MJ Braide on Brand Strategy

How strong is your corporate brand? Important question. How can you do better than guess at the answer? Well, you could spend six or seven figures on some quant research on reputation (which will do little more than confirm your gut about what people think of you), you can invest in a brand valuation (which will give you a nice round number that isn’t reliable and won’t tell you much about how well your business is performing) or you can put a PR resource on retainer to track the interweb for mentions, sentiment and buzz. Or there is Net Promoter Score, and no doubt myriad other ways to extract your dollars and distract you from what matters.  Even after all this expenditure of time and money, I don’t believe you’ll be any better informed than you are now.

But wait, there’s hope. Wander over to HR and ask them to give you the last three years of your company’s employee engagement data (and if they don’t have employee engagement data tell them to get busy and start collecting it).

My hypothesis – and I am about to launch a research initiative to test it – is that organizations with low employee engagement scores have weak brands and those with high employee engagement scores have strong brands. I have observed this pattern in every organization I have worked with that has had the data available. Naturally I cannot name names as we are talking about confidential data but there are winners and losers.

Ya, sure I get why we matter.

This makes so much sense. Time and time again, engagement surveys tell us that one of the most important motivators for employees is the image, reputation and brand of their organization; followed quickly by whether or not the employee can see the link between what they do and that central purpose.

If your employees don’t get it, I can assure you that your customers won’t, and not just because it means that your value proposition is not clear – but because it means that your employees are not clear on how to deliver the brand. Compare a WestJet to a Delta, a Tim Hortons to a Dunkin, an Apple to a Dell. A Google to a Yahoo.

The natural question follows: if my engagement scores are low, do I focus on fixing that or on building the brand? My belief is that you focus first on getting a winning external proposition, then you work with employees to help them figure out how what they do contributes to its achievement.  Too many organizations get caught up in creating “employment brands” that are remote from their market brands. Big mistake, and usually the source of a lot of ugly confusion.

Get your brand story right and create the line-of-sight that every employee needs to make it happen. And watch both your brand and the engagement of your workforce increase in lock step.

Stay tuned for more as I head out and start testing the hypothesis with my clients and others. And let me know if you’re involved with an organization that would be good to talk to about this.

Allen Hirsh had a very good idea. Build a practice around helping organizations form the next generation of leadership: www.nextgenleaders.ca

Then he had an even better idea: build a network of thinkers, practitioners and collaborators that would work together on exploring the issues and advising decision makers: www.nextgenleaders.ca/our-network/overview.html

I was fortunate enough to be asked to join this network and I feel privileged to be signed on with such and accomplished and generous group. Great listeners, strong thinkers, clear communicators, good people, all gathered around the biggest issues that will change the game for organizations of all kinds in the next 5-10 years. We are strategists, coaches, storytellers, change managers, organizational designers and we all care about the future of organizations and the individuals who will make them work.

Allen’s insight about the new demands of leadership is profound and simple. We cannot leave the development of our next generation of leaders to chance. High performing companies that want to develop from within must start now to connect with and inspire young leaders in the making. He is applying his work in a civic context through his role with the City Summit Alliance as its leadership advisor and coach.

Allen’s desire to develop his insight through a network of pals is also profound and simple and we are all enjoying the process of defining our roles together and apart.

The question of who will lead next and what we need to be doing now to support them is so critical. I am very excited to be included in the discovery.

I’m often asked as part of brand strategies to help with vision and mission statements and values definition. What is it with these things? Every organization seems to want them, but they put the most flimsy thought into them (despite spending hours on successive re-drafts that turn them into deadened sludge). They are usually derided by employees as meaningless fluff and only ever see the light of day on lunchroom posters, bad PowerPoint slides and desktop SWAG.

You know what I mean: “Our vision is to be the leader (or the provider of choice) in the provision of fully integrated solutions that meet customer needs and generate shareholder value. Our mission is to continuously improve our effectiveness and efficiency through teamwork….bla bla bla…

Right out of the mission and vision bulls**t generator.

But these should be really really important, memorable, clear and motivating ideas. They should be the ideas that make the difference between coming into work everyday inspired and just showing up.

I think I’ve found the problem. People set about to write these things without any agreement on what the terms mean. Vision ends up being all about us, mission gets into a whole lot of “how” not “what” and values become generic ideas about respect and teamwork. If you listen to people arguing about mission statements you quickly realize that they are not actually arguing about the mission. They haven’t agreed on what a mission statement is. So the process ends in a negotiated solution that everyone hates. No wonder it’s relegated to SWAG.

Answer: agree on smart and simple defintions and stick to them. The rest will be so much easier. How’s this:

Vision: The perfect future we want to see (that we probably cannot achieve alone).

