What Category Entry Points (CEPs) can DPG Media use to grow its brand position?

Henrike Reinhardt works as Consumer Insights Manager for the Belgian & Dutch Marketing Department of DPG Media Publishing. DPG Media is an umbrella company with several brands under its wing. Think of: de Volkskrant, Trouw, NU.nl and AD, but also Libelle and Margriet.

Category Entry Points (CEPs).

Why was DPG Media so impressed with our research method? Henrike: "We had already had Blauw conduct a study once before, in which we were very impressed with the information we received about Byron Sharp's marketing philosophy. Now we wanted to dive a little deeper. We wanted to gain strategic insights into where we are as a brand. We wanted to discover tools. In which areas we can better position ourselves and our competitors. As far as the strategic issue was concerned, Blauw was very convincing in its pitch. We were particularly charmed by its explanation of the concept of Category Entry Points (CEPs). We had not seen before how CEPs could be an important part of a brand tracking study, so we expected to gain a lot of new insights. That expectation has definitely been met, by the way.

Category Entry Points (CEPs) represent the most important moments when your product or service is used by consumers. The context and relevance of a situation is very important here. Just like the associations that come up in the consumer's mind when they think of your brand name. Once a company knows its most important CEPs, you can respond to them with marketing and grow your brand awareness, brand equity and brand position.

We started the research process with a kick-off session. A workshop of our Blauw experts for the project team of DPG Media and the brand managers of a number of DPG titles. Together we drew up a list of possible CEPs and corresponding brand associations. Henrike: 'During the workshop Blauw helped us to get a good picture of the different CEPs.

The research also included other modules. Among other things, our Blauw experts examined the brand funnel, the emotional connection consumers feel with DPG Media's brands, brand values and Distinctive Brand Assets (DBAs: visual attributes of brands, such as color and logo).

The nice but at the same time challenging thing about DPG Media is that its own brands are very diverse but in the same category. Henrike: "With our marketing we naturally want to do each brand justice. Therefore we had to look not only at the unique differences but also at the common ground.

In doing so, we got a good sense that it is not only important to test our own brand values in this study, but also those of our competitors. Incidentally, we also looked at both positive brand associations that come to people's minds, as well as negative ones. Of course, it is always good to know if we are not promoting the wrong values. If so, we can adjust it in time.'

Soon DPG Media got its hands on the reports of the study. But with that, of course, we did not leave the project team and the brand managers to their own devices. Henrike: "During a session Blauw presented the most important findings. We all found the results very interesting. We really got new insights from the image people have of the various titles of DPG Media as those of our competitors. Partly it confirmed our suspicions, and partly we got new insights into certain brand associations. After the presentation, another workshop was held in which we selected the most important CEPs. Finally, we could think of concrete actions that respond to the different CEPs per brand.