Introduction

What is the Brand Wedge?

The brand wedge is all about the brand and how it works, behaves and speaks to it's existing (and potential) users. The brand identity is crucial to the brand's success. The lack of one can be equally fatal since it will always leave the users confused about the brand and often lead to poor recall value or top of mind awareness for the brand. This could be disastrous since it can lead to high acquisition costs, low engagement and poor retention of users. A drop in any of these can reduce the potential of revenue for the brand.

What is The Ken?

The Ken is a subscriber-only business news publication. It publishes one story a day that is deeply reported & analytical. The Ken has it's offerings in India and globally for subscribers. The Ken also publishes weekly newsletters and podcasts as additional offerings for it's subscribers. Some of the offerings are freely available to non-subscribers as well.

Crafting the Core Value Proposition

What is the product?

In this section, we will answer some questions about the product to provide context and set up the first step to building a brand wedge.

What is The Ken really in the business for?

The Ken and it's offerings are aimed at providing deeply reported (and independent) business news to it's subscribers. The Ken started because many non-business (and business) professionals across India lacked the resources and understanding of the larger picture of businesses and sectors in India.

Thus, The Ken launched as a Subscriber-only offering. The only source of revenue for The Ken is the subscription fees it charges to it's subscribers on an annual (sometimes 3-years) basis.

The Ken covers across industries and sectors, thus making it the only business news subscription that a professional needs.

Over time The Ken has evolved to create products that align with it's vision of providing a view on businesses across India & globally that transform and create impact on the sector. These products now range from stories to newsletters to podcasts.

The subscriber only model has led to deep innovation at The Ken, including the creation of a paywall in India that offer's content only to subscribers. This paywall, now has been copied by multiple other news publications across India to create their own premium versions that are subscriber-only offerings.

What problem does The Ken solve?

Businesses are hard to understand and even harder if you are not a business professional. This is not helped by business professionals in their use of jargon and complex frameworks. For someone on the outside of the business team, it becomes really hard to understand what happens. However, all professionals need to fundamentally understand business because at the root of any company is the business and the business model that dictates everything else.

Thus, The Ken has set out to simplify business across India and globally for everyone. The Ken does this through deeply reported analytical stories daily. These stories are focused on business, the tactics they use, how they grow or even how wrong decisions lead to pitfalls for the biggest of companies.

For each stories, a reporter speaks to multiple sources (across multiple conversations) and industry experts as well as other industry veterans that understand context, build narrative and create a compelling story of what the actual business status is and how it got there. Often, the story also speaks about others who might have gone down the same path, and how (if) they have gotten out of it.

The Ken's stories have been know to create waves due to the very core premise that it questions. Often subscribers feel that the stories are too negatives but the real fact is that, negative truths are suppressed far more than what positive narratives are celebrated.

What benefits do subscribers get from The Ken?

When a subscriber purchases a subscription from The Ken, they get access to deeply reported stories daily. The major focus for these stories is India and businesses related to it, however, The Ken also has a global offering bundled for some plans that offers subscribers understanding of businesses across the globe.

These stories have the highest bar on journalism and code of conduct before they are published and thus are know for their quality.

The subscriber also get access to ~10 weekly newsletters from The Ken that talk about other events that are not significant enough to demand a story from The Ken. These newsletters are sectoral and have fixed days of the week for when they are published. They often have an informed opinion from the author and are not news stories.

The Ken also offers it's subscribers (and non-subscribers) weekly podcasts that focus on different things. Daybreak, for example, is a business news podcast that covers the recent happenings across businesses in India. First Principle is another podcast from The Ken which is based on leadership and talks to different leaders in India from different sectors to understand their leadership style. Cost to Company was a podcast from The Ken which focused on careers and workplaces. It was crucial in a time when there were layoffs happening across Indian startups and helped navigate many professionals through their transitions.

How are users solving the problem right now?

In the absence of The Ken, users would rely on legacy news publications for business news. These would often be filled with jargon and leave a person more confused than informed.

Another way professionals would learn about business news would be through talking to business professionals, however, they would always be limited by that professionals knowledge and understanding. This led to a very narrow view of business.

However, in the past few years, a number of business news publications have cropped up. These include The Morning Context, Yourstory, Captable to name a few. However, these news publications tend to have a focus on fundraises and revenue numbers rather than an understanding of how the business is being driven or what challenges it is facing, thus giving users a very money focused view rather than a business understanding view.

