Influencing Your CEO To Support Brand Management

Brad VanAuken The Blake ProjectDecember 20, 20102 min

The number one reason branding projects fail is lack of CEO support. The number one reason they succeed is CEO support. If you are in charge of brand management for your organization and you have a CEO that is less than 100% supportive of brand management, here are ten things you can do to help nudge him or her along:

1. Send him or her articles/blog posts that talk about the value of the brand as an asset. Studies have shown that a significant portion of a company’s value (and stock price) is due to the strength of its brand.

2. Bring Interbrand or Millward Brown representatives into your company to talk about their brand valuation approaches. Invite your CEO or members of his or her staff to that meeting.

3. Initiate a brand management speakers’ series at your company. Invite chief marketing officers and brand managers from other companies to talk about the successes of their brand management practices. Invite all employees to these presentations.

4. Ask your CEO how you and your brand management department can best help him or her achieve his or her highest priority objectives for the company.

5. Let people in your organization know that strong brands have been shown to result in the following:

  • Increased market share and sales
  • Increased ability to charge a price premium
  • Increased profit margins
  • Increased customer loyalty and advocacy
  • Increased ability to weather a company crisis
  • Increased ability to hire and retain talented employees
  • Increased ability to grow beyond current product/service categories
  • Increased negotiating leverage with business partners

6. Invite a highly respected brand consultant to talk with your company’s senior staff about the importance and process of brand management.

7. Perform a thorough brand audit to identify what your organization is doing well and not so well regarding managing its brand.

8. Through rigorous brand research, identify how your brand is perceived by its target audiences vis-à-vis its competitors and how that may be affecting how those audiences interact with your brand.

9. Share an executive summary of this research with your organization’s leadership team.

10. Identify highly influential people throughout your organization and enlist them to become brand champions within your organization.

I wish you every success in transforming your CEO into your organization’s chief brand advocate.

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