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What results have clients experienced?

We have case studies where clients got real results.  They fall into 4 categories

Consumer products
  • Our work with Mars, Scotts Miracle Gro and Uniq has helped them create £00's millions of extra sales and growth
B2B case studies
  • Working across different categories  with UL, Aramark, Mars, PepsiCo, Benfield's, Fridays, Link we have created insights about what customers want and helped them turn this onto £00's millions of extra sales
Improving franchising and partnerships - win win
  • Created PepsiCo's franchise excellence programme and transformed business relationships to enable businesses to support each other to get more growth.
Building the marketing team's pitch
  • Working with marketing teams and benchmarking them against the best to identify how they acan increase their influence and improve the pitch for their ideas

What clients like about Game Changers


Yesterday Maxwellia attended the 4th workshop in the Differentiate Programme - This is the PERFECT step where we began to bring our brand to life. It was brilliant - probably one of the most rewarding days of my marketing career as the Maxwellia vision and first product begins to lift off the page. 

The output of the day is a culmination of the hard work the team has put in since May we have brainstormed, debated, talked to consumers, prized out the truth from our colleagues and validated our work with online research.  I now have an almost perfect Brand Story for Maxwellia, a refined brand positioning for our first product and focused ideas on products and services to build around the core offer of that first product.

The power-driver methodology which is Chris' IP is a truly effective and fast way of getting the heart of a value proposition and gets to the crux of why people will buy your product.  We have saved so much time and money compared to the way big pharma companies in my field do this type of work.

Yesterday Chris Radford was absolutely in the zone providing clear, powerful, solid direction for brand creation his years of experience shining through with useful advice and theory based on his take on why we consumers buy the things we do. It was a fun day, the energy levels high and creative ideas flowing freely, Shona's facilitation skills were outstanding pushing the group hard to drive the best ideas using a range of ideation techniques to help us when we got stuck. It was a hard day but I am energised and motivated to push on. 

A big thanks to Chris for the Differentiate journey so far (and for inventing the Differentiate Programme) I am looking forward to starting the process again for our second product.

I am convinced it will work.


Anna Maxwell
Maxwellia

Case studies - consumer products

This is where we learned our trade.  We have worked in these companies and they became our clients.  Not only have we proven our approach works but we have deep knowledge about how the industry works, what the retail customers need and how consumers behave
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Helped Mars to change their game in seasonal chocolate by creating Celebrations.  A massive brand that brought fun to a tired category.

Identified new growth opportunities and the drivers of choice for the core brands and some totally new products


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Re positioning and repackaging of chocolate drinks range around energy and new channel expansion into grocery. Sales up +200%

New entries into desserts and chilled coffee



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Launch of Galaxy Jewels and establish Galaxy as chocolate brand leader in GCC region

New market entry strategies for North Africa, India
Pinpointing new category opportunities

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Discovering drivers of growth in trifles and turn these into new product and pack features for own label product ranges





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Pinpointing the category and brand opportunities for growth.  (New and existing)




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Creating category brand leaders by taking this outstanding fertiliser brand and making it work in Compost, Lawn seed. 



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Use insight into drivers of customer choice to create brand relaunch, new packaging, new messages around the pleasure of the lawn not just the greenness


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To resolve a complex brand portfolio issue in weedkillers by starting with the consumer drivers of choice in gardens, patios and drives.  We worked these through to new product formats for Weedol, Pathclear and RoundUp.

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Kettle wanted to get into lighter healthier snacks.

We found the power drivers in healthier snacks. Kettle developed some product that did this whilst keeping the "natural" positioning of the brand.  But on reflection, this indulgent brand was never going to be about "lighter", the company refocused on expanding distribution of its core crisps instead.
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We helped RHM foods to pinpoint the opportunties, prioritise its product categories based on their strengths and market attractiveness.


But sometimes we do the work and the business gets taken over and the all the management change.

Then along came Premier Foods and all changed.

Case studies in B2B

Companies who sell B2B know they must add value to their clients and customers.  They know their customers can go elsewhere if they don't.  We have applied our model of turning insights into products and services that customers love and it has worked incredibly well.

