Branding Strategy Insider

Brand Consulting: How To Gain Buy In For Outside Help

Branding Strategy Insider welcomes and answers marketing questions of all types. Today's question comes from Andrew, a Brand Manager in New York City, New York. He writes:

"I am starting the new year with a new company, managing a brand that needs a great deal of help. It seems the threat to the brand is just as much internal as external. Do you have any suggestions for ‘selling in’ outside brand strategy expertise? My management team does not understand the concept of brand management, its value or why outside brand consulting help would be beneficial."

Thanks for your question Andrew. I have found that it is very difficult to “sell in” the concept of brand management if the organization’s top management doesn’t understand the value of brands. However, one approach to making them aware of the power of brands is to outline how much of the organization’s financial value is the result of its brands and other intangible assets rather than tangible assets (plants, equipment, inventories, etc.).  After rigorous research, CGI reported that 50 percent of a traditional company’s value and 90 percent of an e-commerce company’s value result from nine intangible factors:

• Innovation/R&D
• Quality of management
• Employee quality/satisfaction
• Alliances
• Brand investment
• Product/service quality

Several independent studies over time have confirmed that brand equity accounts for between 5 and 7 percent of the change in a company’s stock price and many experts believe this percentage is somewhat conservative.

The B2B Brand Positioning Workshop

The Blake Project offers a highly facilitated, day long, workshop that is designed to gain complete consensus among your organization’s management team and marketing leadership on the brand’s target customers, essence, promise, personality and archetype. A compliment to our one-day and two-day brand positioning workshops for B2C brands, this workshop integrates insights about the elements that most often differentiate business to business companies from each other.

We work with you to develop your B2B brand’s position in its current marketplaces, while designing flexibility for its future growth. This includes identifying, analyzing and selecting the brand’s target audiences, competitive frame of reference and key customer benefits (functional, emotional, experiential and self-expressive). The workshop focuses on developing the brand’s essence, promise, personality and archetype. We also ensure that your brand has chosen the most powerful benefits to own and that it has developed the proof points and “reasons to believe” for those benefits.

We believe that the primary brand benefit should deliver against these objectives:

The Two-Day Brand Positioning Workshop

The Blake Project, the brand consultancy behind Branding Strategy Insider now offers a highly facilitated two-day workshop designed to help brand owners gain clarity and consensus on key strategic and creative decisions that impact business success when introducing new products, inventing new brands and transforming under-performing brands.

With a process designed for issue resolution, marketing and brand management teams come together in a creative environment that aligns stakeholders around the brand’s target customer segment, desired brand positioning, brand promise, essence and delivery in the markets the brand will compete.

Over the course of two days we work with you to build a strategic roadmap for brand growth and success through focus in four key areas:

To whom you market
You can only create successful products or solutions when you know who the most fervent buyers will be. It is critical to understand as much as you can about the core target customer segment to whom the brand is intended to appeal.

Why they buy
Grabbing the largest share requires a complete understanding on what drives the target customer to products/brands in your space. Defining the context that will give the brand unquestioned relevance to the target customer against their illuminating needs, motivations, attitudes, and preferences is essential for brand building success.

Choosing A Brand Consultant

Choosing a brand consultant can be tricky. First, you must determine what you are seeking in a brand consultant. Do you want to know how your brand stacks up against competitive alternatives? Are you concerned about an emergent competitor? Has your brand lost its competitive edge? Do you need to reposition your brand? Has your brand’s architecture gotten too complicated? Are you seeking an updated identity? Does your brand need a new tagline? Do you want to create a new marketing campaign? Are you trying to rally employees in support of the brand? Are you trying to create an improved brand building culture within your organization? Do you need to understand your brand’s customers better? Are you looking for ongoing education for your marketers? Be specific and clear about what you are seeking in a brand consultant.

