Brand Insight Wit Attitude

While cleaning out my briefcase I came across an article that was worth re-reading.  The article is titled “Can You Say What Your Strategy Is?”, written by David J. Collis and Michael G. Rukstad, published by Harvard Business Review.  In essence the article is a call for brevity in writing and presenting an organization’s strategy. In the authors’ opinions the statement should be no longer than 35 words, accompanied by a supporting “value-proposition chart” and “activity-system map.”  Their proposition is that if an organization lacks a clear statement of strategy it is unlikely it will be executed well.

The authors point-out that “words lead to action” and that employee engagement is an important rationale for promoting succinctness in communicating an organization’s strategy.  Their notion is that the more employees know about the strategy, the more likely an employee is to direct their actions in concert with the strategic intent. That makes sense, except most employees are not fascinated by or frankly not very interested in corporate strategies.  By their very nature, corporate strategy presentations can be perceived as self-important and off-putting to many employees.  Generally speaking, employees are pragmatic and more likely interested in things that are easily understood and positioned in a way that is relevant to their work. 

At the end of the day employees want to know, or in some way surmise, that they have made a difference in the work they do.  Employees like to know that through their efforts and talents, individually or in concert with fellow employees, they made a real difference for a customer or customer group.  Many experts believe engagement is at its highest level when employees are inspired by the passion and talents of the organization’s culture (the brand inside) and believe that collectively they make a distinctive difference for customers (gaining brand recognition on the outside).  So the most effective leadership platform statements are those that link the distinctive qualities of the organization with the difference they make for customers. 

The traditional (some might say, old school) leadership platform is built on some variation of a mission, vision and values framework, some more audacious than others.  There is no question these core elements are important parts of any leadership platform, but they may not be personal enough for employees.  In addition, it is my experience that way too many of these types of leadership platforms are not written well and are too inwardly focused. 

Like it or not employees are not inspired about big ideas solely for the company’s benefit.   But, if the big idea is targeted at making a difference for customers you can get employees’ attention. If you want to engage employees’ passion and spark their imagination, convince them the organization’s most outstanding quality makes an exceptional difference for a customer.  That’s the type of big idea that can be inspiring at a personal level.  Like great leaders, big ideas must be perceived to be authentic in their abilities and their intention to help others. 

Bottom line, the traditional leadership platform must be extended and reframed in a way that makes a direct connection between employees’ passions and the difference the organization makes for customers. It’s not about business strategy, it’s about connecting employees’ passion and imagination with making a difference for someone else.   Outstanding strategies are a dime-a-dozen. Cultures passionate and confident about the difference they make are a much more rare commodity. 

It seems whenever an organization chooses to develop a platform that is directed at connecting with customers it becomes a marketing department assignment.  In most cases the result is a tagline.  The primary purpose of a tagline is to support a myriad of marketing communications and promotional activities.  In that context a good tagline must have a certain “retail” essence that speaks directly to customers and prospects with certain Madison-Avenue panache. 

Too often taglines lack relevance and authenticity with the majority of employees. Marketers would like employees to admire their taglines, but employees were not the target audience during the creative development process.  On a related note, a hybrid approach to taglines was presented in the book Blue Ocean Strategy, written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.  The authors suggest that any good strategy should be able to be summed up in a tagline.  Interesting idea, but it wasn’t clear how the authors differentiated strategy taglines from marketing-oriented ones.  Bottom line, many organizations have not created a customer leadership platform that is designed specifically to ignite employees’ passions about making a difference with customers.  A leadership platform focused in this important human dynamic is the foundation to create a customer leadership culture.

A brand platform is a proven framework that can be used as an effective organizational development tool to create a customer leadership culture.  In this context I am not using brand in its most myopic perspective as a marketing tool or corporate identity.  Brand in its essence defines the distinctive qualities of an organization that are proven to make a remarkable difference for customers.  Marketers’ responsibility is to make sure the organization gets credit in the marketplace for the distinctive value it provides to customers.  Leaders’ responsibility is to ensure that employees are engaged and passionate about making a difference for customers. A full-bodied brand platform must speak with the kind of authenticity and relevance that inspires employees and also contains the market sensibility that connects with customers.

