Our thinking is appearing in publications around the world

Prophet's James Walker and Joerg Niessing presented at London Business School and taught a brand valuation class as part of the MBA program’s core Marketing course. The lecture highlighted the paradoxes of valuing brands but also created a clear roadmap of do's and don’ts and illustrates the power of brand valuation as a brand-management tool.

A look at the top 10 things that are different about marketing mix modeling in 2013, and why it is a more effective business tool than ever before.

When your company is expanding rapidly and experiencing double-digit growth, evaluating your sales force performance, in most cases, becomes a low priority. But growth will inevitably slow down due to change. Internal changes (mergers, new product launches, entries into new markets), competitive changes (loss of market leadership, price competition, lower barriers to entry, lower share of voice), or environmental changes (deregulation, new infrastructures, economic cycles) should all prompt you to reassess your sales force. 

Brand Valuation is important for us at Prophet because it embodies the intersection of our unique, individual capabilities: brand, marketing, design, innovation, digital and analytics.

Prophet’s senior partner for Analytics James Walker has been leading a book project over the last few months looking at The Future Of Marketing Analytics. We’ve interviewed over 40 CMOs, analytics leaders, business school professors, and leaders of analytical-software vendors. The conclusions are coming together, and we should be ready to publish in the fall, but there are some early learnings around The 8 New Rules of Building A Marketing Analytics Capability.

Almost everything about marketing is sexy and exciting, spanning, as it does, so many interesting areas that are highly visible to the entire organization and public. Marketers manage the brand (or brands), its position, communications, and lead such popular trends as digital strategies, social media, and guerilla marketing. 

And then there’s pricing, decidedly not sexy despite being one of the most critical aspects of marketing. This is where margins are made, cash flow is generated, and businesses grow. It’s the profitability backbone of an organization. It is also the most measurable aspect of a brand, and lends itself to a plethora of analytics opportunities to make these challenges surmountable.

Meet James Walker. Prophet’s newest senior partner will be spending the foreseeable future hopping between his home in the U.K. and the States as he helps bring analytics to life for savvy marketers. He’s spent the last 20 years in the marketing sciences, on the big agency (J. Walter Thompson), big consultancy (Accenture) and entrepreneurial sides. He recently shared his views of the new practice area he’s leading, and a peek at other interests that occupy his time.

Prophet senior partner James Walker has spent his entire career in marketing consulting, analytics and research. He was fascinated to see neuromarketing becoming more mainstream, so he met up with Hilke Plassmann, the global thought leader in the application of neuroscience to marketing. Hilke is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at INSEAD where she teaches marketing management in France and Singapore in INSEAD’s MBA program, and neuromarketing in INSEAD’s Executive Education Program. She is currently Visiting Faculty at The Wharton School as part of the INSEAD–Wharton alliance.

Prophet senior partner James Walker popped down a couple of streets from our New York office to meet up with Tulin Erdem at Stern Business School, New York University. Tulin is one of Prophet's academic partners and is the Leonard N. Stern Professor of Business and Professor of Marketing at Stern.

JCPenney will be the retailer to watch this year. The company has launched a major rebranding effort with a full overhaul of its merchandising strategy, and Forbes is already touting it as the most interesting retailer in 2012.

James Walker and Kevin O'Donnell share their takeaways from the recent Consumer Electronics Show Las Vegas.

Prophet contributed to the 70th anniversary of the GfM (Swiss Marketing Association) through 7 articles published in their symposium. Articles in English and in German

Jay Milliken and Andres Nicholls discuss how strategy-led design and understanding customer behavior are the key elements for the success of Emart.

The medium or the message? Too often these days, the message is ignored in favor of the medium. Niren shows that the right messaging will differentiate your brand, drive stronger consideration and purchase behavior, and can be significantly more rewarding than figuring out what the most effective media are.

Merger and acquisition activity is again skyrocketing, but the complexion of the deals is changing. Cost savings alone are no longer enough to justify the high premiums being paid. Instead, the focus is increasingly on gaining revenue synergies, with the end goal being to fuel greater business growth.

When you think about prepared Hispanic foods, Goya is the brand that most likely comes to mind. Many brands are at a similar impasse, investing significant resources in the quest to become authentic Hispanic brands. But they end up stuck in the middle, unable to connect with this demographic group and undifferentiated against competition. Why?

Classic financial theory has it that all else being equal, the greater the risk, the greater the return. And when it comes to innovation, those businesses that are the most successful embrace that notion.

Individual brands, or even whole categories, that were once important for a particular consumer segment, become irrelevant as society evolves and tastes change. Should you completely lose your current brand equity association so you can become relevant to new consumers?

With the Hispanic population in the US expected to surpass white non-Hispanic inhabitants by 2030, marketers are scrambling for ways to tap into growing spending power while generating loyalty to their brands. Strong, enduring brand loyalty can be built among Hispanics, but not by using tactics that work for white, Middle America.

The growth in minority markets is substantial and their potential buying power is even greater. Marketers who map out the most customer-centric approaches to establish their relevance to these diverse populations will be rewarded with the kind of strong and enduring brand loyalty that drives sustainable business growth.