the world, Game, Brand or Marketing Planning. So as Mr. Shakespeare so aptly put it “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other word would smell as sweet”. Such is brand planning – different businesses and different processes but fundamentally the same thing.
Brand Planning is one of the key fundamentals of being in Marketing. It’s a process where we pull all relevant data or unorganized facts that need to be processed together, sort it methodically into information (the data presented in organised manner) so that were able to derive insight from it. Now we develop a set of activities (read plan) to help us address the opportunity the insight uncovered and…. drumroll we grow the business. Simple enough right?
Well it should be until us Marketing folk over complicate and over intellectualise the process with so many different templates and processes within processes and ambiguous terms that it ends up feeling like you’re in a tumble dryer with a hangover and your head feels like it want to explode. Literally – like a watermelon hit with high calibre shot gun…pink stuff and water…everywhere
I had the privilege to gain really great Brand planning experience during my time as brand manager on Jose Cuervo and Captain Morgan – a grounding that I have found invaluable during the course of my career. This planning process is in the form of the 5I’s process just with some sexy templates to help drive appropriate levels of rigour. I have found this structure very useful over the years. Whether it is writing strategy or whether its brand plans: It. Just. Works.

The 5 what? What does the 5I’s stand for?
Simply put it’s the following: Information, Issue, Insight, and Implication with last but not the least Implementation
So how does this framework work and how do I begin?

Information
I prefer to start with Information – collecting the data from sources that is relevant and reliable. I sort the data sort it into useful chunks of information – looking at the “themes” that I see correlating across the difference sources. Begin closer to come – get a good Brand understanding. Do you have tracking data, research relating to you the brand you work on that will give you an idea on what’s going on? The look at your consumer – are there consumer dynamics that has changed or is in the process of changing (trends & behaviours) and then look wider at your Market context. What are the competitors doing, do we have information to help us understand if it’s working for them, how are they positioned relative to your brand? Market dynamics can also have a significant impact on your brand so it’s very important to understand the underlying Macro and Micro factors that can have an impact!
Issue
Brands are like people and people have issues so brands can have issues too. You have collected the information and there arecertain things about the information that will jump out at you…. These themes of correlating information will start to give you the clues on the potential issues your brand might have….. There can be one or two or there can be more issues if the brand is a women. The trick here is to prioritise the issues in terms of Business impact and ease of execution – this can be done in a very simple 2×2 matrix. Now choose which is the most relevant and pertinent issue
Insight
An insight is a deep and penetrating discovery about consumer motivations, which we can leverage to unlock growth for our business. An insight should not be confused with an observation: things we have seen or heard, some factual information that describes the behaviour. An insight is not something you want consumers to think, or that you hope they believe. It’s a reflection of the current state – the good, the bad and the sometime damn ugly. In a nutshell, that’s how you usually discover the insight; by spotting something about your brand which has associations which are significant to your target consumer. It’s about motivations and how we can relate it to our brand that will enable us to unlock growth – thus an Insight is like the 2 sides of a coin the human motivation and the brand connection –It’s really important to keep these two halves of the insight separate – Otherwise we end up with something about us and our brands, not about consumers
Implication
This part of the process is really about identifying potential strategies and tactics that can be implemented that will allow you to take advantage of the insight identified and drive growth for your brand. A great way to ensure that you explore a multitude of different potential areas is through ideation with cross functional teams within your business and your different agency partners. Your job as a brand manager is to shortlist and prioritise these ideas again against ease of execution and business impact. There are many ways to skin a cat – and many potential strategies will come to light. They key here is to make choices – and this is what strategy is ultimately prioritise and choice. Choice is not easy and we has humans are pre-programed to feel discomfort when this happens. More is less – even if it makes you feel more comfortable – you will end up doing a lot and end up not having the desired impact. Be brave, put your big girl of guy knickers on make the hard choices! Rather do one or two big things than clutter your plan – it’s a lesson I learned the hard way!
Nearly there……hang in there….
 Implementation

It’s the process of executing against the tactics and strategies identified in “Implication” this is really where the rubber hits the road and you can see the Strategy or plan come to life. This is where the briefing, media and depending on your industry the channel planning process kicks in. It’s a detailed process and a lot of hard work, but there is nothing more rewarding seeing the fruits of your planning in Market and having a positive impact on sales. This is also where Measurement and Evaluation is key. Closing the loop, capture and sharing learnings is invaluable not only for your own learning and developing but also for the broader business, I have seen it so many times where the same mistake gets made over and over in other Markets costing the business valuable resources. Resources that could have been spend much more effectively if the successes and just as important the failures where shared!

Key Learnings 
• Use simple but clear frameworks to help structure your thinking – for example 5I’s
• Templates are good, they help to structure your thinking and ensure the correct level of rigour is applied BUT… Don’t over complicate your plan or strategy with fancy and unnecessary templates
• Don’t fix what is not broken – you end up creating more problems for the brand than you began with in the first place
• When looking at the data chunking is your friend, chunk the info – look for data pieces that inform or correlate with each other and sort them together
• Keep it simple, Keep it consistent – very rarely in my experience (unless you throw an Nkandla sized budget at it) will you solve a Brand issue in a short period – it is a steady slog. We as Marketers tend to think a problem is fixed quicker than it really is – be patient.
• Make the hard choices because less is more – you try and fix all the problems at once, you will end up not fixing any issues on your brand at all