Brand Acceleration Services

Brand acceleration services turn what a brand means into demand a business can actually collect: the marketing strategy, the targeting, the route to market, the cost of winning a customer, and the campaigns and channels that convert demand once it is there. Vivaldi has done this work since 1999, for companies including Renault UK, Allianz, Generali, Hendrick’s Gin and the neobank Current.

One clarification first, because the phrase is used two ways. Several vendors sell marketing automation and asset management software under the name. This is the strategy and marketing work itself, delivered by people. Software can make activity cheaper to run, and it does not decide what your brand should mean or which demand it should pursue.

The argument underneath everything on this page is simple. Acceleration works on demand that already exists. Where the proposition is not earning preference, more media buys a faster route to the same place at a higher cost per customer. That is the pattern behind most of the performance conversations we are asked into: the efficiency numbers look good, the trend is bad, and nobody can state the cause in terms finance accepts. This is the marketing group inside our marketing strategy and acceleration practice, and its job is to separate what accelerates from what compounds, then fund both deliberately. We set the case out in full in why marketing should raise ROIC rather than chase ROI and in how the financial value of brand spend can be proven rather than asserted.

• Since 1999brand and marketing strategy
• 200+published case studies
• 10 officeson four continents
• 5xWirtschaftsWoche Best of Consulting, Strategy and Innovation
• 8 capabilitiesengaged singly or as one program

When companies bring us in

Nobody asks for brand acceleration by name. They arrive with one of these five situations, usually from the CMO, the growth lead or the commercial director of an enterprise or growth-stage company.

• Performance spend has been optimized hard and growth has flattened anyway. Cost per acquisition is defensible, the pool it draws from is not getting any bigger, and the next increment costs more than the last.
• A new position is settled and nothing has reached the market yet. The strategy is agreed, and the question is how to get it into market at speed without losing what makes it distinctive. This was Current’s situation.
• Consideration has been sliding for years and no one campaign explains it. The brand is respected, the numbers drift down regardless. This was Renault’s situation in the UK.
• Marketing cannot say what it returns. Reach, engagement and delivery are reported every month, and the board still asks what any of it is worth.
• Brand and activation share one line in the budget. When they cannot be separated, the measurable one gets funded and the compounding one gets cut, quietly, every year.

Why more media does not fix a preference problem

Growth marketing that only optimizes the conversion end of this will produce real improvements and will not change the trajectory. Four patterns account for most of what we see.

• The proposition is the constraint and the budget is treated as the answer. If customers do not prefer the offer, spending more reaches the same outcome sooner and at a worse price.
• The target is a demographic rather than a demand situation. Money goes to people who fit a profile rather than to people in the moment where the choice is made.
• Acquisition cost is treated as a media problem. It is largely a brand problem. Companies with preference pay less for the same customer, and no amount of bidding discipline closes that gap.
• Activity is reported where outcomes should be. Views, reach and completion rates are inputs. Price realization, share within a demand space and cost per acquired customer are the outcomes they are supposed to produce.

The underlying point is set out in why most marketing is market taking when growth comes from market making, and in our view of how brand growth accelerates beyond incremental gains.

What our brand acceleration services include

Eight capabilities sit in this group. Most companies need two or three, and which ones depends on whether the constraint is demand, reach or conversion. Each can be engaged on its own or as part of one program, and each has its own page with the method, the proof and the pricing conversation.

1. Marketing strategy

The annual plan, the split between building and activating, the measurement chain that connects both to a commercial number, and the operating rhythm that keeps them funded. Go there if the plan itself, rather than any single channel, is the thing to settle first. See marketing strategy consulting.

2. Segmentation and targeting

Go there if your spend is pointed at demographics rather than at the situations in which people actually choose. Segmentation research, demand-situation definition, segment economics and the targeting method itself all live on that page rather than this one. See segmentation and targeting consulting.

3. Brand activation

Turning a settled position into things that happen in market: platforms, partnerships, experiences and the activity that makes a brand felt rather than described. Go there if the strategy is agreed and nothing has shipped. See brand activation.

4. Go-to-market (GTM) strategy

The route from offer to customer: channels, partners, pricing and launch sequencing, for a new product, a new market or a repositioned brand. Go there if the offer is right and the path to the customer is the open question. See go-to-market strategy consulting.

5. Customer acquisition

The economics of winning a customer, taken as a whole rather than channel by channel: what a customer costs, what preference takes off that cost, and where the room to improve it actually is. Go there if acquisition cost is rising faster than the value of a customer. See customer acquisition consulting.

6. Performance marketing

Converting existing demand efficiently, with the measurement built so the result can be defended outside marketing. Go there if the demand is there and the conversion of it is the inefficiency. See performance marketing consulting.

7. Campaign development

The idea that carries the strategy into market, plus the planning framework, content themes and measurement that let it run for years rather than a quarter. This is what we built for Renault UK as a playbook. Go there if the strategy is settled and the idea is missing. See campaign development.

