The orientation of brand management has gone through substantial changes over the last decades, and has evolved as a more integrated and visible part of the overall corporate strategy. The evolution of the brand equity concept during the 1990s, development of advanced financial brand valuation methods and its adoption by advisors and their clients, and emergence of better brand tracking tools, have all facilitated the elevation of the branding discipline beyond the middle management and into the boardroom.
The Asian boardrooms generally lag behind this trend and tend to manage brand marketing from a bottom-up perspective instead of top-down perspective. There are a couple of reasons for this. As marketing and brand decisions traditionally have been managed in mid-level marketing departments among most Asian companies, a large emphasis have been placed on tactical marketing activities as opposed to strategic branding approaches led by the corporate management. Branding has been widely perceived as advertising and promotions.
But several indications show rapid progression in the right direction for a selection of Asian companies where branding as a strategic tool has become more recognized and accepted within their boardrooms. This is also driven by the increasing attention on branding and its value-driving capability among stakeholders, media and opinion makers across Asia. Asian companies can have great intensions and aspirations to move up the value-chain through branding to capture the financial and competitive benefits described in the previous chapters. But to achieve these objectives successfully, Asian companies must follow a comprehensive brand strategy framework supported by a systematic process throughout the organisation. Successful implementation of these processes will help Asian boardrooms in achieving sustainable revenue and cash flow streams for the future.
The brand vision, objectives and multiple marketing activities must be closely aligned with the corporate strategy. They must blend together as they serve the same purpose: Driving profitability and shareholder value. Branding is the entire sum of all parts and elements involved, so getting the strategic balance right between the brand, the corporate vision and the entire organisation is crucial. The boardroom must ensure that the brand delivers successfully and seamlessly at every customer touch point, so that the brand supports the overall strategic intentions.
There are 10 crucial steps to follow to build a successful branding strategy and manage its implementation. The steps enable the Asian boardroom to focus its attention on the required areas, and serve as check-points which can be tailored to the individual company's specific needs and requirements:
1. The CEO needs to lead the brand strategy work
2. Build your own model as not every model suits all
3. Involve your stakeholders including the customers
4. Advance the corporate vision
5. Exploit new technology
6. Empower people to become brand ambassadors
7. Create the right delivery system
8. Communicate!
9. Measure the brand performance
10. Adjust relentlessly and be ready to raise your own bar all the times
1. The CEO needs to lead the brand strategy work
The Asian business landscape requires a different path for Asian companies and their boardrooms to be successful. Companies need to achieve a fine balance between low-cost production (competitiveness), constant innovation (differentiation) and enhanced customer satisfaction (value capture through branding).
Brands are not only, if sometimes at all, built from traditional advertising and promotions, but are rather built using a comprehensive range of corporate-wide activities delivered by people throughout the organization. Therefore, the crucial balance between brand promise and brand delivery has implications for all company functions and it becomes a managerial responsibility reaching far beyond marketing and communications departments.
Therefore, branding can no longer be delegated to the mid-level marketing function in the typical Asian organization. Instead, the Asian boardrooms and the CEO must take charge of the brand strategy, lead the brand development, manage its implementation and be fully involved in performance tracking and benchmarking. Branding should be represented at the boardroom by a person responsible for branding so that he/she is able to participate equally with corporate executives like the CEO and CFO.
Naturally, there is a limit to the direct involvement and supervision of the CEO in managing the marketing and branding activities. To ensure his continuous involvement in branding despite his other responsibilities, the CEO must be backed by a strong brand management team of senior contributors, who can facilitate a continuous development and integration of the brand strategy. The Chief Marketing Officer can serve as the crucial (and often missing) link in the Asian boardroom. It enables the corporate management to directly design and control the brand strategy, and also to allocate the required resources to successfully implement the strategies.
2. Build your own model as not every model suits all
All companies have their own sets of business values and a unique way of doing things influenced by the company heritage and culture. There are many brand models available and more are being developed every year. Even the best and most comprehensive brand strategy model has to be tailored to these specific company needs and requirements. Often, only a few but important adjustments are needed to align these models with other similar business models and strategies of the company to create a simplified framework and toolbox for branding. It must be remembered that as branding is the face of a business strategy, these two aspects must go hand in hand very well for the company to become successful.
The corporate management should set clear and quantifiable objectives for the brand portfolio - and stick to them. Brand building is a long drawn process. Therefore, companies need to take a long term view and not be discouraged by unrealistic expectations of achieving the results in the short-term. Brand metrics are important tools to measure performance and benchmark against several indicators.
The company must determine the brand identity, strategy and implementation plan, and make sure it is aligned with the corporate strategy. The entire process is important in itself as it forces the corporate management team to discuss and agree on crucial issues related to the brand and its implications for the company.