What is the Job To Be Done?

Is The Ken a category creator?

While the business model of The Ken is something new in India, business news has been published in India for decades. Thus, looking from an category perspective, The Ken is not a category creator but instead it has entered an existing category of business news.

What helps The Ken stand out in the business news category is the deeply reported stories it does. The stories are on businesses that people use daily or have a stake behind the scenes yet have a deep impact on most individual's lives. The subscriber only paywall was unheard of before The Ken introduced it in India. This innovation led to the creation of an advertiser independent business model thus allowing The Ken to be fearless in it's reporting and chasing the actual narratives that mattered rather than focus on press releases from companies. This, in turn, has led to some stories that are timeless in understanding how the business landscape has evolved in India over the last few years.

While the stories that The Ken does are front and centre in helping in distinguish itself, the experience is also something that way missing from other legacy business news publications. Without the need to thrust ads down the throats of subscribers, The Ken was able to create a beautiful experience for it's subscribers.

Because of this, stories were more readable and allowed the subscriber a chance to enjoy them rather than having a to minimize a popup add every few seconds. This would lead to an uninterrupted reading experience for ~10 mins daily. With time, subscribers have fell in love with The Ken's long from stories.

However, as a new product in an existing category, especially a business one meant that trust from it's subscribers was extremely vital to exist. News, more than any other profession requires trust because the lack of it can often lead to the death of a true and factual story.

Is The Ken a pull product?

Yes, The Ken with it's explosive stories has always been a pull product. All the subscribers that purchase a subscription to The Ken do so to read an existing story.

However, even as a pull product, the distribution of stories remains crucial since if non-subscribers cannot discover the stories at The Ken does, they will never turn into subscribers.

Thus the primary JTBD for The Ken's subscribers is personal. The subscribers want to understand what is happening in businesses across India and the globe. The secondary JTBD for The Ken's subscribers is social. Often subscribers use the knowledge from The Ken's stories to show-off their understanding of the business function to others.

Understanding The Ken's Subscribers

The Ken is a product that is both B2B and B2C but for the sake of simplicity, we will focus only on the B2C side for the purpose of this project.

Articulating The Core Value Proposition for The Ken

For early to mid-senior working professionals who need to understand business news, The Ken is a subscriber-only business news publication that helps them understand businesses across India one story at a time.

The Ken's Brand Wedge

What are the top problems the category is facing?

The Business News category is filled with jargon led business news that is often extremely hard to understand. Often, the business news is too focused on the revenue and profits rather than focusing on what is happening in the business and thus hampering the core understanding of the reader. Business news often has credibility issues as well which leads to doubting of the story and the thing mentioned in the story.

What are the top problems that users face?

In the business news industry, individuals often cannot find the right business news publication or are unable to understand the news due to the fact that it is not simple enough for non-business professionals to understand. The legacy business news publications have been unable to solve for this over the last few decades which has led to multiple business news publishers being born.

Users are also fed up of business news publications that shove ads down the throats of users every time they land up on a news. The screens are full of popup ads that often lead to extremely poor experience for the reader.

What are non-negotiables for the users?

1. Trust: As a business news publication, trust is the most important factor for users. If a user does not trust the news publication, they do not believe anything they read from the publication
2. Jargon Free News: Simplifying business news is hard but it must be jargon free for the user to understand the happenings in the business
3. Quality: The overall quality of the business news must be high. All the perspectives and facts must be studied before forming the narrative.

What are the negotiables for users?

1. Price: Users are comfortable paying a higher price for quality business news
2. Quantity: Users are comfortable with a lower number of news being published as long as they are relevant to them

What are the users' aspirations?

The major aspiration for users is to leverage the business understanding to grow in their professional life. The users are typically early to mid-senior professionals that want to transition to leadership roles.

For leaders who use The Ken, their aspiration is to be up to date with the business happening to leverage them to grow their business.

Defining the Brand Wedge

Category Problem: Gaining readers trust

User Pain Point: Jargon filled business news that is hard to comprehend

User Non-negotiable: High quality business news

What does The Ken look like?

The Ken is premium but it is not incomprehensible

The Ken is quality but it is not unaccessible

How will The Ken speak?

The Ken is clear and concise but it is not click-baity

The Ken is straightforward but it is not rude

How will The Ken behave?

The Ken is subscriber-first but not subscriber-led