I strongly recommend that every organization develop a brand platform.  A well-conceived brand platform is a powerful framework to extend the fundamental principles of the traditional mission/vision/values leadership platform.  Much like the word brand itself, a brand platform can have various meanings.  In way too many cases brand platforms are skewed for serving primary marketing needs.  A well-crafted brand platform is an assignment for the leadership team, not a creative exercise for the marketing team.

Developing a brand platform that supports effective dual brand building – brand inside and brand outside – requires a different dimension than the traditional brand-building model.  A brand platform must describe the brand with an organizational development sensibility to support employee engagement (brand inside building) and exude creative possibilities to capture the fascination of the prospective customers (brand outside building).

First and foremost, the brand platform must be anchored with a brand ethos.  In this context, a brand ethos describes the one most important value residing inside the organization.  Identifying a brand ethos requires keen insight and it must be grounded in the “truth” of the organization.  I cannot emphasize enough the importance of discovering a brand ethos.  Without a credible brand ethos, a brand platform will lack authenticity and the fundamental grounding required to develop a brand platform that is distinctive, relevant and consistent – the essential traits of every strong brand.  A brand ethos is the heart of any customer leadership platform.

A well-founded brand ethos becomes the genesis to define the cadre of brand platform elements, starting with a brand vision and culminating with a brand character.  A more detailed description of a corporate brand platform can be found at http://www.brandtoolbox.com/corporate-brand-platform.php.

Conventional wisdom has it that brand building is a niche competency contained within the marketing silo. There is an innovation in brand building now taking place that integrates the relationship-building competencies of the marketing and HR functions.

The name for this new business process is internal brand building. Internal brand building produces high-performance customers (customers that produce above average revenue, better profit margins, or purchase a broader portfolio of products) and substantially higher levels of employee engagement. When employees are highly engaged around the things that make the biggest difference for customers, the result is a strong brand. Engaged employees create engaged customers. Internal brand building is an innovation that connects employees with customers.

The innovation is based upon marketing and HR working together, using a shared process to coordinate the relationship building inside the organization with employees and the relationship building outside the organization with customers. I am talking about an innovation that can have a direct impact on improving the value customers receive and as a result will have a positive impact on the organization’s financial results.

One of the most important responsibilities of a marketing executive is managing the relationship between a company and its customers. An important leadership role of the marketing executive is to create a customer-centric discipline for the organization. The focus of the marketing leader is to cajole, inspire and otherwise encourage employees to keep the best interests of the customer front and center of everything the organization does. By necessity the marketing executive approaches each leadership challenge with an outside-in perspective.

HR executives are accountable for the relationship the company has with its employees. The HR function is perceived to be much more effective when employees are aligned and focus their efforts on delivering value to customers. HR’s perspective naturally is inside-out of the organization.

Creating symmetry between these two perspectives will enable organizations to more effectively build a stronger brand. Marketing and HR working together can increase the number of high-performing customers, a key performance indicator of every industry leader.

This is an excerpt from a recently published article titled Internal Brand Building:  HR’s Path to Leadership.  Click here to read the entire article. 

In this post I suggested using the metaphor of an iceberg to better understand the whole of brand building. The essence of the blog entry suggested that effective brand building required a dual effort, represented by the two parts of an iceberg.  Marketing represents the visible part of the iceberg and human resources is depicted by the part of the metaphorical iceberg that was below the surface.  That post presented marketing’s perspective of the iceberg.  Here’s human resources’ frame of reference of the so-called iceberg of brand building.

High performing human resources executives understand the positive impact an aligned culture can have on business performance.  The challenge has been to create a direct link between an aligned culture and business performance. The culture of an organization is represented by the part of the iceberg that lies under the surface. Being associated with the segment of the iceberg that is under the water has its own irony for human resources executives.  The part of the iceberg that can have the most impact on brand building goes unnoticed by senior management teams in so many organizations.  Unfortunately too many human resource executives have faced an unnecessary uphill battle to act on the opportunity they so clearly see.

