Creatives have always received the accolades when it comes to building the profile of an agency, but the title of brand strategist has begun to increase dramatically in cachet.
There’s simply no elegant way of writing this, but it seems that every Tom, Dick and Harry harbours the aspirations – but not necessarily the skills – to become a brand strategist. I receive enquiries on a weekly basis from people keen to see how they can transpose their account management skills and acquired strategic marketing experience into the role of a full-time, hands-on original thinker. More often than not, the signs are not promising. However, what frustrates me is not the fact that strategy is receiving so much attention (on the contrary, I think this is a great step forward for our industry), but rather the inconsistency between the level of significance that agencies put on the glamour of brand planning versus the daily grind of brand execution.
It is a simple fact that strategy alone does not differentiate your brand, it is the execution of that strategy that sets you apart as you deliver your message and actions in accordance with your business goals.
With that in mind, I find it ironic that the implementation phase of most branding initiatives is referred to as “brand execution”, given that this is inevitably the point at which you run the greatest risk of killing your brand.
There are a variety of acknowledged ways in which you can “execute” your brand, some more visceral than others. What follows is a look at the different challenges that will test an organisation’s commitment when it comes to implementing their brand’s strategy. It highlights a critical area of branding that does not necessarily receive the same accolades or attention as those of strategy and creative, as it is fundamental to achieving the ultimate goal of any brand, namely a successful business outcome.
#1 Death from natural causes
By far the most acceptable way in which to execute your brand is simply to allow it to pass away in the quiet of the night.
The signs of old age were obvious for all to see, but nobody took any action to do anything more than ensure the brand’s basic survival, certainly not enough to encourage growth or even reinvention. What’s even more unfortunate is that often customers do not even notice the passing of their once favourite brand. They switch seamlessly to the young pretender whose lack of substance is at least counterbalanced by a swathe of enthusiasm and energy.
Your customers now face an incredible number of choices for their business, and the basics of segmentation, targeting, positioning and delivery are more important than ever. Branding is not for the fainthearted, and the most successful brands are the ones that take the bravest decisions. Had it not been for this attitude, IBM would have died with the typewriter like many of their competitors (may they rest in peace). Instead IBM chose to reinvent their business and reap the rewards.
#2 Death from cardiac arrest
In some cases, organisations decide to take their brands into overdrive.
As they strive to commission special projects, accumulate steering committees, and launch working parties with a magpie’s enthusiasm for the new, visionary papers and innovative strategies are engineered and embedded on an almost daily basis until eventually the organisation grinds to a shuddering halt. The veins of its corridors and cables now jammed with ambitions that far exceed its operational capabilities, the organisation admits defeat in the face of a yawning chasm between the realities of today and a rare future that they could only envision. The faint beating of the heart of the brand can barely be heard above executives clamouring to distance themselves from once lauded strategies as they consign their brand to the history books – only for the next generation to conduct a cursory post mortem before proceeding to repeat the same formula.
What often goes unnoticed is that the fact that the strategy itself was pretty accurate, but that it was let down by unrealistic expectations in the way that the strategy could be implemented. In the same way that most people don’t like change, most businesses don’t like revolution. They prefer a transformation more akin to evolution. Time is not only the great healer, it is also an ideal lubricant to help ease organisations into a new pair of shoes. It gives employees and customers alike the space and respect to find their own feet in the stiff leather of any new arena.
Complex strategies in cluttered markets call for multiple horizons if any brand strategy is to be successful. This is a lesson that Mayne learned firsthand when they restructured their business with insufficient consultation with their key customers, and as a result the strategy was quickly deemed to have failed and a very unhealthy diagnosis for the company was soon forecast.
#3 Death by public hanging
Hangings have always been a very public way to meet your end, even doubling as a mild form of entertainment in medieval times. These days, they are equally entertaining for business editors and students of the branding industry, condemning brands to a slow and painful death that is painstakingly recorded on blogs and front pages all over the world.
When businesses hang themselves, it is typically a result of making promises with their brand and communications that their organisation cannot deliver.
In the UK, Abbey rebranded themselves a few years ago under the premise that they would democratise the world of high street banking. They made a massive investment of time and money to redesign their advertising, collateral, retail presence and other marketing communications only to have their customers find that they had not in fact reinvented their business as promise, they had merely redecorated their brand.
Empty promises, unmet promises, and promises that are carefully worded with spin but without any substance all result in your customers quickly becoming disillusioned and dissatisfied. Ultimately, they become someone else’s customers and, with the smell of new paint still lingering in high streets across the country, Abbey’s customers simply left them to hang.
#4 Death by lethal injection
Brands used to be the domain of marketing departments and represented little more than the company’s logo reproduced on the office stationery. Nowadays, branding represents a core discipline of any successful business, an organising principle for how the organisation behaves and the decisions it makes.
With many more stakeholders involved in a branding process that has far wider implications than in the past, aligning and managing their expectations is a critical factor. Of course, the marketing department need to know how to develop their communications and collateral, but the finance department also need to know what value to put on their brand and how to manage that investment as an asset; the call centre need to know how (and how quickly) to answer the phone; and, the human resources department need to know how to promote and measure employee performance, as well as recognise future leaders.
Branding plays a pivotal role in all these scenarios, but all too often the implications of an organisation’s brand are not fully understood and therefore underleveraged, or otherwise they are misconstrued and a fragmented message quickly appears just as soon as the strength of their brand disappears.
Either way, once confusion spreads, it is difficult to contain and before too long, the brand is no longer the great asset that your shareholders had hoped that it might become.
Instead, it is a daily liability that must be neutralised – and before those marketing guys cause any more trouble in the otherwise stable worlds of finance, product development and corporate strategy.
And once the lethal injection has been administered, it is already too late.
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