Building Winning Brands - 10 of 16

The Tenth most important thing to know about building winning brands is that internal brand building is one of the hottest topics in brand management today.

One of the most difficult tasks in brand management is transforming the organization from one that does not understand the scope or importance of brand management to one that embraces and actively builds the brand as a critically important source of sustainable competitive advantage.  Key to this transformation is the organization’s brand promise.

The following comment is typical of what I hear from marketing executives at more and more companies these days: “We conducted exhaustive consumer research.  We carefully positioned our brand.  We developed and instituted comprehensive brand identity standards and systems.  We are running our new advertising campaign.  Now what do we do?  How do we get the rest of the organization to understand and care about the brand and its promise?  How do we get the organization to deliver on the promise?  How do we make the brand promise real?”  These questions pose a particularly difficult problem for large, decentralized organizations.

Certainly, the brand promise drives your marketing communication and your brand identity standards and systems.  But it must do much more than that.  Your products and services, every point of contact your brand makes with consumers and the total consumer experience your brand creates must reinforce your brand’s promise.  This has tremendous organizational implications – from alignment with organization mission and vision, HR systems (such as recruitment, training and performance management) and internal communication to operational systems, resource allocation and strategic planning.

Increasingly, the brand is becoming the key source of differentiation that guides customer purchase choice.  The brand is also the focal point around which an organization defines how it will uniquely deliver value to the customer for a profit.  The brand embodies the “heart and soul” of an organization.  Its promise is delivered through its products, services, and consumer communication – the total customer relationship and experience.  If the brand promise is well conceived and consistently delivered through all business processes and customer contacts, the organization will grow and prosper.

Ultimately, you want to create a company full of brand maniacs, champions, and evangelists.  Not until this happens can you be sure that you have developed a brand building organization.