Services

How we keep our clients happy and ourselves busy.

Branding

At Amati and Associates, we believe that the best brands are built on purpose.

We transform brands by delivering a roadmap to more robust, relevant, and salient brands. We advise clients in building authentic, purposeful brands.

With the emergence of #theBlur, and brands moving beyond the traditional boundaries of their categories and sectors, we build more robust and lean brand architectures.

We are experts in:

Strategic Brand Design, Brand Positioning
Brand Architecture
Brand Audit
Brand Purpose

Innovation

We believe that innovation is key to success.

That's why we work with our clients to fill their innovation pipeline, execute innovation projects, and keep both top and bottom lines in mind. We can also lay the groundwork of innovation, facilitating creativity, conducting primary and secondary research, building business plans.

We are experts in:

New Product Development
Ideation
Products as a Services
Services as a Productse

Interested? Schedule a call and discuss your project!

Foresight

In the VUCA reality, our clients seek our help in building future scenarios, scanning weak signals, and monitoring long-term trends.

All of the above activities create a backdrop for meaningful strategic development.

We act as a bridge between your company and the outside world. We are able to provide you with a bird's eye view of tomorrow's challenges, opportunities and threats.

Our methodology is based on a sound theoretical framework, but also on practical experience and best practices from many years of working with companies from various industries and sectors.

We are experts in:

Foresight
Future Scenarios
Trend Watching
Scanning

Commercial Development

We help companies develop effective internationalization plans beyond the "moving boxes phase."

Our tiering approach helps companies prioritize investments, focusing resources where they matter.

We believe that it's not enough to just move your company's stuff to a new country—you have to understand how to make your product local and relevant, even if you're operating globally. That's what we do, every day: we help companies develop effective internationalization plans beyond the "moving boxes."

We are experts in:

Exports and International Plans
Market Tiering
Modern vs. Traditional Trade
Sales as Brand Building Opportunity

Type of Projects

Marketing and Commercial Due Diligence

We have helped companies in their due diligence process by assessing their targets' required marketing and trade investments, spotting fuzzy deals, and identifying quick wins for growth. We often work alongside the legal teams to assess the commercial impact of existing trade agreements. Industry Experience: Consumer Goods, Food & Beverages.

Acquisition Radar Screen

We assist companies and M&A boutiques in scouting for brands and commercial operations that would fit their portfolio and international growth objectives. While we do not look at financials and valuations, we bring insights from a brand, commercial, and distribution point of view. Industry Experience: Consumer Goods, Food & Beverages, Personal Care, and Cosmetics.

Revenue Management / Route to Market Development

Every negotiation has its constraints and developments, and they do not always end up where expected. Managing a retail or distributor portfolio requires taking a step back to gain a helicopter view. We help companies assess their distributors, channels, and accounts to find opportunities to shuffle investments in trade allowances in the clients with the most promising growth. Industry Experience: Fashion, Healthcare, Retail, Consumer Goods, Food & Beverages, Consumer Electronics, Lighting.

Launch of D2C Models

For several B2B2C players, we have developed and implemented MVPs for their Direct-to-Consumers approach. Based on building a community first instead of focusing on the transactional & commercial part. This work also includes looking into subscriptions or products-as-a-service business models. Industry Experience: Fashion, Healthcare, Retail, Consumer Goods, Food & Beverages.

Brand Positioning

Building salient brands requires time and consistent efforts. A catalyst for saliency is a well thought and relevant positioning. We help companies position and re-position their brands in a relevant, purposeful, and actionable way. Industry Experience: Fashion, Healthcare, Retail, Consumer Goods, Food & Beverages, Consumer Electronics, Lighting.

Brand Architecture

The blurrification of category boundaries and the emergence of metaverse are forcing firms to rethink their brand architectures to ensure they can tap into multiple categories and deal with their digital footprint. We help companies audit, analyze and design brand architectures. Industry Experience: Fashion, Fragrances and Cosmetics, Healthcare, Retail, Consumer Goods, Food & Beverages, Consumer Electronics, Lighting.

Ideation Workshops / Co-creation Sessions

Co-creation is a design-thinking process in which the managers involve consumers, customers, and external experts. Co-creation is a form of collaborative innovation in which people - both internal and external to the company - work together to find solutions to a defined-problem Ideation is the creative process in which people internal to the company develop solutions to existing problems or concepts to tap into emerging opportunities. We help companies design, execute and summarize the outcome of both ideation and co-creation efforts. Industry Experience: Fashion, Healthcare, Retail, Consumer Goods, Food & Beverages, Consumer Electronics, Lighting.

