Hindsight, it’s so often said, has 20/20 vision. When we look back on a successful venture, the outcome often seems so inevitable that it’s impossible to imagine that things could have turned out any differently. It’s easy to write the positioning of a successful well established brand – that’s because you have the hindsight of great consistent positioning and communication. Analyse that positioning and communication and the brand models are relatively easy to complete. However, it’s a different story for a new brand or a brand that needs to re-focus. To get this just right, what we want is the seemingly impossible – hindsight NOW. But, amazingly as B7 partner Paul Tidmarsh explains, there is a methodology that offers us just that.

Regular brand positioning methodologies just focus on the key questions in a particular proforma – not how to answer them. B7 Innovation’s Adcept methodology is different. Firstly, because we show consumers up to 80 Adcepts in a focus group, we’re able to show them a much wider range of themes than the usual concept statement/mood board format allows. This means that areas of potential interest all get a crack of the whip, including the more radical game-changing ideas that are often considered too left-field to be given a berth at the expense of those with more obvious appeal.

Once the most interesting themes have been isolated by the group, each one is then examined from multiple angles. Because Adcepts are written in the language of brands – advertising – they carry an emotional as well as a rational appeal. We can therefore unpick not just the functional attraction of an idea, but also the tone of voice & personality that brings it best to life. As successful modern brands are increasingly defined by the ownership of a very specific aspect of an emotional territory, precisely defining this emotional positioning is essential to a brand’s success.

Showing consumers real creative stimulus and finding out why the strongest executions touch their hearts, makes the process of completing a brand positioning statement or communications brief for a new brand so much easier. It is almost as if the brand has made the successful change in direction and we are simply finding out the root of its appeal

Having identified the most compelling way for a brand to behave, we then simply work backwards to define the brand. The result is ‘hindsight now’, or more accurately, 20/20 foresight for your brand.