Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
Sales & Marketing
Strategy / MBA Resources
Case Study SWOT Analysis Solution
Case Study Description of Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign
Ericsson, the Swedish telecommunications products and systems company, is embarking on a first-ever global advertising campaign for its brand of mobile phones. The idea for consumer brand building, new to an otherwise technology-oriented, industrial company, has come about as a result of developments in the worldwide market for cellular phones: fast growth, entry of new consumer segments, declining product differentiation, and the growing pressure on prices and margins. The expensive campaign, aiming to cement a relationship with consumers, is notable for a total absence of product-related communication. Under the slogan "Make yourself heard," the ads feature a gallery of faces and a range of situations demonstrating the spirit of communication between people around the world. Some of the issues the case raises are: How do you build a strong brand for a product that is increasingly difficult to differentiate? Can pure brand values stand on their own merits without any references to products? What criteria should you use to evaluate advertising execution? A 2001 ECCH award winner.
Swot Analysis of "Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign" written by Kamran Kashani includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Brand Campaign facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Communication, Globalization and Sales & Marketing.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign casestudy better are - – wage bills are increasing, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, increasing energy prices, there is backlash against globalization, increasing transportation and logistics costs, customer relationship management is fast transforming because of increasing concerns over data privacy, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, geopolitical disruptions, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Brand Campaign, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Brand Campaign operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Brand Campaign
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Sales & Marketing field.
4. Making a Sales & Marketing topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Brand Campaign
Strengths Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Brand Campaign in Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign Harvard Business Review case study are -
Effective Research and Development (R&D)
– Brand Campaign has innovation driven culture where significant part of the revenues are spent on the research and development activities. This has resulted in, as mentioned in case study Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign - staying ahead in the industry in terms of – new product launches, superior customer experience, highly competitive pricing strategies, and great returns to the shareholders.
Strong track record of project management
– Brand Campaign is known for sticking to its project targets. This enables the firm to manage – time, project costs, and have sustainable margins on the projects.
Cross disciplinary teams
– Horizontal connected teams at the Brand Campaign are driving operational speed, building greater agility, and keeping the organization nimble to compete with new competitors. It helps are organization to ideate new ideas, and execute them swiftly in the marketplace.
Organizational Resilience of Brand Campaign
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Brand Campaign does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Superior customer experience
– The customer experience strategy of Brand Campaign in the segment is based on four key concepts – personalization, simplification of complex needs, prompt response, and continuous engagement.
Diverse revenue streams
– Brand Campaign is present in almost all the verticals within the industry. This has provided firm in Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign case study a diverse revenue stream that has helped it to survive disruptions such as global pandemic in Covid-19, financial disruption of 2008, and supply chain disruption of 2021.
Training and development
– Brand Campaign has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Brand Campaign is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Brand Campaign has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Analytics focus
– Brand Campaign is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Kamran Kashani can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
High brand equity
– Brand Campaign has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Brand Campaign to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Weaknesses Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign are -
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign HBR case study mentions - Brand Campaign takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Slow decision making process
– As mentioned earlier in the report, Brand Campaign has a very deliberative decision making approach. This approach has resulted in prudent decisions, but it has also resulted in missing opportunities in the industry over the last five years. Brand Campaign even though has strong showing on digital transformation primary two stages, it has struggled to capitalize the power of digital transformation in marketing efforts and new venture efforts.
High bargaining power of channel partners
– Because of the regulatory requirements, Kamran Kashani suggests that, Brand Campaign is facing high bargaining power of the channel partners. So far it has not able to streamline the operations to reduce the bargaining power of the value chain partners in the industry.
Interest costs
– Compare to the competition, Brand Campaign has borrowed money from the capital market at higher rates. It needs to restructure the interest payment and costs so that it can compete better and improve profitability.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Brand Campaign is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Sales & Marketing segment. Brand Campaign needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Brand Campaign to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Products dominated business model
– Even though Brand Campaign has some of the most successful products in the industry, this business model has made each new product launch extremely critical for continuous financial growth of the organization. firm in the HBR case study - Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign should strive to include more intangible value offerings along with its core products and services.
Employees’ incomplete understanding of strategy
– From the instances in the HBR case study Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign, it seems that the employees of Brand Campaign don’t have comprehensive understanding of the firm’s strategy. This is reflected in number of promotional campaigns over the last few years that had mixed messaging and competing priorities. Some of the strategic activities and services promoted in the promotional campaigns were not consistent with the organization’s strategy.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Brand Campaign has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Brand Campaign 's lucrative customers.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Brand Campaign has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Brand Campaign is planning to shift buying processes online.