Next, find out what the consultant’s skill sets are. Marketing research? Brand equity measurement? Brand valuation? Marketing strategy formulation? Brand (re)positioning? Brand identity development? Brand plan development? Advertising campaign development? Brand extension? Ask not only for a client list, but also for case studies on the services in which you are most interested. What type of person is the organization mostly comprised of? Brand strategists? Marketing researchers? Graphic artists? Copywriters? Account executives?

And, know this, if the consultant’s tool is primarily a hammer (or copywriting or marketing research) every one of your problems will seem like a nail (or a copy writing exercise or a research exercise) to him or her. People and organizations mostly use the tools with which they are most familiar.

Brand Counsel

When should you seek the counsel of a brand consultant?

• Your company has acquired or merged with another company.
• You're launching a new product, service or company.
• A competitor has mounted an unexpected attack on your brand.
• Your profit margin or market share is shrinking.
• Research shows that your brand is not understood by your audience.
• Customers don't see a difference between your brand and your competitors.
• You're having difficulty knowing what to brand and how.
• You need to decide the relationships between parent and sub brands.
• There's a noticeable gap between business vision and customer experience.
• Your brand expressions don't fit your brand strategy.
• Your brand expressions lack excitement or relevance.
• Your brand expressions are confusing with too many product names, sub-brands, logos, taglines, etc.
• Your brand's touchpoints lack consistency across media or cultural borders.
• Your creative partners need to better understand your brand.
• You need to get executive buy-in for brand programs.

A Brand Consulting Offer For GM

It’s a new day at General Motors. Fresh out of bankruptcy the company is moving to restore its leadership role with the spirit that fostered pride and ingenuity for more than a century. The Blake Project, the brand consultancy behind Branding Strategy Insider wants to help this American Icon strengthen its brands for the road ahead. So to Fritz Henderson, Bob Lutz and other respected GM executives here is our sincere offer:

A day together to share insights, ideas and expertise free of charge outside of economy travel expenses. (A 100k value) We will structure the day based on your needs and will share specific recommendations. I’m proud to say my team is ready, well respected and well suited to assist you in building a future of success.

Jack Trout - World Class Brand Consultant, originator of the Positioning concept.
Brad VanAuken - World Class Brand Consultant, led Hallmark to emotional branding success.
Mark Ritson - World Class Brand Consultant, Educator at MIT, London Business School and other respected institutions.

Please see their full bio’s below. This offer can be accepted confidentially at my address or openly here on Branding Strategy Insider.

Here’s to reinvention for a stronger GM.

Derrick Daye
Managing Partner

The Blake Project Team:

The Brand Positioning Workshop

 
Certainly we spend a fair amount of time on Branding Strategy Insider (and at The Blake Project) focusing on brand positioning. It's one of our favorite topics. A question about our brand consulting process inspired today's post on how we position brands. Simply put, we call this exercise The Brand Positioning Workshop. This highly facilitated, day long, workshop is designed to gain complete consensus among your organization’s management team and marketing leadership on the brand’s target customers, essence, promise, personality and archetype. A compliment to our two-day and B2B brand positioning workshops, this workshop integrates insights about the elements that most often differentiate business to consumer companies from each other.

We work with you to develop your B2C brand’s position in its current marketplaces, while designing flexibility for its future growth. This includes identifying, analyzing and selecting the brand’s target audiences, competitive frame of reference and key customer benefits (functional, emotional, experiential and self-expressive). The workshop focuses on developing the brand’s essence, promise and personality. We also ensure that your brand has chosen the most powerful benefits to own and that it has developed the proof points and “reasons to believe” for those benefits.

We believe that the primary brand benefit should deliver against these objectives:

•    The benefit is extremely important to your target audience(s).
•    Your organization has unique, sustainable competencies (and strategic intent) in delivering against the benefit.
•    Your competitors are not delivering against the benefit (nor would it be easy for them to do so in the future).
•    Any benefit chosen must be unique, compelling, motivating, understandable and believable.

We generally plan for attendance by 6 to 10 key organization stakeholders, including the organization’s leadership.