Truth be known, human resources executives have demonstrated an understanding of the connection between culture and business performance for quite some time.  This important connection is at the root of the evolution of human resources from an administrative function to the strategic use of human capital to drive business performance.  Human resources executives are very aware of the importance of aligning and engaging employees’ behaviors to deliver value to customers.  In some ways, human resources executives have been waiting at the station for the marketing train to arrive.

The most credible, innovative human resources leaders have been strong activists aligning their organization’s human capital strategy with its business strategy and needs of the marketplace.  As a result, these outstanding human resources executives have earned a viable and respected place at the senior management table.  A new set of human resources competencies is required to earn this admired place of the leadership team.

The results of the 2007 Human Resource Competency Study (HRCS) reflect human resources professionals’ understanding that a new set of competencies determines professional excellence.  The researchers conducting the HRCS concluded there are six core competencies that high-performing human resources leaders embody. There are three of these competencies highlighted in the study that directly address internal brand building. 

Being a proficient culture and change steward, one of the three relevant competencies, is fundamental for connecting employees with the uniqueness of the culture that creates a distinctive brand.  The competency described as strategy architect is focused on activities that enable employees to connect with customers.  Of course this is foundational to internal brand building.  Being a competent business ally requires the human resources executive to have a first hand and active knowledge of competition and customers.  Brand building is based on being distinctive from competitors and relevant to customers. 

Employee engagement is another example of a human resources competency that has not been given enough credit for its potential in driving business performance.  The concept of employee engagement is not new; its origins go back at least 25 years.  Employee engagement is enjoying resurgence, in part due to firms like Gallup and BlessingWhite. 

Like other human capital strategies, employee engagement has not been getting the traction it deserves.  The acceptance of employee engagement programs has lagged due in part to human resources executives’ ability to articulate a reasonable connection to acceptable business performance drivers.

I’m not a human resource professional and frankly until the last five years I have had very little interaction with the human resource profession. I have become an accidental tourist in the human resource profession as a part of the steep learning curve I have experienced designing and implementing internal brand-building programs.

My rather skewed perspective on human resources through my connection to internal brand building has enabled me to gain some insights into why some organizations have had false starts with programs that attempt to connect culture with business performance.  My experience suggests that many human resources executives have been disabled from using their vision and passion to connect culture with driving customer performance because:

1. Marketing (and in some organizations this is extended to include sales) has traditionally “owned” the customer and marketplace.  In too many cases the marketing function has acted as a silo and this isolation from human resources professionals has been unintentional.  This lack of collaboration has limited the possible contributions by human resources professionals to add value in building stronger customer relationships.

2.  Human resources have limited knowledge of the customer.  This limited knowledge inhibits the human resources executive from developing viable human capital strategies that are linked to customer performance.

3. In some organizations human resources has been locked out of the customer conversation because it is perceived to lack the “marketing chops” due to their inexperience in marketing or sales.  In some cases this attitude has tainted their perceived role at the senior management table.  This has limited their role in conversations relating to customer relationships and marketing strategies.

4. There is a lack of a proven process that links human resources initiatives with marketing objectives. Internal brand building is the customer-centric employee engagement innovation that bridges that gap.

5. Finding a credible cause-effect link between employee engagement programs and measurable customer performance improvement has created a hurdle to gaining acceptance by the senior management team to implement such a program.  Brand is becoming much more accepted in the minds of senior management as an important lever in marketing and sales productivity.  In addition, innovative leaders believe one of their roles is to help employees understand the company’s connection with its customers.  The organization’s brand is becoming a very effective leadership tool to describe the value-added relationship with its customers that will result in competitive advantage.  As a result internal brand building is a process that will add more credibility to the notion that employee engagement and business performance have an important cause/effect relationship.

6.  Human resources has been given a limited, in some cases cursory, role in corporate brand initiatives.  After 25 years of developing corporate brand programs it is clear that without human resources’ involvement, any corporate brand program becomes just another short-lived campaign.  More importantly this lack of collaboration limits the potential for human resources to use its creativity and competencies to expand the corporate brand initiative into a program that engages employees in a more meaningful, sustainable way.

