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Building
a Strong Brand.
“We advocate managing on a brand platform. Using a brand platform is a powerful way to pull your company together, focus your people, and steer your ship in a profitable direction. Managing-to-brand is a mission your board will endorse and even hardened critics will accept. Here's why: The brand is the power of the company. Brand is the great mystical force in your company. It can be so great in fact that if you ignore it, you may wander aimlessly in a desert wasteland until you rediscover it. IBM and American Express are both brand behemoths that lost their way in the late 1980's. Yet through enlightened leadership and the help of brand advisors like Ogilvy & Mather they rediscovered themselves. They returned to prominence by reinventing what made them great brands in the first place. If you ignore the power of the brand you will imperil the very company the brand built. Use the power of the brand and you will grow. The brand unites. As the ultimate power in the company, the brand is stronger than you, the CEO (no disrespect intended), your leadership team (however good they may be), and your people. What made you great (or will make you great) is reality of your brand -- that complex collection of ideas, associations and stimuli that define who the company is, what it does, and how it does it. This brand force is a magnet. It attracts everything positive ("on-brand"), and rejects everything negative ("off-brand"). And it provides a powerful focus in the company. As the central core of the brand platform, brand force pulls people together, makes them part of the company, and brings everyone closer to customers. A properly managed brand encourages everyone, at every level, to reflect the company in a positive and consistent manner. The brand centres your company. Who you are, what you do, and how you do it -- for whom and with whom -- is the essence of the brand equation. When you apply that to your company, the brand becomes an organizing principle. It defines how you conduct business, how you lead and manage your people, and how you build profitable, long term relationships with customers. The pinnacle of a brand-centered business is when everyone becomes part of the brand mission. Under a brand umbrella, there is a sense of belonging and sharing of the mission that is motivating and rewarding for people at every level. The brand looks inward, and outward. Everything you do in a brand environment plays to the brand, and the brand plays to your own people internally as well as to customers and other external influencers. This universality gives you 360-degree vision. You value your people and guide them sensitively because they create the hands-on relationships you have with customers. You value customers because they have invested their emotions and their dollars in the brand. You value partners because they help you achieve the brand mission. You value investors because they, too, have made an emotional and financial commitment. Above all, the brand is a benchmark. The brand helps you evaluate what you do, what your people do, and what you plan to do. Instead of the clamor of many voices, you hear one voice. The brand voice. Is this what the brand is about? Is this how the brand does business? Is this what our customers and partners expect from the brand? Do these initiatives reflect the truth and essence of the brand? Does this project move our brand closer to our customers? Will this program bring new people to the brand without alienating our current customers? Think about your brand. Think about the plans you have for your business. Be a brand leader. Are you in great shape? Is there work to be done? by kind permission of Ian Latham. Latham and Co. All rights reserved. Accelerated Branding (SM) are service marks of Latham & Company LLC All content © 2003-2005 Latham & Company LLC. All rights reserved. (illustration by The Boy Fitz Hammond - www.tbfh.com)
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