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ARAMARK wanted to win more pitches in Germany.  We worked through PINPOINT POSITION and PERFECT with them.  We developed a brand story based on how they help their clients stay one step ahead.

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UL Consumer Technology was not winning enough pitches and wanted to build a marketing plan that would attract more customers.  

We deployed the whole Differentiate process and they created a new position in the market and a new pitch that is attracting more customers based on the promise that they are chosen by people who care




Pragmatic, consumer & customer focused. 

Provide solutions not just data crunchers.  

Tim Pittam, Pepsi




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We helped Benfield's understand what was important to clients and identify what they should be know for. The owners of Benfield's used this to reposition the business for a successful IPO

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Regular partner with PepsiCo to help them win more pitches through better understanding of their clients consumers and turning that into programmes to make soft drinks a more attractive proposition in cinemas, restaurants and leisure accounts.
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Identifying the drivers of choice for estate agents in referring business to them and clients in choosing a property conveyancer helped Fridays reposition itself and launch new services to drive rapid market share growth when transaction volume was declining

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We helped the Met Office to understand how it was perceived by it's government and public clients.  As a result the commercial offer was completely reshaped to deliver more attractive products and services

They also strengthened their dialogue with the internal givernment clients
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Link got a new understanding of what mattered to clients and used this to reposition their recruitment agency as the best career choice for oil and gas professionals.  

This built on their existing operations and services but provided a more powerful message to both candidates and clients



Reliable.  Meets expectations by delivering in accordance to the original brief.  

Credible partner, particularly working with our with customers
Zoe Kavanagh Pepsi





Case studies on being more effective by working with others e.g. franchising

We have done a lot of work helping clients understand what makes a great business partnership work.  This starts with the same principle of understanding what matters to each partner and then using that to find the win win that means the relationship will thrive.  The EGL toolkit can be applied of PINPOINT, POSITION, PERFECT, PROMOTE and PITCH.  Again this is all about adding value to clients
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In many markets PepsiCo makes and sells it beverages through bottling partners.

Stacey ran a project to understand what really made that relationship tick and turn that into a franchise excellence programme to support franchise and operations management to do the best job.


This is now a global capability programme within PepsiCo
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Britvic needed to align its business planning around a common view of how the market was performing.  

We built the planning model that they used to guide internal planning.  this data also became manifest as the industry soft drinks report to share their market insight with their trade customers
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Mars GCC has built its business through distributor relationships with local partners.

The leadership team were very ambitious and concerned the partners did not share this.  So we worked to find out what the distributors thought and wanted and turned this into a conference to relaunch the Mars GCC vision and plan.

This was a first step in an ambitious plan that has seen Mars GCC grow by a factor of 10 times in the past 15 years.
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Chris operated as a non executive director within the Extreme Group.

Whilst grappling with the realities of establishing start up businesses, Chris was able to get the owners to see that the core strengths of Extreme were in branding, ideas, spotting opportunities and doing the necessary deals.

This led to a refocus and turning the business into a licensing business that would work with partners who were much more skilled at operating in each market

Case studies on improving the PITCH by the marketing team

Each of these firms had marketing teams that sometimes struggled to exert sufficient influence on the operations finance and sales teams.  As a result it could be hard to get the focus on customer needs and get marketing programmes implemented.
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For each firm we ran a version of our PITCH module which to examine how they worked with the rest of the business and how to be more effective.

This module is built on research we have done comparing the best performing marketing teams with those that struggle a bit.

In each case we did a 360 feedback exercise on the marketing team and highlighted areas where they could build relationships and credibility

When we came back a year later and repeated it, the scores improved and effectiveness was definitely better.  the marketing team were more confident (in a good way)



Differentiate

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Some things our clients have said

In a nutshell, Differentiate help me to see the wood for the trees. They help me to crystallise my plan of attack to grow and differentiate my business and brands.  
Michelle Frost:  Mars

Enjoyable and Invaluable. Refreshing change to see insights gained in more interactive and quantifiable way. No ambiguous summaries just clear actions & decisions. 
Michelle Quickfall:  Scotts Miracle Gro
Challenging, stimulating, really creates a new perspective on market and company. Significant but very worthwhile investment.  

Michael Meinhardt: Fridays