So, much like their marketing executive colleagues, human resources executives are frustrated.  The irony is that the frustrations experienced by both executives are connected. In fact the only way to realistically reduce the frustrations in a way that benefits the organization is to understand that the issues and solutions are inseparable.  Just like the iceberg, the top gets its respect from the power of what lies beneath the surface and the bottom gets its recognition from the top.  Marketing represents the top of the iceberg, which interacts with the outside world and human resources represents the bulk of the mass that can have the most impact on the customer.  Together the iceberg is a force to be reckoned with.

Success in business is all about relationships.  The ability to leverage key relationships is an outstanding performance driver for all successful businesses.  There are many relationships that impact an organization’s performance: relationships with employees, customers, distributors, strategic partners, prospective customers, potential employees, competitors, the media, and the community-at-large.  Every organization has a portfolio of relationships to manage, some on the outside and others on the inside of the organization. Every organization will benefit by having a corporate relationship strategy.

The aim of a corporate relationship strategy is to implement a coordinated relationship-building effort for the organization.  Too often managing the many different corporate relationships is done in isolation.  Like any other asset (business relationships are a good example of an intangible asset) these relationships should be managed as a portfolio. And like good portfolio management, these relationships should be managed in a coordinated fashion to achieve a common goal.  The common goal of a corporate relationship strategy is to consistently improve the delivery of distinctive value to customers.

A pragmatic, proven framework is a necessary element to effectively implementing any strategy.  I recommend that brand be used as the framework to manage a corporate relationship strategy. Let’s slow down here and get on the same page about brand. When you think about brand don’t focus on the tactical elements of brand building like, logos, tag lines, or advertisements.  A brand is a relationship.   And brand management is the business discipline of creating and building a relationship for the purpose of improving the performance of the business.  Brand is a proven relationship-building competency that can be used as a framework to implement a corporate relationship strategy.

Corporate Brand – Thinking Beyond the Customer

Traditionally, the business world has focused its brand management attention on managing the relationship between a customer and a product.  Effective product-related brand management will yield a relationship with a customer that is based upon a single dimension usually defined around the attributes of the product.  At best, that relationship can be expanded based upon brand extensions.  In its own right product-based brand management can produce solid relationships between a company’s product and its target market.  But limiting the brand-building competency to the product-customer relationship cuts short the possibilities of a corporate relationship strategy.

Corporate brand is not new and every organization has one.  Some organizations use their corporate brands more effectively than others.  Most organizations have a limited perspective on corporate brand, viewing it either as a reputation management tool or as a master brand to identify its products. When understood in a broader context, a well-managed corporate brand can encompass a myriad of relationships, inside and outside the organization.  This expanded view of corporate brand extends the core discipline of brand building to a broader set of relationships that impact the performance of the organization. A new, broader view of corporate brand will provide a new powerful framework to implement a coordinated, proactive corporate relationship building strategy.

This neo-corporate brand perspective requires a whole new paradigm for coordinating the relationships inside and outside the organization.  Neo-corporate brand management requires the coordinated efforts of marketing and human resources.  The core competency of the marketing function is building relationships outside the organization (sometimes called customer brand building).  The human resources function has built a proven competency of relationship building inside the organization (sometimes referred to as employer branding).  Each of these professions has by necessity differing perspectives on relationship building.  By working more collegially these differing perspectives can prove complimentary.  This cross-functional team working with a common purpose and shared competency will deliver true innovation to the corporate relationship building process.

 Delivering on the possibilities of a corporate relationship strategy will require among other things:

• A new cross-functional team approach that extends the brand competency and responsibility beyond the marketing department.
• A new approach to corporate brand that is embraced by the leadership team.
• Be consistent in applying the proven brand-based relationship competency to each targeted relationship that comprises the corporate brand portfolio. 
  
• Define and consistently use a corporate brand platform that clearly defines the important relationship attributes of the corporate brand, starting with the organization’s brand ethos.
• Measure the perceptions that surround each of the targeted brand relationships.
• Implement relationship-building as a core competency as a part of the organization’s leadership development program.

