Keeping this in mind, the first step for us involves understanding in detail the operating market dynamics - the brand characteristics, their differentiating product aspects if at all; brand communications in the past versus competitive advertising and the overall comparison; brand sales trends versus those of competitors and the rationale for the same and above all, the evaluation of, and thereafter formulation of the marketing objective in formal terms. This necessarily entails our understanding of the market segmentation criteria for the brand in question - however one major differentiating aspect is that this is done from the consumer segmentation point of view to assess need gaps rather than an industry driven segmentation per se. This brings us to the resultant corollary - an in-depth understanding of the target consumer and the various consumer archetypes that emerge and more relevantly, the differentiating aspect, if at all, in the target consumer versus other competitive brand consumers.

Next comes the all-important issue - where our brand fits in versus competitive brands. Only after doing the same the critical variable of brand image as well as the underlying brand personality evolve and that too, keeping the competitive context in mind. Finally, the concluding step in this exercise is the evolution of the EVP (extra value proposition), which is the positioning / brand platform that subsequently becomes the foundation stone for the creative and underlying media strategy taken as a whole.