Branding requires the right and adequate organizational and financial resources, so the corporate management team needs to ensure that the brand promise and the brand delivery are aligned closely. This involves a thorough examination of the entire operational system of the organization and how well it is equipped to deliver on the brand promise to be communicated to the market. A comprehensive customer touch point program play a crucial role in managing and measuring the entire process throughout the company.
3. Involve your stakeholders including the customers
Who knows more about a company than the customers, the employees and many other stakeholders? This is common sense, but many companies forget these simple and easily accessible sources of valuable information as useful background information for creating and managing powerful brands.
It is important not to underestimate the value of market research. The company should get an external and unbiased view of the competitive landscape including the current brand image among stakeholders, the brand positioning and critical directions for the brand identity and strategy ahead. However, it is also important to add in own observations, cultural understanding and intuition to achieve a well-balanced platform for decisions. Research can very well comprise retail visits to get an understanding of a local market and its customers. It is important to have a constant pulse on market trends and watch the competitors' actions in the market place.
4. Advance the corporate vision
The branding strategy is an excellent reason and channel for advancing the corporate vision throughout the company. It allows the management to involve, educate and align everyone around the corporate objectives, corporate values and future strategy of the company. It provides a guiding star and leads everyone in the same direction. The internal efforts contributes at least 50% in making a corporate branding strategy successful, and it serves as a platform for communicating the corporate vision internally as well as externally. By involving all the internal stakeholders, the corporate management can not only ensure a total buy-in for its branding initiatives, but can also use the entire exercise to motivate its employees and rejuvenate the corporate culture.
5. Exploit new technology
Modern technology must play an integral part of the branding strategy and it helps the organization in developing, managing and measuring the activities of the brand.
A well-designed and constantly updated Intranet is a must in today's working environment which has become increasingly virtual with employees working from home, from other locations and traveling across the globe. An Extranet can facilitate seamless integration with strategic partners, suppliers and customers. It can help to avoid time consuming paper work and manual handling of many issues.
A company website is not only a must, but rather a crucial channel for any modern corporation regardless of industry and size. Many Asian companies still under-estimate the power of the Internet as a communication channel to build its brands. If the corporation does not have a strategy for and is not accessible on the Internet, it does not exist!
Customer Relationship Management solutions (CRM) can be a very powerful tool for Asian companies to align the brand with distribution, customers and other stakeholders. It gives companies a well structured system through which they can monitor and manage the entire spectrum of customer interaction. CRM also enables companies to build strong databases which can be used in multiple ways to enhance customer experiences across all cross-functional touch points. The key to success is to get the relevant departments involved and implement the right systems and processes through on-going training and adjustments, so motivation and accountability become drivers of the project.
6. Empower people to become brand ambassadors
One of the most important assets in a corporation is its human resources. They interact every day with colleagues, customers, suppliers, competitors, industry experts and many others. But the company staff also interacts with an impressive number of people totally disconnected to the corporation in form of family members, friends, former colleagues and many others. Hence these staff members serve as the most important brand ambassadors of the company as their attitudes and behaviours will significantly impact perceptions.
The most effective way to turn employees into brand ambassadors is to train everyone adequately in the brand strategy (including vision, values and personality etc.) and making sure everyone fully understands what exactly the corporation aims at becoming in the minds of its customers and stakeholders.
Internal branding should most importantly be carried out by getting a buy-in by all the employees. The company should treat all its employees the way they treat their customers and use this as a benchmark. A classic example is how Starbucks, despite hiring temporary workers gave them stock options. The logic was - if Starbucks wants to be seen as a third place (apart from work and home) for its customers - then it should make their employees also feel that way. So this way, the organizations should earn the loyalty and buy-in from its entire staff into living the brand.
7. Create the right delivery system
A brand is the face of a successful business strategy and basically it promises what all stakeholders can expect from the corporation. The brand will add value only when these expectations are consistently met. Therefore, the delivery of the right products and services as promised is extremely crucial for companies as promise without delivery is of no value. Think of the cradle to grave concept of a lifelong customer and the value he/she will provide in such a time span. Companies should ensure that customers are handled with outstanding care according to internal specifications and outside expectations. The moment of truth is when the corporate brand promise is delivered well ? and the ideal situation for the brand will be to exceed the customer expectations.
One of the challenges for companies in general and for diversified or companies that are on a growth expansion in particular is to put in place a systematized structure to deal with the many challenges. To ensure consistency in delivering brand promises, companies should establish some benchmarks and guidelines. These should guide all the different functions within the company. The guidelines just provide the blueprint. But the important aspect is to drive these initiatives to its logical conclusions. The ever changing market trends and customer mindsets makes the brand management process an ongoing process. The process should act as a loop by constantly taking in inputs from the market and customers and evolving the branding processes.
8. Communicate!
According to a report from Accenture, 70% of marketing executives have difficulty capturing attention of customers due to noise and clutter in the market place. Gone are the days when a good product would sell itself in the market place. With the ever increasing number of products, proliferation of brands and over-communication in the markets, creating the right perceptions has become equally, if not more important, than the product itself.