Corporate relationship strategy is an innovative approach to consistently delivering value to customers.  It requires a new perspective, new set of competencies and will yield improved bottom line results to any organization.  Is your organization ready? 

We all know the tried and true metaphor of the iceberg that reminds us of the importance of taking into account what’s under the water to get a deeper understanding of the whole situation.   Many marketing and human resources executives understand they face an iceberg-like dichotomy that has frustrated their best efforts in applying their professional competencies to exert more direct impact on the customer relationship that drives their organization’s financial performance.

The marketing executive is frustrated over what appears to be a governor on his/her ability to build a stronger brand that strengthens the customer relationship and leverages the organization’s marketing resources.  On the other hand, the human resources executive has a difficult time making a more direct connection between their employee engagement efforts and the impact on the customer relationship.  What many marketing and human resources executives don’t realize is that there is a simple and congruent solution that will satisfy their frustrations.  More importantly by working together they will create a synergy that produces mutual satisfaction and ultimately benefit the organization’s growth objectives.

Okay, I know this sounds a bit complicated or even convoluted, but let me take you through my logic one piece at a time.

Marketing’s Iceberg
Let’s start with the marketing side of the coin, if for no other reason than it is where I have spent most of my time-in-grade.  That is until the last few years where I have spent much more of my time in a particular part of the marketing world that cross-borders with HR.  My time and new perspective on this cross-functional territory that lies at the nexus of marketing and human resources has evolved slowly starting about 10 years ago when I was asked by one of our innovative clients to take on a leadership problem in an unconventional way by using a marketing-oriented (brand) approach.

Brand is not complex and relates to all organizations.  At the core of every thriving organization is a belief that it has a unique combination of values, competencies, and people all guided by a business model that enables it to deliver distinctive value to a target group of customers.  Those unique qualities define their brand of doing business.  The organization has earned a strong brand when customers acknowledge the distinctive value they receive and admire the organization for the way it does business.  This fundamental understanding of brand makes the link between human resources and marketing essential, no matter the nature of an organization’s marketing budget and activities.

Generally speaking, marketing has the responsibility for managing the relationship between the customer and organization.  In essence this boils down to guiding the organization to focus its brand of doing business on the needs of its targeted customers and at the same time making sure the organization gets credit from its customers for consistently delivering that unique value.  No one said marketing was easy!  In many organizations marketers have not been provided the tools or the position to be accountable for managing both sides of that equation.  Even in the most sophisticated marketing organizations, marketing’s influence has not been wide enough to deliver on the true promise of building a strong brand.

It is becoming conventional wisdom among marketers that there is a two-part process to building a strong brand. Delivering distinctive value is the first, most important part of brand building.  To consistently deliver the brand’s value requires the efforts of the majority of the organization.  The leadership framework and processes to focus the organization’s values, competencies, and passions is called building the brand on the inside. The second part of building brand equity is the process of using marketing communications to get credit for the value an organization provides to its customers.  This effort is called building the brand on the outside.

Generally speaking the visible part of an iceberg is 12% - 14% of the entire mass.  The implied lopsided ratio has an analogy for marketers when it comes to brand building.  If one had to apportion the effort to build a strong brand it would be an 85/15 ratio, where 85% of the effort is required to deliver the distinctive value (inside brand building) and 15% for the marketing communications to get credit in the marketplace (outside brand building).  This ratio is a generalization and depends upon a number of different factors, but it is fundamentally sound.

Unfortunately the purview of many marketers has been on the part of the brand that’s visible in the marketplace that can be impacted through effective marketing communications. While this restricted perspective can help build a stronger brand, it lacks the level of influence that produces the necessary leverage to build sustainable brand equity.  The part of brand building that has the most leverage lies below the surface, so to speak, with the majority of employees who together have the most sustainable impact on the qualities that make the brand valuable.

Leadership and organizational development provide the most potent levers that can impact the largest part of the brand-building mass.  Too often these levers are not normally within the reach of the marketing department.  It is very difficult for marketers to reach out and impact the part of brand building that exists below the surface.  The first challenge is to convince the senior management team of the importance of internal brand building.  Even if the senior managers are open to the new perspective, marketing has no credibility in the organizational development competencies required to create change within the organization.

