Benjamin Bidlack is Brand Strategy Director at RiechesBaird

In the first of two parts we explore what is a Brand Audit and why tech companies choose to conduct them.

Remember the fantastic scene from “A Few Good Men” where Lt. Daniel Kaffee (played by Tom Cruise), an inexperienced military trial lawyer, confronts a seasoned Marine Colonel Nathan R. Jessep (played by Jack Nicholson) about the facts surrounding the apparent murder of a fellow Marine? “I want the truth!” exclaims Kaffee in the courtroom. “You can’t handle the truth!” shouts back Jessep.

Although it is sometimes hard to ‘handle’ or swallow, the truth is the idea behind conducting a brand audit. More so than some other industries, tech companies need to know the cold hard truth of how they are perceived in the marketplace. Even if the results hurt the technology brand ego. Because the first step in strengthening brand weaknesses or vulnerabilities is learning precisely where the brand value stands now.

This year, some tech companies won’t need a full-tilt, top-dollar rebranding. They may have just finished a complete rebranding last year, or recently merged or acquired other brands. They might just need a brand audit to help them with this year’s strategy and resourcing decisions.

What is a brand audit?

A brand audit is a thorough, multi-dimensional analysis to understand a company’s brand(s), its internal and external perceptions, and their strategic implications. Brand audits often include rigorous competitor brand evaluations to deliver strategic context and recommendations to its findings.

A brand audit answers questions such as:

-  How do prospects really view the technology brand?
-  Which brand attributes and personality does it and its competitors ‘own’?
-  How much ‘permission’ does the brand have to offer new products or enter new markets?
-  How cohesive and compelling is the tech brand story and promise?
-  What internal and external challenges stand in the way of developing and strengthening brand to drive business forward?
-  Which touch points have the most impact for building this technology brand?
-  How should brand position change to be most effective against competitors?
-  Is it wise to go ‘head-to-head’ with primary competitors? Why or why not?
-  What differentiators do the brand offer that cannot be easily copied?
-  How relevant is the brand in today’s marketplace? How believable is brand promise? How differentiated?

In many cases, technology brands ‘lead with the tech’. They believe it will be compelling enough to drive the trial, preference, and repeat business that drive future revenue. Technology is only part of the value offered by Apple, Google or Microsoft. These technology leaders all carry brand value and associations far beyond the technology they offer: prestige (or ‘everyman-ness’), cool (or not-so-cool) ‘geekiness’, self-expression, social or economic status, values, etc.
Top technology brands also carry associations related to value delivery, service quality, and relative pricing, whether it’s their products or stock. The brand value goes far beyond a technological development.

Unfortunately, executives do not always want to hear the truth about their brands. Lack of honest insights can cause uninformed decisions and leave them wondering why the numbers or performance of their brand is not improving.

Can your team handle the truth? Let us know how you uncover the honest data that leads to informed decisions.

Next time, we’ll look at the specific elements of a brand audit, and why it can be a relatively inexpensive and extremely effective tool.

Ray Baird is President of RiechesBaird

Why are many brands unintentionally hijacked by their own people and strategies?

There have been many papers and books written on the importance of brand alignment, employee engagement, brand adoption, call it what you may. So, why do so many companies still suffer from poor employee morale, low retention, misalignment, performance fatigue and the inability to make good on their brand promise?

To answer the question, all you need to do is look at the typical business eco-system – its structure, interactions, systems  and most importantly its accountability and philosophy.  For the most part, business in America is built in a departmental fashion, and the larger the company becomes, the more susceptible it is to falling into a “Silo” mentality. Obviously the “Silo” effect works against the principle of being aligned, collaborative and fully informed. When the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing, they are left to their own interpretation and often work against the brand’s best intentions.

Structure is the next problem.  The biggest problem here is, who is really in charge of pulling the entire picture together and reporting on its effectiveness. HR deals with internal issues, marketing controls brand, operations tries to deliver the goods and sales.  So the problem is not only that “Silos” are not conducive to collaboration,  but  that structures typically are not built to orchestrate a bigger picture mentality and understanding of the customer experience, the internal experience and how it’s being perceived and delivered.

In addition, companies often fail to develop well thought out interactive/collaborative processes to foster “informative decision making” internally and externally. Yes, most companies have some loosely defined collaborative meeting structure but most don’t monitor the internal brand working relationship to the external delivery. Again, people and departments are left to make decisions without confirmation of alignment to the overall strategies.

