Product | Price | Place | Promotion
A key advantage of the Big Picture vis-à-vis traditional approaches to strategic marketing lies in the economies it brings to decision making: once the strategic decisions have been taken, executional decisions (products and services; pricing; distribution, and communications) flow out the framework. Implementation of this new disciplined approach to marketing strategy allows managers to continuously test hypotheses and learn from mistakes while replicating successes.
Product and Service Alignment
A product portfolio review using the Big Picture framework uncovers opportunities to rationalize and improve the portfolio by identifying areas where greater alignment is needed between the firms positioning variables and its product and service offerings.
Strategic Pricing
The strategic focus of the firm determines the type of pricing strategy and the tactical approach the firm should adopt. Most pricing problems are intimately linked to other executional issues of the firm or a lack of a firm pricing strategy; once those issues are fixed our clients are able to restore their pricing power.
Channels of Distribution
We find that companies tend to take distribution channels as fixed, and fail to identify opportunities to better use their channels to further their strategic objectives. We encourage our clients to think broadly and creatively about opportunities to better manage their channels to improve, not just their performance, but the health and sustainability of their industries.
Promotion
A commonly held belief that the objective of advertising is to “sell” leads many companies to purchase advertising that is not aligned with the company’s strategy and is therefore ineffective in advancing it. Yet communication objectives are linked to the choice of strategic focus already made earlier in the framework. We help our clients realign communications activities for greater efficiency and impact.
