Business Turnaround through Brand-building

Having worked on four business turnarounds — as an executive and by advising brands as a consultant, I’ve developed an understanding of what it takes to unlock growth for a struggling business and brand. Here's what I've learned and some points I recommend to examine:

1. Understand Your Consumer

A successful turnaround starts with deep consumer understanding. Knowing your consumer like a best friend—understanding their wants, needs, challenges, and daily lives—is foundational. For example on OLAY it was critical to understand the anti-ageing benefits women seek to tackle at 30, 40 and 50 years.

Once you understand your consumer, your company and brand’s activity system should be centred around the consumer. The business leader should direct this to enable the team.

2. Define Your Playfield

Clarity on your market, category segmentation, and competition is critical. Sometimes, this means looking beyond direct competitors to understand broader consumer choices. It will enable you to spot market opportunities and influence your brand positioning and offering. At IONIQ Skincare, we recognised that our competition wasn’t limited to body care but extended to beauty device brands.

Once you understand your playfield - take a step back and look at which geographies and channels to focus first. Look at the size of the opportunity, the trend and also effort it takes to unlock it.

3. Position Your Brand Strategically

A turnaround requires a clear brand positioning that meets identified consumer needs, builds an emotional connection and is differentiated from your competition. Your brand’s purpose should resonate with consumers and help to make a positive difference for the broader community, ideally the world. Consistency in visuals and messaging is key to recognizability and trust.

At KIKO Milano, positioning ourselves as an Italian beauty brand proved to be an accelerator.

4. Drive Growth Through Product & Innovation

Your assortment and innovation are often critical growth drivers. Assess whether your assortment meets consumer needs, aligns with market trends and is competitive. Identify hero products and glorify them. Set a clear innovation cadence whether through product launches, communication including influencers, or sales activations. For some brands, like those I’ve worked with, monthly news was necessary to deliver growth.

Ensure your product quality and promise are true and designed against consumer needs and wants.

5. Deliver Consistent Communication

You can’t generate demand without relevant and synchronized communication. Ensure a unified message across all touchpoints, connecting back to your brand. One clear, consistent message at a time is far more effective than fragmented campaigns. This message needs to be relevant to the consumer and start from a consumer insight.

For the Safeguard brand, the key was to use the white hand demo.

6. Nail Go-to-Market Strategies

Examine your pricing—both per unit and per milliliter/gram—to ensure competitiveness and alignment with product quality. Define the role of each channel and assess whether your brand has the tools to win in those spaces, including appropriate packaging, pricing, and promotions. Understand how your product is distributed and its velocity.

Promotions, while often essential to drive growth, should be profitable, brand-building, and consumer-centric. Look at the product combinations, margins, and mechanics (e.g. discount, multi-buy) with the brand’s communication strategy.

At KIKO Milano, we ran a big data analysis that led to promotions including consumer-relevant, and more profitable product combinations.

7. Structure Your Organization for Success

Turnarounds demand an effective organisational structure and cross-functional collaboration. At KIKO Milano, breaking down silos between HQ and markets was crucial.

A learning culture, change management, and the right talents are non-negotiables for success.

Final Thoughts

Every turnaround involves analysis, strategic clarity, and flawless execution. Strategic clarity also means to be clear about the 3 to 5 things that will make the biggest difference to the business.

It’s about aligning your consumer insights, market understanding, and organisational design to unlock growth opportunities. Last but not least cost-control is as essential as tacking opportunities and barriers for growth.