Are You Thinking Too Small About Brands And Your Impact?

If you’re a designer, copywriter, brand strategist, marketer… ultimately you’re a brand-builder.??

But sometimes there’s a sense that these jobs aren’t contributing much to a business.??

That you have no role in a boardroom.??

That you’re just a support function to a support function.

Partly this is driven by a perception that brands are ‘just ‘how we look and what we say about ourselves’.?

Many clients still share this view – even those in leadership roles.??

The knock-on effect of this is that many C-Suite clients are unwilling to engage in brand strategy work – or they nod along with the presentations, then go straight back to their day job.?

Because they believe they've been involved in something that they have no role in executing.

They see it as just the first stage of work required to ‘bring the brand to life’ in identity and copy.

But nothing could be further than the truth.??

It’s time for anyone working on brand strategy to understand the true importance and impact of their role, and help clients understand it too.

What is a brand?

Understanding if you’re thinking too small about brands needs to start with understanding what brands really are.

Here’s an exercise that might help.

Draw a circle and inside it write: Coca-Cola.?

Take 1 minute and write everything that comes into your mind when you think about Coca-Cola.?

Here’s my associations.??

Mine may differ from yours.??

But neither is right or wrong.

Because brands are just what we think they are. They are a set of associations and feelings that we have about an entity – whether it’s a product, a service or an organisation.

Brands are the associations we have in our mind, based on the a sum of all of our experiences. A business needs to have great clarity on what they want those associations and experiences to be.??

Because strong brands do not let these associations occur by accident.

Until 2021, Coca-Cola had decided that their brand was about refreshment and happiness.??

You can see that in my associations.??

Even though I know Coca-Cola is not the healthiest thing for me to drink, when I’m on holiday, relaxed and happy in a sunny café, there is always a moment where I will order a Diet Coke.??

I see the name on a menu and it triggers these associations of refreshment and holiday happiness, that themselves started on my first trip to Disney as a kid.?

And this is not just due to advertising messages or branding.??Product development, distribution, marketing - all parts of an organisation needs to work together to build these associations.

Brand strategy is where these associations start

The value of brand strategy is not in a visual identity outcome.??

Brand strategy supports the C-Suite in one of their most significant roles; providing focus, clarity and direction for the business.

As a brand strategist your role is to guide clients through a process of insight gathering and engagement to get to a decision on the answers to four questions that shape the direction of all organisations, and clarifies the associations they want to be known for:

1. WHY do we exist?
2. WHO are we and HOW do we do things around here?
3. WHAT are we/do we do?
4. HOW do we look, feel and sound?

All of the world’s best organisations – and those that have the most valuable brands – have clear answers to these questions.

Take McDonald’s who answer them this way.

Or Microsoft who have their answers clearly defined.

Whether B2B or B2C, helping clients answer these questions is fundamental to their success.

You don’t even need to call these answers brand strategy.??Or yourself a brand strategist.

Be a ‘red thread consultant’, like Barkley show in their State of the Whole Brand 2022 Report, or a North Star Strategist, or promote your ‘Decision Making Framework. ’

It’s just about getting strong answers to these questions to give an organisation the focus and direction they need to make decisions across a business to build a strong brand.

Where should you start?

You might be most used to talking about 'brand positioning' or 'brand personality/brand attributes': the answers to WHAT a brand is/does and HOW it wants to look, feel and sound.

But it’s the first questions – WHY do we exist, and WHO are we and HOW do we do things -??that will stretch your contribution further.

They impact everyone who works with, or partners with, an organisation.??They set the stage for building a great brand.

The leaders who understand this out-perform other CEOs.

In 'CEO Excellence - The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest', Senior McKinsey partners’ study of the highest-performing CEOs, the first mindset identified is bold direction-setting.

This starts by clarifying an answer to WHY people are coming to work every day, beyond the financial or growth goals articulated in most business strategies and ‘2030 vision statements’.??

As Oliver?B?te,?CEO of the world’s largest insurance company, Allianz, and one of the world’s top 100 most valuable brands, states,

“Nobody gets galvanised by, ‘I need to double net profit.’ Sorry, even my top team doesn’t.??So the question is, what can you rally people behind?”

Getting to a clear and compelling answer to this question with your client may be your most important contribution, since answering and then activating an organisation to deliver on this has been linked to all sorts of growth outcomes.

10x better performance

Research?from Harvard Business Review in association with EY found that companies that operate with?a clear and driving sense of purpose, beyond the goal of just making money, outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of 10 between 1996 and 2011.??

3x faster growth

Jim Stengel, in his study of 50,000 brands over 10 years that led to his book, 'Grow, How Ideals Power Growth and Profit At The World’s 50 Greatest Companies', showed that the brands that identified a strong WHY statement?collectively outperformed the S&P 500 by almost 400% and grew 3 times faster than competition.?

6x greater earnings, outperforming the market 15-to-1

These findings echo those of the 1994 classic "Built to Last," in which Jim Collins and Jerry Porras?reveal?that, over a more than 60-year period,?purpose-guided companies earned six times more for their shareholders than their narrowly profit-focused competitors.

46% greater market share gains?

A 2015 study by Havas Worldwide found that brands that ranked high on purpose and meaning experienced more market success than lower-rated brands.

