Avoiding Flakey Brand Shit

How will you avoid brand strategies as flakey as the PC character who is confused on who he is suppose to be?

The other day, I heard a colleague refer to a brand document as "flakey brand shit". At first, being a brand enthusiast, my heart sunk and I began to think, "how could someone refer to a brand strategy document as 'flakey brand shit' when it's this document that defines how a brand will position itself to stimulate premium pricing, attract top talent & create brand evangelists (both internally and externally)?"

But then it occurred to me - ya some brand documents ARE "flakey brand shit" because they lack genuine purpose of what the organization is set to accomplish. There is no meaning to motivate the organization's talent to act on the brand's strategy because it remains irrelevant to their day-to-day roles. Therefore, the fluffy altruistic words in the document become flakey and meaningless, because those who are responsible for executing the strategy daily are unable to translate the brand into tangible actions. This causes the document to go unread and be quickly forgotten making staff focus on the only other thing they know to - the bottom line, resulting in short-term thinking and trade-offs that jeopardize the long-term customer relationship.

So, how do we avoid creating "flakey brand shit" and start motivating the organization with the brand strategy?

Like I've said from the beginning, it starts with purpose! This purpose shouldn't come out of thin air. Rather it should be rooted in what the organization is and has been doing for years - usually stemming from a core competency, but then asking "why does what we do matter?". This allows the brand to get to the heart of what it is enabling and contributing to society. Do not ground the purpose in a specific industry or product/service offering, as you will limit your brand's relevancy in the long-term.

Once this is established and relevant to what the brand has already been doing for years, then it's time to disperse it throughout the organization. The marketing and brand teams are not the only stakeholders the strategy should be geared towards. Rather, every functional team should know & understand the brand strategy - actually, they should believe in the brand strategy, rather than just know it!

Jean-Yves Minet, from Wolff Olins, has a great definition of what a brand is that describes this concept well:

Brand is a tool that sits at the heart of your organization and helps you drive every decision you make about your offer, your capabilities, your culture or your image...to be powerful you need to have a strong idea behind your brand.

That strong idea, which I refer to as brand purpose, must be meaningful internally and externally to translate into something relevant! Meaning they need to understand and believe in the brand to be able to adequately deliver on the brand promise.

So, to effectively communicate the brand strategy to the organization, it must become tangible in order for the internal talent to know how to act on it. This is best done through stories. Robert Simons, a Charles M. Williams professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, says "if managers cannot tell stories about how the values relate to their work, then the values aren't valuable". So, he feels that you must find examples of internal talent using the values to make decisions that deliver on the brand strategy, and then take the opportunity to tell those stories to the rest of the organization. This will make the brand strategy tangible, making it easy for employees to know how to deliver the promise on a daily basis.

So, my colleague was right in referring to a brand strategy document as "flakey brand shit" as they can easily go that route if not given authentic/genuine meaning and communicated internally in a tangible & relevant way!

How will you avoid creating "flakey brand shit"?