Let’s give marketers credit; it’s not that they didn’t know that this disparity exists.  On the contrary, many very good marketers were (and continue to be) very frustrated by their lack of direct influence over the parts of brand building that can make the most difference in building sustainable brand equity.  In some industries like consumer packaged goods marketing professionals have much more influence over the entire business mix.  Anecdotal evidence suggests this broader span of influence results in more effective brand building.

So marketers are frustrated and their organizations are losing out on the opportunity to effectively build a stronger brand.

Stay tuned for the rest of the iceberg dilemma from the HR executives’ perspective.

Posted by Karl D. Speak

Errol Flynn’s profound insight speaks volumes about perceptions.  It is an insight that every business professional that cares about their brand should heed and keep top of mind.  Perception may be the most important of all the tenets that comprise the concept of brand.   When an organization holds itself accountable to the perceptions maintained by its customers, it expands the possibilities of the business.   Embracing the intangible nature of perceptions will enable the organization to expand the tangible results of its business.

In some regards perception is a straightforward concept, one that is easy to understand intellectually, but is not intuitive for many people.  Perception is about sensing, feeling and empathy and is an example of a  “soft” business skill that has, by its nature, limited the way it is incorporated into business strategies and processes.   To fully understand the potential of customer relationships, one must be willing to be held accountable to perceptions.  Perceptions measure the intentional energy that drives the amount and scope of business transactions a customer will have with an organization.

To be sure, perception is not a new concept to the world of business.  Just ask any successful salesperson to react to the following Ralph Waldo Emerson quote – “I can’t hear what you say over the thunder of who you are.”  You will get an instant lesson on the street-wise impact that perceptions play with their relationships with customers, especially if they have recently had to struggle through a customer service problem.  Understanding and managing customers’ perceptions has been primarily an individual sport within many organizations. Too few organizations have incorporated managing perceptions as an organizational competency.  This lack of focus has limited the organization’s accountability for creating the desired perceptions with customers.

The study of the concept of perceptions has its roots deep in the behavior sciences and if you read enough it can get so complex you begin to wonder what side of the mirror you are facing! There is no need for me to present a theoretical construct that supports a purer understanding of perceptions.  Applying the notion of perceptions to brand building requires only a basic understanding of the concept.  The more difficult part is the discipline of viewing things from the customer’s perspective and the fortitude to hold oneself accountable for the perception that is created and not the action that was taken.

Incorporating perceptions into a business’ operating principles starts with the following easy process steps:

1. Decide what perceptions you want to create in the minds of your target audience.  Perceptions don’t have to be random.  Building a strong brand starts with deciding what perceptions you want to create.  Determining the desired perceptions is a strategic decision based on careful consideration and commitment.  Decide on the set of perceptions you want to create based on the following criteria:  first and foremost focus on the qualities that make you distinctive from your competitors; make sure the perceptions are targeted at what is most important to your target customers; and be sure the targeted perceptions are based upon the qualities you can consistently deliver.
2. Be accountable for creating perceptions as often as possible.    Every action leaves an impression and those that start inside the organization will create an inertia that will find its way to a customer.  The bottom line is that everyone must be held accountable for the perceptions that are created.  The process starts with creating a clear understanding of the desired perceptions. This is followed with a process of coaching employees on the behaviors that support consistently creating the targeted perceptions.
3. Measure the perceptions.  Perceptions are real and can be measured.  Continual improvement starts with measurement.  A commitment to quantitative research is a necessity to understanding and managing perceptions.

A customer’s perceptions of an organization define the limits of the relationship. When a customer’s perceptions underestimate an organization, the relationship never achieves its potential.  When a customer’s perceptions are in synch with the true qualities of an organization, the full potential for the relationship is a real possibility.  When a customer’s perceptions grow with the possibilities of an organization, the potential for the relationship is unlimited.  

