Brands need foresight, not just insight, to survive and grow

Cultural change is slowly and imperceptibly killing your brand. In the background, advances in science and technology, changing societal attitudes, and changing political and geographical realities are all conspiring to make your brand less appealing, and opening the door for someone else to come along and solve your consumer’s dilemma more effectively.

London taxi drivers were famed for having to ‘do the Knowledge’ – be able to navigate through London’s complex streets, which have evolved since the Romans built the first roads. As they focused on this as the cornerstone of their efficacy, the world changed around them – satellite navigation and Google Maps democratised the Knowledge, portable electronic payment systems made payment more convenient for customers than predicting how much cash they needed to carry, and of course apps have enabled us to get a private hire car more conveniently than standing in the rain waiting for a cab to drive by.

It is hard to inspire your business to get motivated behind an invisible threat, but brands that focus purely on the short term, or imminent dangers like tariffs, face a double whammy. Not only are they not laying down the conditions for future sales, which make trading easier, they also get into a vicious circle where the short term becomes harder and harder as new entrants nibble away at their business.

Great foresight comes from scanning the horizon, to understand what may happen in the future and take preparatory actions.

Early in my career, I worked on an iconic British brand which had enjoyed a phenomenal run of growth. I had done some analysis and projected forward that the rate of growth was slowing, and I was able to see changes in a cohort of consumers, which in turn was linked to changing attitudes to health and wellbeing. Looking back, I effectively diagnosed the issue but did not offer solution or action. That could have come next, but I vividly remember the marketing director saying to me: “You think I am ignoring this, don’t you, and leaving it to the next guy?”

He was due to return to the US in 12 months’ time. He did leave it to the next guy, and the broader business ignored it too. Within 18 months, the brand entered one of the stickiest points in its history, when health and wellbeing tipped into the mainstream and it was ill-prepared to respond. My lesson: be better than I was in getting the business to take note, and don’t be the person who ‘leaves it to the next guy’.

Let’s celebrate good marketing rather than ridiculing the bad

Frame, scan and plan

Great foresight comes from scanning the horizon to understand what may happen in the future and take preparatory actions. By understanding the macroenvironmental forces shaping people’s attitudes and behaviours, you can act quicker than your competitors, moving at or ahead of the pace of cultural change.

As well as determining what’s to come, it can help plan scenarios, especially during the volatile and uncertain times in which we live today – if you look at a horizon of 18 months out, which is typically beyond what your business will consider in its detailed planning. If insight is about asking ‘why?’, then foresight is about asking ‘what if?’. For accurate and actionable foresights, it is typical to take an approach of ‘frame, scan, plan’.

Framing

Framing requires you to define scope and information. For example, if your brand is driven by people’s need to stand out, or ‘status’, you might wish to understand how status is evolving. If you are Costa Coffee or KFC, you might want to understand how ‘convenience’ is changing.

Framing helps avoid boiling the ocean and enables you to identify the right mix of data sources – it is about being clear on what you are looking for and therefore where to look.

Scanning

Scanning requires your team to be immersed in data about changes in the macroenvironment and culture, relating it to your own category and first-party data if you have it. As well as quantitative data, especially forecast data, it is important to look at examples of cultural phenomena and brand activity that might already reflect emergent trends and new behaviours. Search, especially trends over time, can be strong indicators of rising interest – people see or hear something new and, not knowing quite what it is, they search to find out more.

Remember that future trends are emerging all the time, and you need to get good at spotting them. This is not about TikTok trends. Looking at TikTok trends is a bit like fast fashion, and it may help you with a tactical execution, but they have a 30-day lifespan before the next thing emerges. They may offer clues, but you are interested in things that may constrain or enable your consumers, or over time provide them with different ways of meeting their needs.

Planning

Planning is about uncovering new relationships within the data. A good foresight session will identify themes across data sources and observations, and generate hypotheses. Ask: ‘How might this affect consumer attitudes and behaviour in my category and towards my brand?’

It’s great to identify four to six areas that may impact your brand in years to come. They will most often come from those cultural and macro factors – perhaps a looming legislation change, a demographic shift that may be positive or negative, or a profound technological advance like generative AI.

Map these factors on two axes – firstly the relative scale of impact, and secondly the likelihood. These will help you prioritise brainstorming new ideas and mitigation plans – with most urgency against those with high likelihood and high impact.

Thinking about these through the lens of your portfolio, brand and innovation opportunities is all-important. Though the top-right box requires most attention, it will also be the segment which your competitors are looking at. Ensuring you spend time on the mid-scale areas can therefore be the biggest source of competitive advantage long term, propelling you to act when your competitors might find themselves holding their breath in a seemingly impossible world.