Decision Technology with BT Group plc

BT Group is the UK’s largest telecoms provider, operating three separate brands across the broadband, mobile and TV markets. To drive growth, BT Group is targeting the 13 million UK homes that don’t currently have a relationship with any of their brands. BT Group needed to establish a multi-brand strategy that would drive consideration of BT, EE and Plusnet’s target segments, while leveraging the diversity of the BT Group portfolio to avoid cannibalisation. To do so, it needed to identify products and services that would appeal target segments, while differentiating BT Group brands from each other and competitors.
BT Group and Decision Technology worked in partnership to build a robust framework rooted in behavioural science, to capture the complex nature of customer consideration and provide a rigorous approach and granular understanding of customers across markets, territories and brands. This first-of-its-kind research examined 100 propositions, to identify those that increase brand consideration and investigate the degree to which consumers already associate them with a brand. The findings identified clear new territories to be pursued by each BT Group brand, recommended propositions to be used across the group, flagged propositions that pose a cannibalisation risk and prioritised those that differentiate BT Group from key competitors.
The Brand Differentiation research has now become the go-to guide for strategic management of BT Group’s three brands and has established a new direction for consumer consideration and its levers across the telecoms market. The statistical and quantitative nature of Decision Technology’s work produced recommendations that helped to guide key decisions that risked being skewed by internal structures and dynamics had the voice of the consumer not been in the room. Brand Differentiation enabled important new conversations across the organisation and was critical in supporting BT Group’s wider shift towards a trans-brand vision.
However, the true success of the project was the product of a strong and committed collaboration between the BT project team and Dectech consultants. In order to leverage the considerable skills and expertise of both parties, the BT-Dectech team established a collaborative and dynamic way of working together and co-produced robust, informed and impactful recommendations. By positioning themselves as partners rather than service providers, Dectech started an ongoing relationship with BT Group, becoming an integral part of the BT team, available to be called upon for advice and support in the same way as any other team member.

View the Decision Technology profile in the MCA Members Directory.