Posted by Karl D. Speak

Brand is about truth and honesty.  When an organization (or an individual) embraces brand as an operating principle it opens itself to the opportunities that result from an honest relationship with its customers and marketplace at large.

There is no doubt that many organizations desire to have the business benefits that come from having a strong brand.  It is not always clear that the organizations that hope to reap the benefits of a strong brand have the discipline to embrace and consistently execute the principles of brand. 

Brand thinking requires a different perspective. For starters consider the following two facets of brand thinking.

Brands are relationships.

Brands are relationships, not products. A brand is defined by the distinctive qualities, if they exist, of the relationship between the company and its customers.  Brand is a connection with a human. Brand is not transactional, it’s about affinity. Brand building requires intuition, adeptness and passion for relationships.

Brand is not some sterile business principle that positions the customer as another tenet of a business strategy. The customer is not another input placed in the modeling-mad business world that surrounds us.  The customer relationship is THE POINT.  Financial performance of an organization is measured by how well an organization delivers distinctive value in the customer relationship and how competent an organization is at executing a clever business model -  in that order.  Brand building is the commitment to use the vision, values, unique talents and passion of an organization to make a difference for customers.

Sustainable growth is greatly influenced by the amount of equity an organization has in its customer relationships. Brand is a business construct that places the customer relationship at the nucleus of the organization’s strategy and tactics. Brand strategy is an organization’s customer relationship strategy. 

Brands are based upon perceptions.

The brand is not what the company claims, it is defined exclusively by the perceptions held by customers. 

Any kind of incongruity in the two perspectives can be misleading to either or both parties. Strategies can misfire or fail to get enough traction when organizations are not in synch with the way they are perceived by their customers.

When customers and companies operate from different sets of perceptions it is only a matter of time when customers become dissatisfied and loyalty wanes. 

When an organization holds itself accountable to the principles of brand, it becomes accountable to the truth of the relationship because it holds itself accountable to the defining element of the relationship — the perception. 

The way an organization is perceived is the permission it is given to use that relationship in its business plans.  Honesty is required to understand the perception.  Honesty is required to manage within the constraints of the perceptions.  We can’t have any brand we want.  We can only have the brand we are and are willing to create and sustain.  Therefore it requires honesty to be clear about the truth of the possibilities of the brand we can become.

Building a strong brand is not natural for every organization and requires a different perspective.  It can be antithetical to a short-term business view and requires a long-term commitment to customer relationships.  Every organization must be honest with itself and decide if it has the courage and commitment to build a strong brand. 

Posted by Karl D. Speak

When it comes to defining brand, the business world seems to operate on extremes.  People either over-simplify or over-complicate, but rarely land in between.  This is a sure sign of a lack of understanding.  The notion of brand becomes over-simplified when it is reduced to logos, tag lines or other marketing communications paraphernalia.  Or there are the “brand hotshots” who pontificate that brand is a deep-seated emotional connection with a consumer. 

 Virtually every business leader knows that having a strong brand creates competitive advantage and superior customer performance.  If it were as simple as marketing communications, a brand wouldn’t be very valuable.  Most executives know success isn’t that simple.  On the other hand, seasoned executives know that business isn’t that complex and customers pay for tangible results, so an emotional connection is a bit out there for most veteran leaders. 

So how do we define brand in a way that is simple enough to be believed and robust enough to be used as an important business tool?  Let me give it a shot.  I have used the following definition for over 20 years.  It’s pragmatic enough to enable organizations and their leaders to embrace the concepts of brand to enhance the relationships that impact their business performance.

Brands are relationships. It is not any more complicated than that. Strong brands equal loyal customer relationships. Brand equity is something an organization earns by consistently delivering distinctive value to its customers.  When a customer perceives that an organization’s values, competencies and history of performance are the basis for consistently receiving superior value, that’s brand equity.  Distinctive value can range from being the most outstanding commodity supplier to the most talked about fashion item or consumer tech gadget.  After all, to the buyer of a commodity raw material, consistently receiving outstanding service and great prices can be darn right sexy!

