BE CAREFUL HOW AND WHEN YOU USE THE “B” WORD

Brand can be a bad word. It is certainly misunderstood. Put 10 executives in a room and you are likely to get 10 different definitions – from a logo to an ad campaign to a product’s packaging. Let’s face it, the haze of jargon surrounding “brand” make it difficult to make a proper business case to invest in brand-related initiatives that will drive a return. Without a direct link to strategic business goals, it is difficult for business leaders to buy into the need or the expense.

Let’s face it, very few business people will likely think of “brand as business.” Brand professionals have done little to help themselves by leading with brand terminology that has a low probability of success in a cross-function business meeting that includes financial, operations and sales executives. Leading with terms like brand essence, brand mantras and brand salience, for instance, in a conference room filled with hard minded business executives, expect responses from the mildly interested to the amused to the totally dismissive.

Of course, these terms have their place and are important elements of the larger universe of brand management. But if your audience includes the CFO and director of operations, caution is advised.

Brand strategy starts with a solid focus on identifying the potential business issues and does not require the “B” word.

In order to get the attention your “branding” initiative requires for lift-off, it is better to address the business issue at hand rather than representing the solution set in a brand wrapper. But the point is that the “B” word should only come once you have identified the real business need and, further, should be used sparingly until after you have engaged your senior team in a strategic decision making process to move from issue identification to issue resolution.

Let’s start with a definition that might help illuminate our thinking.

First let’s think about branding in terms of strategy:
Brand strategy is the process of proactively managing your reputation with the constituencies you serve. This is accomplished by systematically monitoring your performance with them, making fact-based decisions to continually improve your performance along key value drivers and then aligning the resources of your organization to perform and improve them consistently

A focus on the business issue means asking the right questions first.

This will target results and align business resources faster. Are your sagging sales the result of changes in customer buying behavior or is it because of the performance of your product or service? Is it because there are new competitors that are infringing on your territory or is it because your managers and employees are not on the same page? Ask the hard questions first. Then offer the solution in the form of a process that informs the decision making of all those responsible for developing the solution. Get everybody on the same page. Cut though the anecdotal with facts and test the hypothetical solutions of your executives with solid research.
Once the real problem and the solution are identified, take the same team through an exercise to build a top-line strategic roadmap for implementation of the solution to ensure that everyone understands what it is going to take, what the dependencies are, how performance is going to be measured and how success will be determined and rewarded. Enlightenment comes with the realization that branding in its most powerful form is an installed process that becomes core to an organizations ability to efficiently make decisions and consistently deliver solutions that accomplish its business goals.

According to thebrandconsultancy.com