Who let the dogs out?

The black Labrador Retriever bounded into the conference room, lifted his leg, and showed the management team exactly what he thought of the copies of the current annual plan that were placed in the corner. The symbolism of the moment was not lost on the company’s Founder; it was time to call for help.

The challenge facing this 20-plus year old consumer goods and services company specializing in the pet related services category was expressed as the “loss of vibrancy.”  The Founder had successfully guided the company through the recession, increasing profitability as top-line revenues were declining, but the lack of growth and the dampening of the entrepreneurial spirit that had been a hallmark of the company were keeping him up at night. 

Our work together started with a comprehensive assessment of the current business, which unearthed a wide range of challenges and opportunities. Their core business had significant growth potential, for instance, but they were not capturing that potential because their pricing strategy and approach to marketing were disconnected from the key markets that represented growth opportunities. Specifically, their marketing investment was fragmented due to an attempt to support a portfolio of loosely associated brands, and their tactics were outdated at best – as exemplified by the heavy use of Yellow Pages as a marketing vehicle. In addition, we uncovered a critical internal challenge – the ownership group actively managing the company was not operating as a cohesive team, leading the broader organization to be confused and often times misdirected.  The assessment discussions were challenging.  One member of the ownership team even asked – jokingly of course – if they should “invest in couches for the conference rooms”, implying we would be having many more probing and difficult conversations with their leadership team. Of course, in every great challenge lies the seeds of great opportunity.

Within months, together with the ownership team, we had succeeded in articulating a compelling vision for the future and developing a value proposition that would resonate in the marketplace.  The internal, operational changes were initiated to turn the brand promise into real experiences for existing clients.  The new vision was launched internally, and we were told the employee community had never been more excited about the prospects of the organization. We also acted as interim CMO during the company’s transition (period), modernizing the organization’s marketing department, reallocating their media mix / investments, fundamentally changing the existing creative, and adjusting the pricing strategy. The result was a return to topline growth within weeks of the changes being implemented in the marketplace.

So how does Buddy, the black Labrador Retriever, feel about things? Well, Buddy greets the cg42 team with doggie kisses whenever we are on campus – now that’s what we call a happy client!