Mission: Our role in making that vision possible.

Values: The beliefs that shape successful behavior.

And don’t just use the definitions when you write the statements. Always have the definitions in place to accompany the statements wherever they are reproduced. That will eliminate all the confusion about what the heck these things are so people can focus on the meaning.

Keep it this simple and you will have ideas that inspire and provide real guidance to decision makers.

I think my favourite example of this was with a large provincial safety association whose vision was some gobbeldygook about taking a partnering role in the provision of excellent services to …… Ya, but isn’t your vision that no one dies from electical shock? Isn’t it that simple? Yes. (What a relief). Can we do that alone? No. Will we ever get there? Maybe not. Is it still worth aiming for? Yes. Good, let’s go with it.

With that kind of purpose behind you, everything else just writes itself.

And don’t weasel out by saying that in the private sector it’s all about market domination and shareholder value. If you want to motivate and orient your employees help them understand how what you do makes a positive difference in people’s lives – whether you manufacture washing machines, sell mutual funds or operate an airline. How do you liberate, simplify, secure, enliven and empower the world?

It’s time we dusted off this tired trio of mission, vision and values and got them meaning something again. Let’s move them off the lunchroom wall and into the conciousness of every employee, manager, executive, volunteer, investor and board member.

And if the term committed to integrated solutions appears in them anywhere you need to start again.

I’ve always thought that the question was not “how is my brand doing”? It’s “how is my company doing”? Nice to have a top-10 rated brand by Interbrand, Millward Brown or Brand Finance, but if your stock is sinking, which it might well be, who cares about a brand value ranking?

My colleague and friend Jonathan Knowles, founder of Type 2 Consulting and probably our most cogent thinker on brand and marketing valuation, has been sharing with me some of his own, and others’ research on the link between good brand management and the creation of shareholder value. This is not the same as how-does-your-brand-do-in-the-rankings question (which is good for the ego, but not necessarily the shareholder). This is: what is the real value that your brand is creating, from a financial performance point-of-view. Powerful stuff for marketers who need to speak the language of the CFO and very compelling for CEOs working to bring their boards and executive teams onside with investment in brand – when other needs are competing for dollars.

After surveying just about everything out there on the topic, Jonathan speaks very highly of the work of Thomas J. Madden, Frank Fehle and Susan Fournier published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 2006; 34; 224. In Brands Matter: An Empirical Demonstration of the Creation of Shareholder Value Through Branding, Madden, Fehle and Fournier state:

“It has long been argued that brand development strategies create shareholder value, but compelling empirical evidence to support this claim has been lacking. Using monthly stock returns for the period 1994-2000, we find that the portfolio of brands identified as strong according to Interbrand’s valuation method displays statistically and economically significant performance advantages compared with the overall market. Firms that have developed strong brands create value for their shareholders by yielding returns that are greater in magnitude than a relevant market benchmark, and perhaps more important, they do so with less risk.”

Thanks to Jonathan for this summary

Ah, greater return for less risk. The holy grail.

And for you finance types, I quote the authors further:

“The results show that the WMVB (branded) portfolio significantly outperformed both benchmark portfolios in terms of average monthly returns. The WMVB portfolio yielded average monthly returns of 1.98 percent; during the same time period, the benchmark portfolio on average returned 1.34 percent per month. For comparison, the 1-month Treasury Bill rate, which proxies the risk-free rate, averaged .42 percent per month during the analysis period, and the market as a whole (as measured by the FM portfolio) averaged 1.52 percent per month.”

I really like where the authors take their findings – into the realm of risk management:

“A direct implication of our work is that we broaden the conception of brands from the sales space to the value space and, accordingly, move toward a deeper understanding of brand management within the framework of risk management. Our empirical results clearly support the implied role of the brand in reducing the volatility and vulnerability of cash flows, as well as a conceptualization of the brand as a powerful risk management tool for firms.”

A timely message in this environment, and one that links brand strategy closely to corporate strategy and makes it one of the most powerful tools of leadership. Not that I don’t love marketing (some of my best friends are CMOs) but I do think it’s time the brand imperative became a priority for the whole c-suite.

I’m looking forward to posting findings of new research by Jonathan and his partner Rich Ettenson on whether financial performance is influenced by how deeply you invest in brand. Is it enough to throw out a few ads? Or do you have to build the brand in profound ways to make it generate value? Stay tuned.

We made the rounds at London Design Week this year, hoping to see forward into what’s next in design and branding. We weren’t disappointed, but sometimes maybe a bit confused. The festival itself is spread out across London, which gives it a very nice feeling of being a treasure hunt, but it is actually pretty hard to navigate, despite have a lot of talent roaming around who understand wayfinding, visualization and signage. Work on that, okay guys?

