Your Brand as Your Business System

The view of what your brand encompasses continues to narrow. With most brand managers lasting only a couple of years in the role, the focus has increasingly become quarterly results, not long term profits.

This is an extremely sad state of affairs, and is bound to do your brand more harm than good.

The reality is that the narrowing of your brand has been driven internally. Brands analyze themselves in great detail, and they should. But consumers rarely put as much conscious thought into it. For the average person, brands are a fluid, everyday aspect of life. I challenge you to find someone who buys your product because of your latest quarterly results.

People purchase your brand because it fits a need (functional, emotional, or both) within the context of their life, and the context of their life is much longer than the 18-24 month tenure of the brand manager.

Expand Your Horizon

To overcome this, you have to start viewing your brand as your entire business system. Allow me to use a simple example to illustrate what this means. If I buy a cell phone from a local carrier, my view of their brand is made up of all the different interactions I have with that company. This still includes the commercials I see on TV, but also factors in the customer service I get on their 1-800 number, the accuracy of my monthly bill and if the phone I want was in stock at their store. The cumulative experiences with all these parts of your business system make up the consumer’s opinion of your brand.

To deliver on all of these different touch points, and in turn build a strong brand, your entire company, or business system, has to be aligned.

Change Your Decision Making Lens

If everyone your company can line-up behind your brand, and recognize that every part of the business system is a part of the brand, you can experience some amazing results. Suddenly, everyone in the organization has a clear lens with which to evaluate any decision. Does buying this new machine help deliver our brand? Does re-organizing this team help deliver our brand? What about the message in this commercial? Or the turnaround time for deliveries?

Who Should Own the Brand?

Many companies have a role whose responsibility is essentially to act as the owner of the brand. Some companies go so far as to make this a role in their executive team. But even that is a step too short.

Overall responsibility for the brand must rest with the only person that can oversee the entire business system – the CEO. No other person in the organization has the cross-enterprise point-of-view required to understand the brand or the power to bring about the changes needed to deliver on your brand.

Adopting the philosophy of your brand as your business system also means that every person in your organization has some level of responsibility for your brand as well. And this can be a powerful motivator employees at all levels of your organization.

What should your brand do next?

No one expects that you stop running regular promotions. Ongoing objectives are important and shouldn’t be washed out by a higher order need of your brand. But at the same time, you need to start thinking, at a very high level, about what your brand should stand for.  Different companies will call it different things – your brand vision, brand promise, brand essence. But what you call it doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you have a clear sense of what your brand stands for and wants to deliver to consumers. Then you need to ensure that all the different parts of your business system – the people, technology, processes, etc – are aligned to that vision.

After that, you’ll be amazed how easily your weekly promotions come.

Ben Wise blogs at Ben Wise on Branding and works regularly with leading brands at LEVEL5 Strategic Brand Advisors. 

A Teen's Perspective on Brands

Note: Image created by Christiaan Welzel from Critical Mass for the Sean The Tool blog

Hello there, distinguished readers of More than a Logo. My name is Sean, and I have been asked by Nicole to share some insights into teenagers and their relationships with brands. Being sixteen, I have been able to pierce the murky veil that is the teenage mind and harvest valuable nuggets of information for your benefit. This brain harvesting really just boiled down to some organized discussions and surveys, so do not fret, there was no actual mind invasion (that I know of).

I have learned much during my summer internship at Critical Mass, about the teenage mind and how they view brands. Teens, when first asked about their opinions on brands, will initially become angry and violent, spitting defensively, like llamas. However once you calm them down and clean off the spit, you’ll see that brands play a huge part of every teen’s life. But a brand has to do a lot of work to earn the trust and loyalty of a teenager. They have to be able to offer three things; relevance, quality, and choice.

Relevance is important, in that a teen will only connect with brands that have something to do with their lives. So they aren’t going to develop a deep loyalty to your company’s trash bags, no matter how hard you try. Quality comes into play in multiple ways. If a brand is associated with shoddy products, well you’re out of luck. Teens can spot bad products from a mile away, and it will be nigh impossible for you to reclaim their trust after they have associated your brand with poor quality. Quality is also vital when it comes to advertising. An entertaining ad speaks volumes about how much a brand cares about consumers, and teens recognize this.

