The world that organizations today are forced to navigate is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous - a VUCA world. Their long-term survival is continuously endangered. A strong brand positioning is important to secure survival and deeply connect with customers. However, changes in consumer needs and expectations call for new ways to stay relevant and stay ahead of these changes. At the same time, it is important to look ahead and make informed predictions regarding the direction society and customers are moving. Thus, future studies - more specifically strategic foresight - has gained growing attention within both academia and industry. With the amount of data collected today, novel ways of analysing and predicting customer behaviour and trends are emerging. Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently gotten a new breakthrough due to its ability to gather, monitor and analyse these vast amounts of data. The intersection between the three - branding, strategic foresight and AI - holds great potential to create and maintain a strong brand positioning. Therefore, this thesis aims to investigate this main question; how can artificial intelligence and strategic foresight be applied to the improvement and/or maintenance a future-proof brand positioning? This project is done in collaboration with Deloitte Digital who consults a number of well-established brands. Thus, this project is relevant for Deloitte Digital as it can future-proof the brands of their clients. Through a literature review and eight expert interviews regarding the three areas and the relations between them it is discovered that there is potential in further focusing more specifically on (1) the emotional connection between brand and user, (2) the Generic Foresight Process and (3) natural language processing (NLP). These insights are translated into design requirements and a design vision which then guide the creation of a solution. The solution proposed is called MindMatch and falls into the category of social listening tools. The digital platform contains three main USPs; (1) an analysis of the match between brand identity and brand image, (2) sentiment analysis and emotion recognition and (3) digital co-creation connected to the analysis insights. An interactive prototype of both a marketing website and the digital platform was developed and iterated upon based on feedback from Deloitte colleagues. When finalized, the solution was validated through interviews with three Deloitte colleagues and one crown jewel client, DSM. MindMatch embodies the answer to the main question of this thesis. By applying NLP techniques (including topic modeling, sentiment analysis and emotion recognition) and the Generic Foresight Process (including the six steps of the process, weak signal detection and forecasting) to social media data, the solution assists Deloitte Digital in improving and/or maintaining the emotional connection and co-created meaning between brand and user - resulting in a future-proof brand positioning.

Increasing computing power, networking capabilities, rapid developments in information and communication technologies have made digital technologies part of our lives and changed the dynamics in the society and in the business world. (Demirkan, Spohrer, & Welser, 2016; Svahn, Henfridsson, & Yoo, 2009). While presenting numerous opportunities for organizations, digital technologies lowered the threshold in the market for new entrants. Therefore, change has become imperative for large organizations in order to survive. This profound and accelerating transformation of business activities, processes, competencies and models to fully leverage the changes and opportunities brought by digital technologies is called digital transformation (Demirkan, Spohrer, & Welser, 2016). Digital transformation presents a novel and complex challenge for organizations regardless which industry they belong to. It is imperative for all the organizations to embrace the deep-rooted, never ending digital journey for their survival. However, going through this journey is not easy for organizations in highly competitive and rapidly changing business environments. Clearly, it is impossible for companies to respond to all the technological developments happening in the world. But how should the companies choose the right technology and how should they apply it? How can they reap the benefits of these technologies in favor of their organization and customers? On the other hand, brand, is an established concept in the literature. It is acknowledged by the literature that it could be a powerful tool for organizations in selecting, guiding and maintaining strategic directions for organizations (Mosmans & van der Vorst, 1998). However, the role of an organization’s brand in digital transformation is not addressed in the literature. This literature gap formed the foundation of this graduation project and was executed in collaboration with Deloitte Digital, a creative digital consultancy which helps large organizations in their digital transformation journeys and striving for acquiring new capabilities and ways of thinking. Exploration of the brand identity of the large organizations in digital transformation and bridging the insights to Deloitte Digital context provided them a new perspective over the digital transformation projects. In order to be able to enable Deloitte Digital consultants in gaining and applying brand-aware perspective on digital transformation projects, “Digital Ambitions” workshops has designed. This workshop, aims to facilitate the creation of future vision and exploration of the possibilities in different domains of digital transformation. Finally, this study has contributed to the research domains of brand and digital transformation in bridging the gap between those by proposing links between them. Additionally, a new perspective for Deloitte Digital is provided that illustrates a competitive advantage in differentiating their approach towards the clients.