Every organization can build a strong brand, regardless of its size, industry (profit or non-profit) or its marketing budget.  There is a two-part process to building brand equity.  If an organization can consistently deliver distinctive value to its customers, it has built the important foundation for building a brand. Relationships in business are a function of how much value is delivered. Delivering distinctive value is the first, most important part of brand building. 

Consistently delivering distinctive value is necessary, but not sufficient to earn brand equity fast enough to grow faster than competitors.  The second part of building brand equity is the process of getting credit for the value an organization provides to its customers.   Embracing the concepts of brand management, inside and outside the organization, will provide the organization with the processes and competencies to build brand equity that will yield superior customer performance that can be measured.

The brand of an organization matters in every relationship that influences the performance of that organization.  Managing a brand is the process of proactively enhancing the relationships that impact business performance.

Posted by Karl D. Speak

Defining brand and understanding its role in business has been arguably one of the biggest challenges in getting executives to embrace brand as a viable business process.  Understanding that brand was created to solve a practical business challenge may be helpful in creating a broader understanding of brand and its role in business today.

Although we often refer to brand as a modern marketing technique, the basic construct of brand dates back to medieval Europe.  Brand wasn’t called brand at that time. The core idea behind brand served as an effective and fundamental tool in market expansion and served as the foundation for the growth of the manufacturing industry.  What we now call brand added integrity to the relationship between the buyer and seller. 

When medieval manufacturers wanted to expand their business by selling to consumers in new, distant markets they faced two important challenges: counterfeiting and consumer skepticism.  Unlike selling goods in local markets, competitors could more easily sell poorer quality, look-alike versions of a product, especially durable goods, to unsuspecting consumers.  Policing the counterfeiters was a challenge, but not the biggest challenge to market expansion. 

The larger challenge was overcoming the new potential consumers’ skepticism that resulted from being disappointed by buying the knock-off products.  Therefore consumers were hesitant to buy some goods from manufacturers they did not know.   The counterfeiters poisoned the pond, so to speak for market expansion.  To expand into new markets manufacturers had to provide consumers with the confidence the product was of high quality and would perform consistently over time.  Without consumer confidence market volume would be limited.  Manufacturers needed a pull-through strategy to defeat the counterfeiters and reap the possibilities of distant markets where consumers did not know them first hand.

The shorthand answer is that manufacturers took two important steps to solve their marketing problem.  The particular order of their solution is fundamental to understanding the duality of brand.  The first step was to have the medieval manufacturing guilds establish and enforce quality standards.  That is to say, using their values and collective competencies to produce a consistent high quality “brand” of goods.  Secondly the guilds redesigned their goods to contain a special characteristic easily observed or detected by consumers that was associated with the guild’s high standard of quality.  The characteristic could range from a certain detectable product quality or a specific thread or color.  The identifiable characteristic became the brand on the outside that ensured consumers of the authenticity and quality of the product – the real brand of quality on the inside. 

Taken together these two measures combated the counterfeiting and consumer skepticism.  One without the other would not create value for either the manufacturer or the consumer.  Brand became one part manufacturing and one part marketing, but not in equal proportion.  Differentiation was the sum total of quality manufacturing and savvy marketing.

If you are interested in a much more detailed reference of the role of “brand” in medieval manufacturing you can check out this link.

Posted by Karl D. Speak

Brand has evolved into a business management concept that has broad-based application and approachable to all types and sizes of organizations. It is becoming the business discipline of focusing the organization’s resources, talents and commitments to deliver what’s important to the marketplace. More importantly it is a business management process that enables an organizaiton to get credit for the distinctive value it provides to its customers. Brand is customer-centered leadership, a management discipline important to every innovative, growing organization.

Every organization can build a strong brand, regardless of its size, industry (profit or non-profit) or its marketing budget. If an organization can consistently deliver distinctive value to its customers, it has built the important foundation for building a brand. Building and implementing a process to consistently build a stronger brand starts with establishing a common language about brand for business leaders. Upcoming entries of the Brand Bytes Blog will provide the reader with a pragmatic business lexicon of brand based upon my 20+ years of coaching executive teams of large and midcap-sized businesses.

Posted by Karl D. Speak