By Ken Rosen
Brand is hot.
So we’ve been doing intense thinking about how strong Branding improves performance. The problem is the meaning of Brand depends on the context.
Brand = Visuals: 10 years ago—and today in many visual design firms—Brand equals visuals: logo, color scheme, package design. This group might say, “the Brand reflects the company, stands out, and is consistent on the web and in print.” While a key component, this is far too narrow and provides little guidance to employees on behavior.
Who does this well? Anyone with good brand police, but certainly Target, Wal-Mart, Virgin, Apple, the New York Times, and many, many more.
Brand = Company: Among other groups, brand is a synonym for “company,” as in “the brand offers many promotions in order to get customers.” This ties more to action, but since it simply defines anything the company does as its brand, it again doesn’t provide much guidance to employees.
Who does this well? Everyone. This definition is so broad, it is effectively meaningless.
Brand = Reason to Buy: If you follow Fred Burt of Siegel + Gale, you get a more meaningful definition: Brand is a reason to buy. Now we’re getting somewhere. Brand is what a company does that, at the moment of decision, causes a consumer to purchase a product or service from that company rather than someone else. It is a customer mindset created by all a company does. The challenge for me is not that this is untrue. It’s that it is not actionable for the average employee making 100 decisions a day about how to do their job.
Who does this well? Wal-Mart (price), Toyota in the 90s (quality), Apple (iTunes easy integration).
Brand = What Others Think: To a vocal group in social media circles (think: Twitter chats), brand is beyond company control. These groups say, “You don’t own your brand. Your brand is nothing more than the conviction about your company by the market.” An interesting point expressed by some smart people, but for me it gives up on proactive work to build brand as a valuable asset.
Who does this well? In a sense, you can’t do this well, because advocates say it is out of your control. But companies with powerful external perceptions, good and bad, include EMC (enterprise storage), Kellogg’s (breakfast carbs), Microsoft and Google (behemoths in their ecosystem), General Motors (on the ropes trying to come back), BP (sigh).
It’s not so much that I disagree with the ideas above, but they are not actionable enough.
Words are useful when they drive us: not only customers seeing a reason to buy, but also employees who individually and collectively perform better.
Brand = Promise: We see Brand as a promise of how you’ll behave, even when that behavior is difficult.
“Difficult” here means expensive, embarrassing, or even (temporarily) unprofitable. Why? Because this view is the way to gain both that coveted place in the customer’s mind and drive high-performance employee behavior. Whether explicitly or implicitly, this Brand promise covers everything: the way you promote yourself, design products, and deliver quality. How you serve customers when they’re happy…and when they’re unhappy. How you protect your customers…and also shareholders and the environment. How you grow and the partnerships you make. The promise even suggests how you make decisions about new actions.
Who does this well (or tries hard)? Costco (80th percentile quality at 60th percentile price), Google (Index world’s content and don’t be evil), Nike (support athletes), Amazon (convenient variety at reasonable price), Rolex and Tiffany (the “best”), Ikea (mid-quality style at aggressive prices), Odwalla (healthy).
We embrace the controversy around Brand and hope you’ll join the debate either in comments below or by engaging directly via email (krosen at PerWorks dot com) or Twitter. But we encourage you to at least add this view of Brand as Promise to your discussions.
Takeaways
- Redefine Brand as your promise about how you will behave…even when it is difficult.
- Help all know the details of this promise to ensure management and employees understand how to apply it.
- Incorporate your brand promise into employee onboarding, management discussions, and performance appraisals.
- Reward and celebrate employees who keep your promise throughout your operations.
- Once engrained, celebrate your promise publicly…but be sure you walk the talk. Whether in love or commerce, people are unforgiving of those who do not keep their promises.
Business Analytics for a Complex World
TechCrunch
Well written. The logo is definitely not the brand but is one of the ways we consumers identify a brand with an experience. It's a short cut. Marty Neumeier of Liquid said it well in the Brand Gap: Your brand is not what you say it is. It's what they say it is. Meaning – it's whatever's in the mind of the customer. And that changes from time to time. He also says brands need to think in terms of avatars vs. logos.
Sergio Zyman, past CMO of Coke has said Branding helps you "Sell more products to more people for more money."
Companies cannot control their brand – it's fluid, organic. They can only nurture and guide it, I believe. Certainly they can control how it's visually disseminated until consumers takeover and repurpose it.
Nike's internal brand promise used to be Authentic Athletic Performance. Last I heard it was "Boom". And Google seems to be violating their mantra of "Don't be Evil" with some of their recent changes this fall.
Today, building a great brand promise is about breaking down silos across the entire company, building create products and services and turning that into an exceptional customer experience.
Patrick,
Thanks for coming by. I think you and I find middle ground around "nurture and guide." Not perfectly deterministic, but not abdicating action either. And yes, even as I wrote used "Don't be evil" as an example, it's clear Google is losing hearts and minds of many as fewer believe the mantra has meaning for the monolith anymore. Zyman's line is what I hope is the great end result of determining…and keeping…one's brand promise.
Looking forward to speaking soon,
Ken
Ken,
I object to the concept of "Branding" as a verb.
My view, is that "Brand" is the result of your Positioning which results from a variety of attributes including:
The Problem You Solve, the Product/Service/Content/Solutions Capabilities, your Market Focus , Barriers & Key Differentiators, your
Channels, your Price Points, your quality image, your Customer Service record and your Competition.
When it comes to measuring Positioning, my view is that it is measured by what others say about you after you have left the room.
What is the difference between strategic position and brand in this case?