The most necessary of the three is choice. Never force anything upon a teenager. This is a great way to get them to start the spitting, and trust me you don’t want that, their saliva is laced with toxins most foul. Instead of pushing teenagers through the proverbial doorway, you should just hold the door open for them. Let them look inside your metaphorical brand-house because they chose to, not because you made them. And trust me, if your brand is relevant to them, and has quality to back it up, you’ll have no problems with that.  And when you gain a teen’s trust, they will stay unwaveringly loyal to your brand, as long as you continue to provide excellence. Just ask any teen who owns a Mac if he’ll ever buy a PC.

Teens aren’t as strange or unpredictable as people make them out to be, we’re just a bit different. Some time and effort will allow you to better connect with us in ways we appreciate. Teens can say they distrust brands all they want, but in reality they are just as important to us as they are to anyone else. Which is to say, they are very important. 

See more of Sean's insights on teens from part of his summer project on Sean The Tool blog

Follow Sean on Twitter (@deus_ex_machine) or his blog (The Deus ex Machina Machine) 

Pursuing My Passion in London

In an effort to pursue my passion for branding and gain experience in markets beyond North America, I will be embarking on the next phase on my life adventure by moving to London, England from Calgary, Canada.

I look forward to being closer to the action and continuing to help brands around the world make meaning and live it everyday!

As for my next opportunity, I will be joining the Blast Radius London strategy team working on clients like Starbucks UK, Bacardi and Nokia.  

I'm excited to work with an international team that shares my passion for brand strategy and leveraging organizations' brand purposes by creating reasons to believe through digital initiatives.

Although I'm excited for this next chapter, it doesn't go without saying how much I have loved working for Critical Mass, and appreciate the opportunities they have given me over the past 2 and a half years.  

If I hadn't joined this incredibly talented and passionate team, I would not have been exposed to the the amazing world of digital marketing, nor realize the incredible impact it can make on creating long-term brand loyalty and trust.

I will greatly miss working with this amazing team, but am happy to know that I have made some wonderful friends along the way.

So for the next couple weeks, while I pack up and say good-bye, then say hello to my new and exciting life in London, I have arranged a few guest authors to contribute to More Than A Logo including a teenage perspective on branding from Sean Willett, the 16-year-old intern I had the pleasure of mentoring this summer.  

The next time you hear from me I will be reporting from London. See you in a couple of weeks. 

Note: The above drawing was created by the amazingly talented Barb Kelly

The Island of Misfit Launches

One of my favorite sites to follow is PSFK. It is filled with the latest trends and innovations. I find it always exciting to see what's happening around the world and how it's changing based on those trends.


This morning, while scanning PSFK, I came across this cartoon and figured I have to share it on my blog. Too much fun! 


Below the cartoon is a great list of brand strategy and advertising stories that I would recommend you all to check out. Click here for the list.


Happy Friday everyone.

Branding Continues to Evolve

At the beginning of the year, I featured a write-up by Paul Worthington, from Wolff Olins, regarding the evolution of branding. Since then, I feel the increasing adoption of smartphones and other mobile technologies has influenced the continued evolution of branding.


The initial three phases of branding, begin with the introduction of TV advertising and its ability to communicate to mass audiences in a visual manner. This was the 'product age' were brands differentiated on a unique product feature - creating the unique selling proposition.


However, product features can be easily duplicated by the competition, eliminating long-term differentiation. So, with the introduction of the PC computer and consumer research, we saw the introduction of the emotional selling proposition. This phase aimed to establish an emotional connection with customers by featuring how the product/service would meet their needs and wants.


Building off the desire to connect with the customer and the increased demand for transparency from organizations, we have seen the growth in experiential marketing. Enabled through the internet and social media, brands are able to engage with the customer soliciting feedback and fostering dialogues between the customer and the brand or with other customers.


But now, customers expect to have the best product features and understand how it satisfies their desires, while being able to engage with the brand at any time. So, customers are beginning to want more from their brands - expecting them and their products to add value to their daily lives - any time, any where.


