Building the brand roadmap
A brand roadmap can be as important to a business as a product roadmap.
Companies have long used product roadmaps to illustrate the direction and timing of new products being developed. Roadmaps show development phases, timetables, milestones and outcomes. They help decision makers understand the steps and pacing of product development, and enable them to coordinate multiple innovation efforts into a coherent strategy.
Brands need roadmaps, too
Brands need roadmaps, too, because brands are never static. Brands are dynamic relationships between companies and their customers. They need constant improvement and innovation to maintain their competitive edge.
Accordingly, brand roadmaps depict the brand steps that will create the customers to drive the business forward. Decision makers need brand roadmaps to ensure that brand innovation strategies complement the company’s product development efforts, so that the customer relationships being forged by brands will help drive adoption of new products and services.
Defining the brand roadmap
We define a brand roadmap as follows:
The brand roadmap is a visual document that depicts the development stages of a brand and its customer relationships along an explicit timeline. The roadmap shows the phases, timing, and outcomes of planned brand innovations. Its primary focus is to illustrate how the brand (and the brand platform) will advance customers in concert with new product development. The brand roadmap lays out the sequence of planned brand interactions, relationships and experiences that will advance customers beyond the reach of competitors.
The roadmap is, first and foremost, a customer roadmap. It shows how the brand will grow customers in a manner that benefits them, and is also strategically beneficial to the business. The best brand roadmaps are a march to a new market space.
Who builds the brand roadmap?
The brand roadmap is the responsibility of the brand team. They create it, get necessary buy-ins and approvals, and keep it up to date. They also manage it so that brand development commitments are met.
What’s in the brand roadmap?
A brand roadmap will be customized to the strategic needs of a company. In general, though, one would expect a brand roadmap to include (depict or reference) the following:
- Axes showing: 1) timeline/timetable; and 2) customer growth/brand depth
- Discrete brand programs or applications to be developed
- The brand platform and platform strategy
- The brand model
- The customer model
- The customer growth model and development path (via delivered brand value and brand experience)
- The brand innovation strategy
- Markets to be created
- Brand initiatives developed with customers (i.e., bottom-up)
