Benjamin Bidlack is Brand Strategy Director at RiechesBaird

Last time we talked Brand Council, it was about who should be on it and what the Council can do to inform the strategic decision-making in a company. The Brand Council should bring a brand lens to organization-wide decisions and activities to ensure adherence to the brand promise and to protect and build brand value.

How to “turbo charge” your Brand Council

1. Define the right Mandate for your organization
I would suggest that your Brand Council clearly articulate its mandate and have the authority to hold your organization’s people accountable for decisions, actions and behaviors that align with the brand.

The mandate can be simple, “To consider corporate decisions from the point of view of their impact on and alignment with the brand.” Or it can be elaborate, “with tactical objectives and metrics to evaluate business decisions.” Your mandate should also specify the rules and conditions under which issues are brought to the Brand Council for discussion, resolution and communication to the broader organization.

“Our expectation is that the Brand Council be a stakeholder-led control and implementation of the brand against a clear set of guidelines.” – Managing Director, Leading European retailer

2. Meet regularly
Frequency and continuity are vital to institutionalize the Brand Council into your organization’s culture. To establish continuity, the Brand Council should meet at least once every quarter on strategic issues and even more frequently on tactical issues.

In addition to regular meetings, the Brand Council should have the flexibility to convene as the need arises. For example events or operations that impact the brand, responses to recent competitive and/or internal developments such as analyst report releases, new hires, customer satisfaction surveys, etc.

3. Be “brand-centered”
a. Your brand must have a high profile inside your organization. This responsibility typically lies at the door of the C-suite. C-level managers must maintain a high profile for your brand by making a business investment in the brand and supporting the investment by demonstrating a personal pride in what the brand stands for. Simply stated, they need to lead by example in living your brand.

b. Your brand lives beyond marketing. View brand building as a holistic organizational responsibility as opposed to the duty of your marketing department. The functional areas and business units within your organization need to understand, through their leaders on the Brand Council, how they contribute to brand value.

4. Inspire your organization through Brand Ambassadors.
“The key is to ensure that the Council is controlling the brand, but also that it provides the freedom to work within a defined set of parameters.”
– Managing Director, Leading European retailer

Brand Councils have different mandates, membership and processes, depending on the needs of the organization.

The Brand Council also guides and manages the activities of your Brand Ambassadors. Your employees can make or break your brand. When properly inspired and empowered, your Brand Ambassadors will lead your employees to make the brand thrive within your organization and, ultimately, with your customers.

Potential bumps in the road

1. A lack of consensus on the importance of the brand to the organization
The Brand Council is a holistic representation of the organization. Therefore, its members, regardless of functional area, should believe in the brand as a vital corporate asset that merits the time, discussion and collaboration of the organization’s senior leadership.

2. The absence of a clear mandate
Branding can be abstract, even to experienced leaders and managers. Part of the Brand Council’s function is to educate its members and the wider organization about the role and potential value of the brand. A clear, well defined and well communicated Brand Council Mandate ensures that the organization understands the purpose of the Brand Council and the value it can bring.

3. Infrequent meetings
A lack of regular Brand Council meetings hinders the momentum on brand-related discussions and sends the message that the brand is a lower business priority.

4. The absence of C-suite support
C-suite support of the Brand Council is critical, especially at the outset, in order to give the Brand Council the credibility and visibility it needs to enable effective strategic brand decisions. Without this support, the Brand Council runs the risk of losing relevance among the organization’s functional leaders.

5. A highly fragmented organizational culture
Structure that favors operation in “silos” over enterprise-wide communication and collaboration. Here’s a real quote about how people throughout an organization often use the brand in the wrong way, creating dilution and eroding its power:
“People want to re-interpret and re-invent things.” – Managing Director, Leading European retailer

Organizations predisposed to working as autonomous functions, divisions or markets will need to commit themselves to greater intra-company collaboration in order to benefit from creating a Brand Council.

6. Incomplete execution on Brand Council decisions
Like any organization and its functional areas, the Brand Council should be evaluated on business results. Leadership can only make this assessment if the organization consistently executes on the Brand Council’s decisions, and monitors the resulting impact on performance.

Conclusion
This concludes our three-part series on the Brand Council. In short, the Brand Council oversees the activities whereby the brand contributes to shareholder value. When your Brand Council guides business activities to align with the brand promise, your organization will benefit from satisfied customers. Over time, consistent and satisfying brand experiences will transform satisfied customers into loyal customers, which, in turn, helps you secure and grow future earnings and create economic value.

What are your thoughts about Brand Councils?
Does your organization utilize one and is effective?
Would you agree with or refute anything I’ve mentioned in these posts?

Why category positioning is paramount to building a successful technology brand.

Ray Baird is President of RiechesBaird

Last week we spoke about the importance of defining the category in which a technology company competes in order to develop an effective brand position. This week we are going to focus on how to approach the assignment and what you need to know to make it successful.

First of all, timing is everything.

If your tech company does not see an immediate need, the likelihood for the project to be successful will be slim. Basically, you have a few options.  Wait for some major change that invokes the discussion of re-examining the positioning (like a merger/acquisition or new product/market direction) or you can create evidence (quantitative or qualitative) for the need.  Take caution when developing the latter. In our experience, technology brands must take individual opinions out of the equation and use research to justify the need.

A sure fire way to create internal buy-in is to conduct the questioning we discussed in Part 1 of this series. Having your executive team reveal their understanding and thoughts as it relates to brand positioning usually gets the group talking about the need to re-examine.

Another suggestion would be conducting a simple survey to existing customers and prospects. There is nothing like fresh research to help understand the current perceptions of your brand positioning and category considerations. Lastly, if your organization is consultant friendly, it’s never a bad idea to have a third-party organization come in to give you an assessment that roles up both internal and external perceptions. Remember, if you don’t get buy-in from the executive group, you are in for a big challenge. You must develop the need.

Developing your category definition and brand positioning is not just a marketing exercise. It is a business exercise and decision that must involve your executive leadership in order for you to be successful.

Once you have buy-in from your team, it’s critical to establish a specific process with defined deliverables that everyone understands and agrees upon. Timing will be critical. Once the project starts it’s extremely important to keep momentum going for the group to stay engaged because you need to have the executive group involved throughout the process. Basically they need to commit to a few meetings and an hour-long, in-depth interview.

A typical brand development assignment of this nature generally takes around 90 days from start to presentation of final recommendations. Our brand consultants suggest getting brand strategy going with a simple kickoff meeting to familiarize the group with the process, expected outcome and their roles in the project. Fundamentally you and your selected technology brand experts need to guide the group through the assessment and discovery phase.

Here are the core pieces of the research. Make sure you not only roll up the findings into insights, but also suggest what the research will mean to the project.

1. Internal Insights: Personal interview with executives and survey of management and employees to capture strengths/weakness/gaps
2. External Insights: Customer/Prospects and industry experts (like Gartner) perceptions and driving influences
3. Competitive Review: Mapping of competitors positioning and brand strategy
4. Market Dynamics: Clear understanding of the current dynamics and future considerations/influences

Once armed with this insightful information you are fully prepared to discuss the strategic paths to developing a well-defined category definition and brand position for differentiation and growth.

In the final installment of this series, we will explore what it takes to develop winning positioning and how to build a technology brand for optimal performance.