Asian companies must realize that communications is not just about creative advertisements. Instead, it is a much more comprehensive exercise encompassing the entire mix of communication channels with the sole goal of connecting with the customers at both functional and emotional levels.
Companies should ensure that through their integrated marketing communications, the brand is brought to life and is made to resonate with its customers. All the brand messages should be consistent, clear and relevant to the target audiences and easy to comprehend.
More often than not, companies are focused on buying advertising campaigns. Instead they should buy marketing effect that will add brand value. By focusing on value creation, companies can establish long term relationships with the right communications partners like ad agencies, PR and media agencies etc. These partners should be made strategic partners with the brand and held responsible for their results.
9. Measure the brand performance
An organization must deliver shareholder value and be accountable. The same applies for brands. How much value does it provide to the corporation and how instrumental is the brand in ensuring profitability and competitiveness? These are some of the questions which need to be answered and which the corporate management will automatically seek as part of a constant commitment to run the strategy successfully.
Brand equity consists of various individually tailor-made metrics (including the brand value in financial terms) and needs to be tracked regularly. A brand score card can help facilitating an overview of the brand equity and the progression of brand metrics as the strategy is implemented. Also, the company should have the right combination of qualitative and quantitative research tools to measure the brand equity.
There are two reasons for marketing decisions to be elevated to the board room: The marketing metrics conveys a powerful message to the CEO about the ability of branding to drive profitability, and also because a decision of that caliber would not have happened within the limited scope of the marketing department.
To elevate the discipline of branding into the boardroom level, it is required of companies to prove the financial implications of branding investments and its contribution to the overall company growth. Currently there are many measures used by companies which put a value on the brand and also track the return from branding initiatives. Over the long run, companies should adopt a method of tracking brand returns based on certain company and industry specific parameters instead of merely adopting some proprietary tools.
Ultimately, the CEO and corporate management should be remunerated based on the brands' strength, its performance measured through metrics like market share, product quality and customer satisfaction ultimately contributing to shareholder value. Only if business leaders are held accountable for their actions, will they take leadership and dedicate efforts to build strong brands.
10. Adjust relentlessly and be ready to raise your own bar all the times
The business landscape is changing almost every day in every industry. Hence the corporation needs to evaluate and possibly adjust the branding strategy on a regular basis. Obviously, a strong and resonating brand should stay relevant, differentiated and consistent throughout time, so it is the crucial function of maintaining a balance between all the parameters. The basic parts of the branding strategy like vision, identity, personality and values are not to be changed often as they are the basic components. Instead, the changes are rather small and involve the thousands of daily interactions and behaviors throughout the organisation, which the corporations employ as part of the brand marketing efforts.
Building any successful brand is very dependant on the buy-in from the shareholders of a company whom in the end must allocate the necessary resources needed for branding as well as evaluate the return on investment. This raises questions about the type of non-executive directors and their knowledge of and beliefs in branding as a strategic discipline. Most executives in Asian board rooms are elevated from technical, operational or financials career tracks. Hardly any from the brand and marketing tracks make it to the boardrooms in Asia. Asian shareholders and companies can benefit significantly from having 1-2 non-executive directors on the board with brand knowledge, tools and international experience as a balance to the traditional technical and financial over-representation.
Branding is potentially a strong tool for re-aligning a corporate strategy and ensuring that the corporation regardless of industry and size is leveraging adequately on the un-tapped internal and external resources. A strong CEO and a dedicated management team are always seeking to raise their own bars and be change agents for their corporations backed by a strong corporate branding strategy.
A well-drafted and professionally managed branding strategy and implementation plan can become a significant part of the Asian boardroom set of tasks in the future. It can help drive profitability and shareholder value aligning the interests of the stakeholders, the management and the company.
Martin Roll: International Brand Strategist
Martin Roll is CEO of VentureRepublic, the leading strategic advisory firm on branding. He delivers the combined value of an experienced international branding strategist and a senior advisor to corporate boards and top-management teams in Fortune 500 companies. He brings more than 15 years of management experience from the international advertising and branding industry, and is a renowned keynote speaker at global conferences. Martin Roll is author of Asian Brand Strategy, and he is a frequent guest lecturer at INSEAD business school and a visiting professor at CEIBS.
www.venturerepublic.com
Asian Brand Strategy: New Book by Martin Roll
Asian Brand Strategy demonstrates how Asian boardrooms and senior leaders can create superior leadership and enhance shareholder value for Asian companies through strong brand strategies. The book includes theoretical frameworks, models and up-to-date case studies on Asian brands. Asian Brand Strategy is a must-read for anyone business leader interested in Asia and illustrates how Asia is shaping a winning formula.
www.asianbrandstrategy.com