One of the biggest disconnects we often experience is the division and disconnect of Marketing and HR. So often these departments work on their own strategies without coming together to fully agree and embrace how the communication content is generated and distributed. We find that successful companies and brands that  co-develop strategies and shared systems experience greater unity and brand performance.

So, if you’re looking to  increase the morale of your organization, improve retention, or better deliver on your customer experience and brand, here’s a few things to think about:

1. Have a holistic view. Don’t develop brand strategies as it relates to your brand experience strictly in a departmental fashion. Bring department leaders together to truly understand the internal/external workings of the brand. Develop a brand council comprised of your department leaders, to guide, instruct and monitor the internal and external brand experience.

2. Say NO to “Silos”. If this is an issue, break it down now, it will only get worse. Especially make sure Marketing and HR are collaborating in strategy and the development of monitoring metrics (and don’t leave out operations).

3. Continual innovative communication. I know it sounds obvious but people need to hear strategy over and over to get it. You must reinforce the importance of the organization to nurture and foster brilliant internal communication and to have external proof that the brand is performing to its intended standards.

If you follow these simple rules, you’ll reduce the chances of your brand being hijacked by its own people. But that’s my opinion, what’s yours?

Ray Baird is President of RiechesBaird

Why now is the time for executives and leaders to closely re-examine the health of their organizations and brands

Face it, 2009 was over for most businesses in October of 2008. The financial crisis, capital crunch and brittle confidence of customers caused business strategists and planners to pull back any future investment considerations in 2009. Everyone froze, waited and watched. We’re still watching. Now is the time to start leading.

Most American corporations have had to seriously re-invent or re-engineer themselves operationally just to stay alive and relevant in their markets. Flat became the acceptable up. I don’t know of one CEO that hasn’t been forced to make significant changes or make fundamental shifts that may have taken them many years to complete if not for the financial crisis.

Bottom line, American businesses have been bent out of shape. We’re out of alignment. Bordering on tampering with irrelevant value propositions. The broken promises of iconic brands have driven customer confidence to an all time low.

If American business is going to re-cover or re-bound in the near future, CEOs and executives need to quickly assess what the last months have done to their business and get down to serious creative planning for 2010. Start by driving your 2010 planning process with fresh, relevant insights. You don‘t have to over complicate your thinking process. Make it simple. Start by asking yourself a couple of revealing questions:

1. What have we become?
2. What’s possible now?

And remember, think Big. Use this opportunity for positive change.

So…

1. What have we become?
Start with the internal realities.

Here’s a mind-set to consider. Throw out most of what you have learned about your company. The most important information is about “Now,” and the current perception and ability to deliver on a differentiated value proposition. Don’t rely too heavily upon historical data to drive your moving forward strategy (too much has changed). Now is the time to get a quick fresh perspective, and you need to start with getting a handle on internal realities. If you don’t have a clear handle on the internal perceptions how can you attempt to articulate the moving forward strategy? Get current quick. You have to know where the organization is misaligned in order to repair it. It’s the major premise of this blog post, and it’s not that difficult. Start with a simple survey to understand the view of the organization as it relates to strategy, structure and execution. Create your own survey at www.surverymonkey.com or reach out to existing tools such as www.strategicbrandassesment.com. Bottom line, you need to drive the strategy from a fresh, contemporary and quantitative point of view. The results from this exercise should be your platform for developing an internal operations strategy for success and an employee communication plan to re-engage employees.

2. What’s possible now?
You’ve got to be current.

Look back at your strategic plan before October of 2008. Does it look a little different today? Of course it does. Think about the people you had then and who is supporting you now. That’s why it’s critical to articulate a convincing moving forward strategy based upon current views of what the market is giving you today and where you want to take your business in the future. Start by answering a few fundamental questions that will guide your thinking:

a) Are we in the same category of business or has it changed? Conduct competitive mapping.
b) Is the current value proposition relevant? Explore new positioning.
c) What is the market saying about us? Conduct a perception study to determine the right brand strategy.
d) Do our customers still love us? Conduct a customer loyalty study so you’re not caught off guard. Develop a specific customer communication (lifecycle) plan to insure alignment.
e) Is the sales force engaged and telling a consistent story? Just interview them, you’ll know.

With these fresh insights you are ready to enter 2010 planning with a clear understanding of the health of your organization. Remember before you can fix anything, you have to know what’s broken and what’s working well. Who knows what 2010 will bring, nobody has a crystal ball, but if you start by asking the right questions, you’re bound to find new intelligent answers.

But that’s just my opinion, what’s yours?