Not to mention the impact on employee engagement, satisfaction and retention all of which hits the bottom line.

According to?Gallup?10% improvement in employees' connection with the mission or purpose of their organization would result?in an 8.1% decrease in turnover, and a 4.4% increase in profitability.

It’s part of what turned around the fortunes of Microsoft, whose stock price had stalled in 2014.??

How did Satya Nadella start the turnaround?

In 3 years they generated $250bn in market value, stock soared 90% and they achieved 95% approval on Glassdoor.

Turning around a business requires a clear answer to WHY we exist.

Answering WHO we are and HOW we do things around here

What’s equally important is to help clients get clarity on the culture they are building.???

Brand strategy influences culture is by helping to clarify the guidelines – identifying and articulating WHO we are and HOW we expect people to act.?

These are typically called values and behaviours, and these need to be captured, just as mich as WHY people come to work every day.

“The only competitive advantage we have is the culture and values of the company. Anyone can open up a coffee store. We have no technology, we have no patent. All we have is the relationship around the values of the company and what we bring to the customer every day. And we all have to own it.”

Howard Schultz, CEO, Starbucks

But you have to work hard to create values that are authentic,?engaging?and meaningful.

If your list of values read something like:??We are 'innovative', 'ethical', ‘customer-focused', ‘collaborative’, ‘open’ and ‘accountable’ then you need to revisit them.

A Booz Allen Hamilton/Aspen Institute?study?across 365 companies and 30 countries showed that?90% of organisations mention integrity, 76% trust and teamwork, 69% honesty and openness, 68% accountability, 60% innovative/entrepreneurial.

And a?HBR study?showed that 55%?of all?Fortune?100 companies claim integrity is a core value, 49%?espouse customer satisfaction, and 40%?tout team-work.

Why does this matter? In the words of Patrick Lencioni in?'Make Your Values Mean Something'??in Harvard Business Review,?

Most values statements are bland, toothless, or just plain dishonest. And far from being harmless, as some executives assume, they’re often highly destructive.?Empty values statements create cynical and dispirited employees, alienate customers, and undermine managerial credibility… Coming up with strong values—and sticking to them—requires real guts. Indeed, an organization considering a values initiative must first come to terms with the fact that, when properly practiced, values inflict pain.?

Creating strong values and behaviours (more on that here)?- defining who we are and how we do things -??is as critical to an organisation’s success as identifying why they exist.??

Modern Survey?found that employees who say their organizational values are “known and understood” are 51 times more likely to be fully engaged than an employee who responds that their organization does not have values that are known and understood.

It helps people understand what’s expected of them and how they can help achieve the ‘why’.???

Where?your?focus should be when doing brand strategy

Your work as a brand strategist provides essential clarity, focus and direction for a business.

But you need to be careful where?your?focus is in the process.

So much dialogue on brand strategy is about the framework and labels used.??

Your contribution is not the framework.

You?can bang on about mission or purpose, values or beliefs.. but the truth is: this doesn’t matter and it doesn’t help.

What's interesting in McKinsey’s study, that mirrors my ongoing study of the world’s most valuable brands, is that?there is no consistency in the terms used by the best CEO’s to capture the answer these questions of WHY we exist and WHO we are and HOW we do things.??

Mission, purpose and vision are all used interchangeably as the label for WHY we exist.

‘Communications and HR professionals, academics and we as consultants can argue all want about the nuances of each term, but the fact remains that the best CEOs don’t worry much about the distinctions – what matters for them is to have a clear and simply articulated North Star for the company that redefines success, influences decisions, and inspires people to act in desired ways.’

This is where many brand strategists can hinder, rather than help a client.??

Using too much jargon, proprietary terminology or insisting on them adopting your brand strategy framework?can create a chasm between the impact your work should have on a company and the engagement and alignment you need from the leadership team to trigger that impact.

Your contribution is not in the framework. It's in guiding clients through a process where they are fully engaged in the creation and?aligned on the implications.

I can’t stress this enough.?

And I’ve learnt it the hard way.??

Looking into the eyes of disengaged and sceptical oncology clients when trying to tell them they need a ‘verbal brand driver’, because that’s what my agency’s framework included.?

Not pushing hard enough when my marketing client told me the C-suite were too busy to have one-on-one interviews with me and they just wanted to be shown ‘the answer.’

And if you’ve felt the same way then it’s not your fault!??

Because this is where the teaching around brand strategy falls down.??

Firstly, there’s not enough of it.??Not even within the world’s largest branding and communications agencies.??You essentially learn on the job so your benchmarks and examples are just those you’ve worked on.??

And while there are some free and paid courses, they just share different frameworks but don’t give you the step-by-step process on how you get to the answers in the right way.?

In a way that gathers together the insights efficiently, that engages leadership throughout the process, and that gets to the solution that’s right for them.

That’s why I created Brand Strategy Academy – to teach all of this.

So if you’re thinking a bit too small about the value you provide clients then maybe it’s time to upskill and add brand strategy to your offer.??

But don’t get side-tracked by the frameworks.???

Your contribution is not the framework or the model you provide.??It’s helping the client get to strong answers to the questions the business needs to help to drive it forward.

It's giving them clarity, focus and direction to help them grow.

And that’s a contribution you can be proud of.