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The Business War College expands brand territory in a time of contraction and retreat
Dedham, MA
Friday, February 13, 2009
Boston/New York, Feb. 13, 2009: Milestone Ideas and The Newlin Taraschi Partnership announced today the launch of a business process to help brands and portfolios survive and thrive in a challenging marketspace.
A unique, two-month process, The Business War College was developed to respond to the emerging disruption and marketplace contraction of today's business environment. It is based on the firm's expertise in working with senior executives and brand teams to upend familiar and basic business models. Now more than ever, the business-as-usual approach is under siege, with unrelenting pressure on margins, growth assumptions, head count and marketing plans. Executives need to make frequent, fast and flexible course corrections: The Business War College brings powerful, Just-in-Time intelligence to bear to solve business's most pressing issues, and to provide real time solutions.
"The Business War College is fast, flexible, and immediately functional", said Bob Taraschi, partner. "Together with our faculty and business clients, we bring the best minds and most relevant expertise to solve serious brand, portfolio and business issues – and we do it in a finite period of time. By creating, developing and sequencing the activation of real-time, real world strategic scenarios, we target critical competitive, brand and corporate constituencies that focus a firm's unique strengths against its competitors' and markets' most vulnerable weaknesses"
The Business War College is designed to enable companies to quickly assess their objectives in the emerging light of today's reality. The goal is to provide a laser focus to evaluate multiple strategies and tactical alternatives with a single purpose, thereby enabling precisely targeted moves that are at once competitively insulatable and immediately and tangibly effective.
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Bob Taraschi is a recognized industry leader in research and branding. For 20 years, Bob has worked with more than 60% of the Fortune 500. His deep professional experience has helped companies establish and strategically extend brands through brand building, positioning and re-positioning efforts, as well as new product and marketing strategy development. He is a board member of the Boston Center of the AK Rice Institute, author of Milestone Ideas, and he has been awarded many international creativity awards, including a Gold Metal from the Pan American Film Festival, the Clio and the One Show. His client experience includes Apple Computer, Kraft Foods, Unisys, the American Red Cross, Dole, Hasbro, Church & Dwight, Honeywell, Heinz, Kitchen Aid, School Specialty and Discovery Networks.
Kate Newlin is the former president of Faith Popcorn's BrainReserve. An extraordinarily gifted revealer of unmet consumer desires and predictor of the consumer's willingness to pay for what they want, Kate has worked with scores of companies, including: Intel, Games by Apollo, Kitchen Aid, Galoob Electronic Toys, Sharp Electronics, Hasbro, P&G, Kraft, Campbell's Soup, Quaker, Pepsi-Cola, Reckett-Benkeiser, S.C. Johnson, and Heinz — to unearth the power of the underleveraged selling proposition.
Kate is the author of Shopportunity! (Harper-Collins, September 2006), a consumer manifesto for reigniting the thrill of the hunt. Her forthcoming book (Passion Brands, 2009) investigates brands that have forged remarkable consumer partnerships and deconstructs the process through which that level of engagement can be formed.
A unique, two-month process, The Business War College was developed to respond to the emerging disruption and marketplace contraction of today's business environment. It is based on the firm's expertise in working with senior executives and brand teams to upend familiar and basic business models. Now more than ever, the business-as-usual approach is under siege, with unrelenting pressure on margins, growth assumptions, head count and marketing plans. Executives need to make frequent, fast and flexible course corrections: The Business War College brings powerful, Just-in-Time intelligence to bear to solve business's most pressing issues, and to provide real time solutions.
"The Business War College is fast, flexible, and immediately functional", said Bob Taraschi, partner. "Together with our faculty and business clients, we bring the best minds and most relevant expertise to solve serious brand, portfolio and business issues – and we do it in a finite period of time. By creating, developing and sequencing the activation of real-time, real world strategic scenarios, we target critical competitive, brand and corporate constituencies that focus a firm's unique strengths against its competitors' and markets' most vulnerable weaknesses"
The Business War College is designed to enable companies to quickly assess their objectives in the emerging light of today's reality. The goal is to provide a laser focus to evaluate multiple strategies and tactical alternatives with a single purpose, thereby enabling precisely targeted moves that are at once competitively insulatable and immediately and tangibly effective.
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Bob Taraschi is a recognized industry leader in research and branding. For 20 years, Bob has worked with more than 60% of the Fortune 500. His deep professional experience has helped companies establish and strategically extend brands through brand building, positioning and re-positioning efforts, as well as new product and marketing strategy development. He is a board member of the Boston Center of the AK Rice Institute, author of Milestone Ideas, and he has been awarded many international creativity awards, including a Gold Metal from the Pan American Film Festival, the Clio and the One Show. His client experience includes Apple Computer, Kraft Foods, Unisys, the American Red Cross, Dole, Hasbro, Church & Dwight, Honeywell, Heinz, Kitchen Aid, School Specialty and Discovery Networks.
Kate Newlin is the former president of Faith Popcorn's BrainReserve. An extraordinarily gifted revealer of unmet consumer desires and predictor of the consumer's willingness to pay for what they want, Kate has worked with scores of companies, including: Intel, Games by Apollo, Kitchen Aid, Galoob Electronic Toys, Sharp Electronics, Hasbro, P&G, Kraft, Campbell's Soup, Quaker, Pepsi-Cola, Reckett-Benkeiser, S.C. Johnson, and Heinz — to unearth the power of the underleveraged selling proposition.
Kate is the author of Shopportunity! (Harper-Collins, September 2006), a consumer manifesto for reigniting the thrill of the hunt. Her forthcoming book (Passion Brands, 2009) investigates brands that have forged remarkable consumer partnerships and deconstructs the process through which that level of engagement can be formed.
Bob Taraschi
Founder
Milestone Consulting
Dedham, MA
781-467-1200
781-467-0299