What are the 3 best brands out there? (I don't mean the classic ones like Coke.. ) and what the companies that managed to succeed despite of their terrible brands? Can you think of any? (5asec.. French landry for one)
I agree that companies are responsible for their brands, but the public has a lot to do with them. Wal-Mart might like to think its brand is price, but the public has its own thoughts.
Hi Chuck. It's been a while since we've talked and it's great to hear from you. I share some of your language frustration between Branding and Positioning. It's not terribly difficult to claim one or the other is the superset! (More on this in my answer to Anonymous.) Anyway,especially since Brand–for so long–tied to logo, I resisted use as you do (my other troublesome words were monetization, impact as a verb, and prioritization
. But I believe a broader sense of Brand has become mainstream.
To your main point about Positioning being what people say after you are no longer there, I love this and it ties to the view I mention about Brand = What Others Think. With your experience, you MEAN this in an active way. That is, I believe you mean "what people say because of your active efforts." My problem with defining Positioning, or Brand for that matter, as "what people say" is that less-experienced team members may interpret this as passive and out of their control. You and I both know we need to take an active role. So my view of Brand as a Promise across the very dimensions you raise forces proactive insertion of Positioning or Brand into the 100 decisions people make each day.
Thanks again for the visit and I look forward to speaking sometime.
Ken
Anonymous,
To your question, "What is the difference between strategic position and brand in this case?," my response is a pretty unsatisfying "not much." As I replied to Chuck above, a clever person could do a good job of claiming either is the superset term. To me, however, I think the typical understanding of strategic position is positioning relative to competitors on dimensions competitors themselves acknowledge as important, e.g. price, value, service, quality, market focus, channels, etc. Again, the same sorts of things Chuck mentions in his comment about positioning. In this sense, I see Brand as broader, including those drivers of behavior competitors may NOT acknowledge are critical, e.g. integrity, obsession with customer satisfaction, simplicity, clarity, level of engagement, etc. Where things get crazy is when those elements become standard dimensions of Positioning, such as Zappos or Nordstrom succeeding so well with a customer care focus that every competitor's decision about customer care is now viewed in comparison. How do YOU see the difference?
Margaret,
I completely agree. We influence what we can influence. Reminds me of a comment about golf: one can say the wind took your ball off course, but the job of the golfer is to compensate for the wind. By TRULY taking the time to understand our stakeholders, building our desired brand identity to match our goals and those stakeholders, and having discipline to be faithful in all our actions to our brand identity, you can say we've done all we can. Then the power shifts to the market to decide. But it is the causal (if imperfect) relationship between what we do and the perception I encourage people to embrace.
Brandglobal,
You comment is important with an almost zen-like quality: What is the memory of a bad brand?
I could imagine a Brand being bad by being memorable, but distasteful. For me, Wal-Mart fits. People may love the low prices, but I dislike the poor service and disarray in the merchandise displays. (If trying to tease subtlety out of my answer to Chuck and Anonymous, I might say Wal-Mart's pricing is strategic positioning and lousy service and messy displays are part of its larger brand promise.)
On the other hand, I could imagine a bad brand as simply irrelevant–unhelpful, not memorable. I suppose the most optimistic thing you can say then is, "You have a blank slate to start over!"
Cheers, Ken
To me, brand is: what-it-is about you, that is different from your competition.
Encapsulate that difference into 3 keywords, and from that point forward, all of your marketing materials — indeed, ALL of your decisions — should somehow evoke the feeling of those 3 words.
From my perspective, your promise is only one aspect of your brand. This may sound to woo-woo for some, but I really think that "brand" is what your hoping to stir in someone's unconscious.
Dane,
It's easy and too-often disingenuous to reply to comments with, "I think we're actually saying something similar," but in the case I believe it is true. You mention 3 keywords and the feelings they evoke, noting these keywords must enter all marketing materials. I agree and believe these words express not ONLY what is different about you from competition, but also a commitment to maintain that difference going forward. That is, whether your difference is price, service, quality, or profound hipness, I believe you tell the customer they can buy from you confident you will maintain that uniqueness. And THAT, to me, if the promise. So the only difference I see between our points is you may have a bit more faith than I do…faith that firms will keep their identity once they know what it is. The reason I assert Brand is a "promise," is to ensure employees throughout the organization see the keywords you mention as ongoing guideposts for daily decisions and actions.
I suppose it's like the phrase, "When you go to a dance, you should dance with the one who brung ya'." Most don't need to hear it to do the right thing…but others can use just a little encouragement.
By the way, thanks also for your kind words about our "Takeaways" in our Twitter exchange. Your description that it's "respectful of our reader" was definitely our hope. If someone like you is kind enough to give us your time, we take very seriously that it's our job to deliver actionable value. And if WE can't come up with the takeaways, we know we shouldn't be posting something!
Cheers,
Ken
Great “history” of how brand has changed, at least for some companies. And I like MargaretH’s comment (and your response).
It seems that companies that do “brand” well have a high alignment between what they are trying to be and what customers define them to be.
Companies need to watch for this “drift”. A gap can happen very quickly (BP) or gradually (Sears).
Such a great point HC. What's the chicken and what's the egg? Is a "great" Branding company just a "good" Branding company lucky enough to have an audience excited to seek what the company offers? And in doing so, does the audience reinforce the company's efforts and commitment to a consistent path? Efforts and consistency that, in hindsight, seem brilliant?
It might be blasphemy, but if we're going to look for useful models (Apple, Tiffany, BP, Sears, etc.), we might have to ask ourselves hard questions about the context in which the branding effort is done.
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