The ARENDS Brand Criterium™

The Arends Brand Criterium™ delivers deep customer insight, uncovers business growth opportunities and creates a unified focus company-wide, by using the metaphor of the bicycle to illustrate and transform the relationship between your customers and your brand.

Named after a classic format for cycling races, the Brand Criterium makes it easy for internal and external owners of the brand – your employees, your channels and your customers – to understand what a brand experience truly is…and how they each play a vital role in the brand’s ultimate triumph in the marketplace.

The Brand Criterium is a proprietary, 4-stage brand development process:

Stage 1 –
Explore…new insights into
customers and markets

During Stage 1, we develop deep insight and a visceral knowledge of both your customers and the market terrain. We identify aspirational goals of your key customers and chart your competitors' positions. Most important, we map your brand within the context of your customers' world – identifying the best strategic opportunities to differentiate your brand and heighten its relevance.

Stage 2 –
Align…your brand promise
with customer aspirations

In Stage 2, we unify the mindset of your brand's most important customer set – your employees – and align it with the external expectations and aspirations of your markets and customers. Your brand essence, promise, positioning, presence and core attributes are clarified and sharpened. We then develop a strategic marketing plan that expresses and delivers your brand experience through an optimal balance of ideas, communications and branding.

Stage 3 –

Working collaboratively with you, the Arends team unleashes the power of fully integrated brand communications. Digital images, words, motion, sound and interaction – across traditional and non-tradition media – express and deliver your brand promise at every point of contact…the full 360-degree wheel of engagement.

Stage 4 –
Accelerate…your brand through
exceptional customer experiences

Here the true strength of your brand, the competitive will of your company, and the relevance and differentiation of your brand promise all come together, propelling your customers to an elevated state of rational and emotional triumph. These winning customers are distinguished by enduring satisfaction, trust, loyalty and belief. Most important, winning customers are the engines that drive value and growth into your brand and business.

As the campaign unfolds, we measure results and adapt programs to shifting market dynamics – in real time, where possible.  And in the true spirit of a Criterium race, we constantly look for new competitive advantages and new ways to accelerate your brand by continuously transforming transactional customers into winning customers.