With the growing dependance and demand for mobile devices, customers expect information and tools to aid them when most needed.  This is creating the perfect opportunity for brands to extend their experience and provide a meaningful utility that is there for the customer when they need it most.

For instance, Nationwide Insurance developed an iPhone app to create a meaningful service for their customers. When someone gets into an accident they can call the police from the app, which geo-locates where the accident took place. You can take photos of the damage, complete the needed paperwork and send it off to Nationwide to begin the claim process.  This is a great example of a brand developing a utility that allows it to add-value to the customer relationship when they need it most, creating the greatest impact further strengthening the trust for the brand.


So, when you go to create an engaging brand experience for your customers, take it one step further and determine how you can develop a meaningful utility enabling the brand to add value to their daily lives when they need it most - in the moment and on the go.

Nike on Brand = The Ultimate Quick Fix

Having just finished my afternoon run, I came across Nike's new ad for the Nike Trainer One, which read "This shoe works if you do." My first thought after reading it, "Brilliant!"

Today, BrandWeek wrote about this ad and its retaliation to the popular toning shoes introduced by companies like Sketchers and Reebok. These toning shoes have generated considerable increases in revenue for these organizations, and the article suggests that Nike missed the boat and should have created a toning shoe to meet women's needs, and the ad was in defense of them not creating one of these shoes.

Well, I couldn't disagree with this more. Sure, maybe Nike missed the "opportunity" to create a toning shoe, but, if this is true, I would consider it a blessing in disguise. If Nike had created a toning shoe, an athletic shoe designed to make working out "easy", it would have gone against Nike's core brand philosophy of Authentic Athletic Performance. There is no authentic athletic performance in trying to get in shape without sweating.

Nike is about striving for excellence; being the best; going out there and Just Doing It! I mean look at this recent ad for the Write The Future campaign - there is nothing in this alluding to making athleticism easy:

It would be completely backwards for Nike to create an athletic shoe for people trying to avoid "Just Doing It".

However, the toning shoes make perfect sense for Reebok, who is repositioning itself as the sports brand that makes sport fun and approachable for everyone. But Nike is about being competitive, willing to go through the hurt and be the best. Walking around to tone doesn't fit the mold.

It's no wonder Nike is the market leader. In my mind, they are crystal clear on who they are, and they are willing to make the appropriate trade-offs to maintain their brand philosophy.

Just like the ad suggests, the quick fix is sticking to the fundamentals - in the case of branding, the fundamentals are your philosophy!

Build up from the foundation: Branding is like solving a Rubik's cube

The other day I was playing around with my Rubik's cube, and I began to think that managing a brand is very much like solving a Rubik's cube.

There are several billion ways to solve a Rubik's cube and, for that matter, to manage a brand. But, like a Rubik's cube, there are few ways to efficiently manage a brand.

The way I solve a Rubik's cube is similar to how I approach branding - I start with the foundation. I like to align the base of the cube and build up from there. This is similar to branding in that I believe great brands start with a strong foundation, rooted in their brand purpose - why the organization is in business; how it will make meaning and contribute to the greater whole.

Once the base is solved, every subsequent move is made to build up from the foundation, and the base helps guide what moves you are to take next in an effort to create a consistent and uniform looking cube - aligning the colored sides.

Branding is very much the same. All initiatives taken are in an effort to support the purpose and build off that purpose. Even though an organization's initiatives, like moves, may vary, they are still in an effort to create a consistent perception of what the brand stands for.

However, any move you take that doesn't build off the foundation will distort the consistency you've created to solve the cube. This forces you to go back and rebuild the base to begin aligning the cube again.

Similar to the cube, when an organization takes a wrong turn and does something against the brand, it appears inconsistent in the eyes of the consumer. This usually forces the organization to go back to its roots and refocus on its brand purpose to ensure future initiatives align with the brand.

But when all the right moves are made, in an effort to build off the foundation and align the sides of the cube, your result is a sense of pride in its consistency, and you can see the cube the way it was designed to be seen - this is the very same for branding!