Scenarios Planning

To stay ahead of the curve, you need to understand systems and complexity and creative and collaborative thinking and actions. Strategic foresight is a latent and ancient human ability. Scenario planning helps you plan for the future. It facilitates future-oriented awareness that works by overcoming existing biases, simplifying complexity, and reducing uncertainty to foster faster and more efficient decisions. It has been used for more than 30 years in corporate decision-making processes and helps overcome uncertainty, improve cognitive ability, and enhance mental agility. We help companies build and analyze the impact of future scenarios and develop an actionable plan forward. Industry Experience: Insurance, Healthcare, Retail, Automotive, Consumer Goods, Food & Beverages, Consumer Electronics.

Trend Research / Horizon Scanning

Change is the only constant in our world. The pace of change is increasing rapidly in many areas, such as digitization. Whenever a change occurs, there are always risks involved and opportunities available If the market changes and there no longer exists a need for a product. It could be a risk for a company. The change also brings many opportunities and possibilities for innovations. We help companies identify long-term (5-10 years) trends in their industries with the potential of changing the sector landscape. Industry Experience: Insurance, Healthcare, Retail, Pharmaceutical, Automotive, Consumer Electronics, Consumer Goods, Wines and Spirits, Food and Beverages

Project Examples

Purpose Strategic Branding Connected Cars Snapshot Acquisition Radar Screen Consumption Rituals Occasion-based Model Revenue Turn Around Growth Strategy

Our client's board was deeply concerned with climate change, geopolitical risk, and uncertainty. They were clear on the significant societal changes driven by demographic and technological disruption. With the objective of making their brand more resilient, they asked us to help them develop a relevant and distinctive Brand Purpose, which would be the center stage for building a stronger, purpose-centric culture. The challenge was not only to build a brand purpose that would resonate with consumers and customers but also that would help recruit and retain talent. That would make sure the employees go beyond the extra mile, by caring for the company and daring to speak.

Our client - a leading B2B service player with a Consumer-relevant brand - was preparing for the next phase of international growth and decided to rethink its brand architecture and brand positioning. For them, we initially conducted a Market trend analysis and a competition mapping to assess the sector's landscape. In addition to that, with a series of internal and external expert interviews, we took the pulse on the organization and its partners' point of view before conducting some co-design workshops with end-user. The workshops helped develop customer insights and in providing an external validation on plans. We finally proceeded in developing new brand architecture and positioning through a series of workshop sessions to build internal consensus on the new strategy.

Our client was interested in scouting trends and weak signals and developing a future-based market assessment of the connected cars ecosystems. The project consisted of two parallel streams, one of Foresight and the other of Insight development and validation. Each stream was feeding and being fed from the other to ensure a certain level of action in the same direction. Of course, the project also included a component of identification of all players of the eco-systems and their agendas. Finally, we translated the summary of our findings into a clear so what for our customer and its sector landscape.

During the hype of the category, our client - a brewer market leader in their own country - engaged us to develop a radar screen for the potential acquisition of craft beer brands in Western countries. We identified, analyzed, and reviewed more than 500 beer brands globally. We assessed them and mapped them in a segmentation based on the client portfolio and distribution needs. For the top candidate, we organized visits to their facilities and tasting rooms (ca. 30 in Europe and the US) and established a first connection with the owners. N.B. We have conducted similar projects in Fragrances and Cosmetics, Soft Drinks, Spirits, and Wines.

Our client - an extensive food and beverages producer - wanted to explore ways of generating deeper and stronger bonding with the consumers while becoming a more relevant player in the on-premise. We organized a set of rituals and co-creation sessions with leading-edge consumers, leading bartenders, and visual artists to develop relevant consumption rituals. We then translated each ritual into either activation or an innovation platform.

With the increasing beer offering and the blurring boundaries of adjacent categories (e.g., CSD, Water, Kvas, Energy Drinks,…), the client - a leading global brewery - needed to develop a more sophisticated approach to its marketing and commercial execution. We developed an occasion-based model to help our client optimize their portfolio strategy while improving the effectiveness of execution both at the promotional and commercial level (e.g., what type of promotion, with whom, in which channel, and for which brand.

Our client - a leading beverage company - was under pressure because of an expensive growth strategy, whose positive volume growth was not able to deliver positive economic returns. We introduced a new customer segmentation approach through strategic sessions and workshops. We then translated it into a new investment strategy in modern trade while launching new channels that were previously untapped. The company broke even after ten months.

While the emergence of premium Tequilas has created a new life for the category, the segment is niche at best in the largest spirits markets (even in the US, sales were concentrated in 5 states). We conducted a series of strategic sessions with external stakeholders (e.g., distributors, bartenders, modern trade) to co-develop creative and relevant growth routes. We then concluded the process with a visioning workshop to build consensus and define a growth strategy.