The Business of Design series had some great sessions on things like creative cities, the future of brands and  sustainable architecture. We particularly liked Tyler Brule’s session on brands with Martin Raymond, Co-director – Future Laboratory and Marek Reichman – Head of Design at Aston Martin. There was some good, honest discussion about authenticity in brands and the importance of protecting credibility (gee, do I have to?). We loved the tough talk about market research. The consensus seemed to be that while it is good to know all about your customers, it is not good to ask them if they like your new ideas. Market research kills new ideas. I could not agree more and have been advising my clients to pass on the testing. Do the right work up front, and you don’t need the stink testing later.

We were very happy to hear about the new trend of the return of light industry to city centres. While no one is ready to let go of their creative class, planners are starting to see the re-emergence of craft, and short-run, micro production in downtowns. What could be more modern? This is an exciting idea we liked.

What we saw at the various shows and studios around London suggested that there are a lot of young new designers busying themselves with creating the most exotic martini glass set they can come up with, using new-age materials and sustainable design principles. It was all a bit odd. The new stuff at Tent London seemed to be acres and acres of chic ways to waste time lounging around on hyper-cool sofas made of graffiti covered half-melted recycled plastic bottles. Everything very precious, decorative, tough and indulgent. Not what we wanted to think the best design talent in Europe was up to.

All-in-all a good week. Worth the trip. We’ll be back next year, September 19-27, 2009.

Okay, so no one can totally recession-proof anything, but I’ve been thinking about some simple things you can do with and for your brand during down markets, when the temptation is to cut costs, slash prices, eliminate staff, lower service levels, change who you are and very possibly alienate customers (so that when the economy turns around – which it will- they’ll have moved on). I’ve been thinking about five opportunities: (Read on …)

When it comes to competitive brand strategy you can be right in a lot of ways, but you can be really, really wrong in just two: 1) believing that there is no one out there like you and so you own your category and have no direct competition or 2) that you operate in a commoditized category and you’ll never be able to truly differentiate, so why bother. I hear both all the time – and shockingly – sometimes from within the same organization.

Regarding the former, no matter how unique, one-of-a-kind, quirky or pioneering you are, there is always something else that your customers can do with their money, their time and their affection. There are pure plays that eat away at your offer, giants for whom what you do is a rounding error and lots of competitors who will say they do what you do, but don’t. Heads up. Someone is eating your lunch; I guarantee it.

Regarding the latter, I need only quote the father of differentiation, Ted Levitt: “There is no such thing as a commodity. All goods and services can be differentiated and usually are.” (I always thought this would have been far more interesting if he had said …can be differentiated but usually are not). I don’t care if you run a hospital, a law firm, a country, a postal authority or a foodbank, you either already are different and may have lost sight of it, or you need to be. In fact I believe the biggest, most break-out opportunities in brand strategy are in the most highly commoditized categories. It’s shooting fish in a barrel. And I’m not talking about spin here. I’m talking about real, sustainable, valuable difference. Too often I encounter organizations with the potential to redefine their categories, lulled into believing that they are just along for the ride.

If you believe either of these things about your organization it is time to examine the consequences, and consider the alternatives. If you do, you may be able to define an totally new opportunity space and a renewed sense of purpose.

From Peter C. Newman going on about power games to Naomi Klein dissing brands altogether to Andrea Mandel-Campbell telling us why Mexicans don’t drink Molson beer, we just have not had a lot of optimistic discourse on Canadian brands in the last 40 years. Jeannette Hanna’s and Alan Middleton’s new book Ikonica has changed that. In short, Hanna/Middleton show that brands=values and that Canadian values=good brands and that Canadian companies can win globally on the basis of our own particular brand genius.

Full disclosure: Jeannette is a long-time collaborator of mine, and my sister-in-law, and I was very lucky to have been able to watch and cheer from the sidelines as the ideas in Ikonica took shape. The end product – which I hope is really just the beginning of a national discourse – is a treasure.

The book – structured as a field guide, beautifully designed by Paul Hodgson and written to be read with pleasure – opens by putting Canadian brands into their historical and cultural context. The authors propose an 11-point model of what makes Canadian brands Canadian. I love this part. Communitarian, chameleon-like, sceptical, collaborative….for example. When I think of the great Canadian brands I’ve worked with, these attributes are not just accurate, they are at the heart of what has made them successful.

Then come the stories. 24 interview-based stories – some with the usual suspects (Timmies, WestJet, Roots) – but also some lovely surprises (Dynamic Funds, TIFFG, Environics, McCain Foods). All the stories come across as intimate reflections by these organizations’ leaders about what has motivated them and the values they have built and modelled in order to succeed. These stories are at times funny, moving and silly but always persuasive.