Opportunities Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign are -
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Brand Campaign to increase its market reach. Brand Campaign will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Loyalty marketing
– Brand Campaign has focused on building a highly responsive customer relationship management platform. This platform is built on in-house data and driven by analytics and artificial intelligence. The customer analytics can help the organization to fine tune its loyalty marketing efforts, increase the wallet share of the organization, reduce wastage on mainstream advertising spending, build better pricing strategies using personalization, etc.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Brand Campaign can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Buying journey improvements
– Brand Campaign can improve the customer journey of consumers in the industry by using analytics and artificial intelligence. Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign suggest that firm can provide automated chats to help consumers solve their own problems, provide online suggestions to get maximum out of the products and services, and help consumers to build a community where they can interact with each other to develop new features and uses.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Brand Campaign in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Sales & Marketing segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Using analytics as competitive advantage
– Brand Campaign has spent a significant amount of money and effort to integrate analytics and machine learning into its operations in the sector. This continuous investment in analytics has enabled, as illustrated in the Harvard case study Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign - to build a competitive advantage using analytics. The analytics driven competitive advantage can help Brand Campaign to build faster Go To Market strategies, better consumer insights, developing relevant product features, and building a highly efficient supply chain.
Manufacturing automation
– Brand Campaign can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Sales & Marketing segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Brand Campaign can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Brand Campaign operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Sales & Marketing sector.
Leveraging digital technologies
– Brand Campaign can leverage digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate the production process, customer analytics to get better insights into consumer behavior, realtime digital dashboards to get better sales tracking, logistics and transportation, product tracking, etc.
Creating value in data economy
– The success of analytics program of Brand Campaign has opened avenues for new revenue streams for the organization in the industry. This can help Brand Campaign to build a more holistic ecosystem as suggested in the Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign case study. Brand Campaign can build new products and services such as - data insight services, data privacy related products, data based consulting services, etc.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Sales & Marketing industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Brand Campaign can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Brand Campaign can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Remote work and new talent hiring opportunities
– The widespread usage of remote working technologies during Covid-19 has opened opportunities for Brand Campaign to expand its talent hiring zone. According to McKinsey Global Institute, 20% of the high end workforce in fields such as finance, information technology, can continously work from remote local post Covid-19. This presents a really great opportunity for Brand Campaign to hire the very best people irrespective of their geographical location.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Brand Campaign can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Sales & Marketing segment.
Threats Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign are -
Increasing wage structure of Brand Campaign
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Brand Campaign.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Brand Campaign high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Brand Campaign demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Brand Campaign business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
Aging population
– As the populations of most advanced economies are aging, it will lead to high social security costs, higher savings among population, and lower demand for goods and services in the economy. The household savings in US, France, UK, Germany, and Japan are growing faster than predicted because of uncertainty caused by pandemic.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Brand Campaign with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Brand Campaign in the Sales & Marketing sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
Capital market disruption
– During the Covid-19, Dow Jones has touched record high. The valuations of a number of companies are way beyond their existing business model potential. This can lead to capital market correction which can put a number of suppliers, collaborators, value chain partners in great financial difficulty. It will directly impact the business of Brand Campaign.
Easy access to finance
– Easy access to finance in Sales & Marketing field will also reduce the barriers to entry in the industry, thus putting downward pressure on the prices because of increasing competition. Brand Campaign can utilize it by borrowing at lower rates and invest it into research and development, capital expenditure to fortify its core competitive advantage.
Environmental challenges
– Brand Campaign needs to have a robust strategy against the disruptions arising from climate change and energy requirements. EU has identified it as key priority area and spending 30% of its 880 billion Euros European post Covid-19 recovery funds on green technology. Brand Campaign can take advantage of this fund but it will also bring new competitors in the Sales & Marketing industry.
Increasing international competition and downward pressure on margins
– Apart from technology driven competitive advantage dilution, Brand Campaign can face downward pressure on margins from increasing competition from international players. The international players have stable revenue in their home market and can use those resources to penetrate prominent markets illustrated in HBR case study Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign .
Technology disruption because of hacks, piracy etc
– The colonial pipeline illustrated, how vulnerable modern organization are to international hackers, miscreants, and disruptors. The cyber security interruption, data leaks, etc can seriously jeopardize the future growth of the organization.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Brand Campaign has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Sales & Marketing industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Brand Campaign needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Sales & Marketing sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Make Yourself Heard: Ericsson's Global Brand Campaign is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Brand Campaign needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
