It’s time to update your brand plan
Published on 01/15/2005 under Branding
Many New Year’s resolutions involve matters that are truly important but tend to get lost in the distractions of day-to-day minutiae. These are things that don’t fit conveniently in the weekly to-do list. They’re too big and too complicated, and besides, you couldn’t finish them in a week if you tried.
You might say that most New Year’s resolutions are longer-term projects that need the occasion of a new beginning for one to summon up the required extra energy and determination. Since we now find ourselves at the start of yet another calendar year, I know you’ve probably already got a list going, so here are a couple of things you could add in order to start updating and strengthening your company’s brand management plan.
Appoint a brand steward.
In any successful brand management system, it’s critical that
The responsibility is often divided between advertising and PR managers who are busily waging turf battles for budget or message control supremacy. Or, at the very least, they’re jockeying for position as the fairest of fair-haired ones in the eyes of top management.
Worse than the advertising/PR split, however, is when brand stewardship is unofficially delegated to divisional managers, whose attention span is limited and overall responsibilities are vast. On any given day, they will give lip service to the importance of brand management, but try to get them to rein in an inconsistent or inappropriate usage and see how far you get.
Brand stewardship is a business imperative that needs to be specifically assigned by the CEO. The executive with the ultimate and final authority for branding decisions should be clearly understood in any company. When questions arise, people should know to whom they can turn for guidance and, if necessary, arbitration. And why wouldn’t that person be you?
Get your fellow employees on the branding bus.
Once you’ve assumed your rightful position as driver of the branding bus, it’s time to think about how to ensure that all your fellow employees are willing and supportive passengers. Far too many companies spend little or no time worrying about this.
Employees not only have to understand and believe in your branding approach, they have to
So the question is: What are you planning to do this year to help employees understand, support and believe with all their hearts in the branding approach your company is pursuing? If you said things like “Write newsletter articles, produce brochures, preview ad campaigns,” and so forth, you’re forgetting about the “two-way dialogue” part of getting people excited about your program.
You might want to consider adding activities such as employee research, branding councils (with representatives from major employee groups), branding blogs on your intranet--you know, interactive stuff. Not only does this make people feel like their views are important, it also provides valuable feedback on how the branding messages are being received--or not.
Develop some brand architecture guidelines
As my colleague, Ralph Oliva, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, at Pennsylvania State University’s Smeal College of Business in University Park, has famously said, “Abraham Maslow had it slightly wrong. What humans need is to survive, to reproduce and to create our own logo for something.”
A corollary law might be: In the absence of a formal brand architecture system, the number of rogue trademarks and product or service logotypes expands to fill the available space.
In my upcoming book on b-to-b branding, I cite three major types of brand architecture: freestanding brands, over brands and master brands. You may be more comfortable with other branding terms (Lord knows we have plenty). It doesn’t really matter so long as you have a system that fits your business model and organizational needs.
If your company does not have a formal brand architecture system, it’s time you devised one. It’s part of the brand steward responsibility anyway. Managing a brand image program requires you to think through the relationship of corporate brands vs. division, product and service brands. So now would be a fine time to start.
Put a value on your brands.
You know the old cliché, “You can’t manage something you can’t measure.” Well, brands are assets and their value should be established--both now and in the future.
In the Nov. 15, 2004, issue of Marketing News (page 8), I talked about the CoreBrand approach to brand valuation. The CoreBrand service starts at $100,000. In the Sept. 1, 2003, issue of Marketing News (page 6) I described a $15,000 approach from a small California-based consulting firm. As you might imagine, there’s everything in between, and some cost a whole lot more than that, too.
The important thing is for you to associate a set of metrics to your brand and track those values over time to make sure you’re headed in the right direction. Scott Davis, managing partner of Chicago-based management consultancy Prophet, in his book Brand Asset Management, defines 19 different brand-related metrics you might track, either on your own or with the help of your ad agency or outside branding counsel.
It’s not rocket science, but it does require diligence and consistency of technique. If you simply pick several metrics, like percentage of customers who can play back your brand positioning or associate your brand with the most significant brand attributes, that’s better than nothing at all.
Over time you should be able to see those numbers rise and feel confident that your brand value is going up, too. And then you can say, with certainty, that your time as a brand steward was well spent.