The book will not disappoint practitioners with its very tidy little model that uses Community, Culture and Commerce as filters for values-based brand strategy. It’s just such great and useful stuff.

Ikonica is not going to change what it means to be Canadian. So much of what is in this book feels like us and is reassuringly familiar. What it could change is how we see the potential of our values to change the way the world thinks about brands, about Canada and about our role in shaping modern commerce.

The world is looking for what comes next after the monolithic all-about-me phase of American-style branding. Look no further. The future of the truly global brand starts here.

One of the most satisfying applications of corporate brand strategy is in helping hospitals define their proposition and orient themselves to a promise that sets them apart from others in their networks. This is far more than renaming, re-skinning or capital campaign sloganeering. In Canada anyway, it’s a survival tactic. If you cannot demonstrate to your funders, your patients, your staff and your donors why you matter and the piece of the system only you can own, someone else is going to come along and claim your space. (Read on …)

When I got tired of asking my clients “who are you?” I started asking them “why are you?”. What’s the reason you are the way you are and do what you do? Then things started to get interesting. I’ve found that one of the best ways to answer that question is to go back to the earliest beginnings of the organization – the moment of conception if you will – to understand the formative values and beliefs. More often than not, those values are still operating in some measure, deep in the reflexive culture, and may be the most authentic thing to build the brand on. The creation story, linked to the present, can be a powerful credibility builder, especially inside the organization where employees are the first to apply the “stink test” to things like a new brand promise. (Read on …)

In my last post I argued that real brand strategy is too big, too important and too much work to be expressed only through a creative brief that goes to communication specialists, design firms, public relations types and advertising agencies. In Part One I proposed the Organizational Brief, in which the implications of the brand are fully explored across everything you do, not just marketing. In Part Two I propose the Experience Brief in which the real work of the brand – the experiences that it creates – are explicitly identified and managed throughout the organization.

(Read on …)

The creative brief. What a curious way to cap off a brand strategy initiative. You mean you’ve spent months asking yourselves and others who you are, how you are different and what your unique opportunity is in the market, and the ribbon you tie around it is a creative brief to inform the design of the visual identity? What about the 900 other ways in which your brand will be experienced, expressed and supported? What about the Organizational Briefâ„¢? (Read on …)

While corporate brands rely on current equity, the best brand strategy will be built on the equity you can create in the future. This idea usually makes organizations nervous as they quite rightly measure the risk of going live with a promise they cannot fulfill. In my view, it’s best to explore the far corners of where your brand can take you and to work towards that vision with the help of your customers.
(Read on …)

“The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavour to be what you desire to appear.” Socrates’ insight is as true for organizations and their brands as it was for the virtuous individual he sought to instruct more than 2000 years ago. This simple idea, also summed up in the iconic: decide who you are and be that thing, is a powerful reminder of how to order your priorities. The common trap, of course, is not getting beyond appearances. So often, too much focus is put on building media attention, advertising impressions and unaided awareness; and on proclaiming through logos, taglines and marketing messaging, that you are who you say you are.

(Read on …)

The Marketing function has pretty much had a lockdown on developing and managing corporate brand strategy in recent memory, but there are reasons to believe that this might be changing. Human Resources is emerging as the group to watch when it comes to implementing the most meaningful aspects of the brand. (Read on …)

If you’re part of even the most average organization, you probably know a fair amount about your customers. You probably know a lot about what matters to them, what they think about you, and how much they are willing to pay to buy to what you sell. But how much do you know about what your employees think, what matters to them and how far they are willing to go to defend your brand? Chances are you’ve got an employee satisfaction survey that HR does every year or so, and you’ve got a few programs in place to communicate more openly; but do you really know the effect that implicit corporate values are having on your ability to deliver on your brand promise, or for that matter on your basic corporate responsibilities? (Read on …)

There is a shift underway in how people are talking about corporate brands; a shift that is going to result in the next generation of branding. After years of brand being the big idea, leaders want more. They’ve got their new identities, taglines, brand evangelists and guidelines, and they’ve even done some training on “what does the brand mean for me.” But there is something missing… (Read on …)

Why is it that the big brand idea so often fails to reach the salesforce? It’s puzzling and it’s something that I’m paying extra attention to in my work these days. If the proposition doesn’t help them sell, there must be something wrong with it. If it could help them sell and they’re not using it, then it either hasn’t been brought to life for them or they’re being rewarded for doing something else. Either way, it’s not a good situation, especially in business-to-business, where the salesforce is so important. Try an experiment. Ask someone in sales to describe you organization’s unique, persuasive difference. If it takes more than ten words, I’d be concerned. (Read on …)