8. Social and digital marketing

Brand meaning and transaction now occupy the same interaction, so the channel plan has to do both jobs at once. Go there if your social and digital work is judged on engagement and expected to produce sales. See social and digital marketing consulting.

How a brand acceleration engagement works

1. Diagnose. Leadership interviews, customer research and a review of your spend, channel mix and tracking data. The output is a clear view of where preference is being created, where it is being converted, and which of the two is actually constraining growth.
2. Decide. The demand situations worth pursuing, the proposition each one needs, and the split between building and activating, with the trade-offs written down rather than offered as a menu.
3. Build. The marketing plan, the go-to-market route, the campaign idea or the acquisition model, depending on which capability the diagnosis pointed at, together with the measurement chain that links it to a commercial outcome.
4. Embed. A playbook, the planning framework and the tracking, so your team runs it after we leave. With Renault UK this took the form of a brand playbook shared with every stakeholder, which we then activated against for over 18 months.

How quickly it pays back depends less on the work than on how early finance is in the room. For Generali Switzerland, a full marketing communication strategy and its product campaign concept were developed and handed to a global agency for execution within three months.

Brand acceleration results

Renault UK: a decade of decline, and a campaign that sold cars

Renault had been an icon of UK automotive marketing and had spent more than a decade in decline, with consideration well below its previous levels. Vivaldi defined and activated the digital, social and content marketing strategy, using a six-pillar planning framework to set the audiences, tone of voice, channel priorities, content themes, distribution approach and measurement, all captured in a playbook shared with every stakeholder. We have been activating that playbook for over 18 months. Reach, awareness and engagement are at an all-time high for the brand, and over 1,100 cars sold were attributed to a single campaign. Read the Renault UK case study.

Current: a position first, then the acceleration

Current was known as a digital challenger bank used mostly by lower income adults and wanted to become an established, differentiated player in US neobanking. Vivaldi used a segmentation approach to understand the cohort properly, built a purpose and brand position with a new consumer language, and designed a demand-first go-to-market strategy to reach new segments while serving existing ones. Because the brand work and the market momentum had to run together, we also developed campaigns including an out-of-home summer takeover of New York, which resulted in a 23%+ increase in brand awareness. Read the Current case study.

Hyundai: a brand idea that moved search, not just views

Hyundai had low brand recognition and an innovative, optimistic personality that its marketing was not conveying. Rather than describing the values, we tested them: a Hyundai i20 was rigged with an EEG sensor and a robotic driving mechanism so the car moved only while the driver was thinking positively, with three influencers filmed documentary-style. During the campaign, searches for Hyundai rose 58%. General awareness rose by nearly 10%, and by 62.5% among women. Read the Hyundai case study.

Brand acceleration by industry

Every case below is published with the client’s name, so you can read the situation, the work and the outcome in full.

Why companies choose Vivaldi for brand acceleration

• We will question the proposition before we spend your media budget. If preference is the constraint, a bigger plan is the wrong purchase, and we would rather say so in week two than in month six.
• We target situations, not profiles. The unit of targeting is the occasion in which a choice gets made, which is what makes a media plan point at something more specific than an audience.
• We own nothing we would recommend you buy. We do not sell the media, so advice on how much of it you need is not an advertisement for ourselves.
• Strategy and the work that follows it in one team. Positioning, go-to-market, campaign idea and channel plan are done by the same firm, so nothing is lost in the handoff.
• Independently recognized. WirtschaftsWoche has named Vivaldi a top consultancy for Strategy and Innovation in its Best of Consulting awards five times, and we have published over 200 case studies with client names attached.

How to evaluate a brand acceleration partner

Worth asking of every firm on your shortlist, including us.

• Will they question the proposition? A firm that takes it as given will optimize the delivery of a story the market has not been persuaded by. That is legitimate work and the wrong purchase if preference is the problem.
• How do they separate brand from activation? If the answer is that it is all one funnel, you will not be able to defend brand investment in the next budget round.
• What would they measure? Reach, engagement and campaign delivery are activity. Price realization, share within a target demand space and cost per acquired customer are outcomes.
• What do they own commercially? A firm that also sells the media it recommends is not a neutral advisor on how much media you should buy. That is structure rather than dishonesty, and it is worth knowing.
• What happens to the capability? If the planning method leaves with the consultancy, next year’s plan costs the same as this year’s.

Brand acceleration consultancy, growth marketing agency or media agency?

The three get shortlisted together and do different jobs. The useful question is which decision you need made.

Related services

This group is one of the service groups in our Marketing Strategy & Acceleration practice. Where the constraint turns out to sit earlier than marketing, the work usually moves to brand strategy consulting for the position itself, to demand landscape mapping for the demand spaces worth pursuing, or to business strategy and transformation when the economics rather than the marketing are the problem.

Brand acceleration services in the US and worldwide

Vivaldi is headquartered in New York and has a second US office in Los Angeles. Outside the US, our teams work from London, Zürich, München, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Singapore, Buenos Aires and Lima. We work with US companies nationwide from our two US offices; for city-specific information, see our pages for Chicago, Dallas and Houston. Read who Vivaldi Group is and how we work.