Our future-first brand and communications strategy services are designed to reframe and redirect brands to meet evolving audience needs and expectations in a fast-changing cultural and consumer landscape.
Our methodologies are designed to define what a brand needs to be in the business of tomorrow, inform future-fit value propositions, and articulate how a brand can differentiate and establish itself through key strategic and marketing actions. This can include:
Brand mapping and future growth opportunities – defining who a brand is today to frame the shifts that will affect it tomorrow. We set the context and focus for relevant foresight areas that unlock opportunity spaces for brand evolution and growth.
Brand strategy – identifying a future-proofed north star for a brand to aim for and an action plan to reach it. We use a range of tools to define brand visions, missions and values, alongside strategic ambitions and targets, to create future-proofed brand positionings and roadmaps that enable a strategic, long-term approach to future decision-making across the organisation.
Marketing and brand experience strategy – aligning marketing and communications activities with changing audience expectations of why, how, what, when and where brands should engage and communicate. We use foresight to understand how expectations of brands are evolving, and create strategies and frameworks to guide and direct initiatives and activations.
We help brands stay ahead as the world changes faster than ever before. Get in touch below to find out more about our brand and communications strategies.
Future Challenge: What are the key brand growth opportunities for Belstaff? How might The Future Laboratory support Belstaff’s leadership team in identifying strategic priorities for the coming year and beyond?
Why?
Belstaff is an iconic British heritage brand. With almost 100 years of history behind it, and nearing the end of a successful three-year turnaround programme, Belstaff found itself at an intersectionwhere it needed to decide ‘where next?’ and what to prioritise. With ambitious commercial growth targets in place, Belstaff was looking for insight, validation and prioritisation of the ideas it had to drive innovation in new markets and build cultural relevance with younger audiences.
Belstaff was looking for a strategic partner who could clarify and define where the brand should be over the next 3–5 years, and create alignment in focus areas.
We kicked off the project with an immersion phase that included stakeholder engagement, business, brand and consumer workshops, and store audits. This enabled us to gain a comprehensive understanding of the current state of the Belstaff business, as well as its ambitions, capabilities and customer segments – both current and aspirational.
Guided by the findings from this immersion phase, we then identified the key trends set to affect Belstaff and the wider apparel and luxury sector over the next 3–5 years. This foresight and strategic research was supplemented with commercial expert interviews to help us paint a rich and validated point of view of the future.
In the final phase of the project, we worked with the Belstaff leadership team to capture and convert our insights and foresights into a five-yearvision and mission, and to define strategic pillars and opportunities for Belstaff’s future growth.
The end output was a ‘plan on a page’ that provides Belstaff with a strategic approach to growth and future decision-making, as well as a series of roadmaps. The plan on a page functions as an alignment tool that everyone in the business will use to build their strategies – commercial, product and communications.
The outcome is an informed and confident plan that provides a North Star for Belstaff as it embarks on its next exciting chapter.
Get in touch and a member of our team will contact you
Book a Strategic Clinic
Build your futures brand and communication strategy today – fill in the form to book your 30-minute clinic with our experts and let us help define your future. We have very limited space available.
