As a brand-building advisor one is always striving to tangible-ize the benefits that an organization can look forward through investment in understanding and strengthening their brand/s. And I was wondering about what would be keeping the CEOs of reasonably well-run organizations awake at night and conecting the benefits to those priorities.
It essentially came down to profits, revenues and increasingly, attrition.
And while great brands command not only great premiums, ever expanding sales and a higher loyalty of employees, it continues to be a important to have and but the how is pretty unclear to senior managements. There is a serious causal ambiguity about achieving this chimera called an 'Great Brand'.
I say this because I do not see them spending on reputation management the kind of time and resources that are spend on financial management as well as people management. Large corporations rarely have a marketing function and even if there is one it is usually ends up being an out-house managing corporate communication accountabilities.
So what explains this lack of involvement, why do marketing advisors not enjoy the same position as investment bankers and HR managers in front of the CEO.
I believe bulk of the responsibility lies with the lack of quantitative accountability within the marketing function. The primary function of marketing is to strengthen the reputation of the brand but comprehensive brand building takes time and results are felt only over a period of time and at times only under crisis when this intangible buffer of goodwill kicks in to provide the benefit of doubt in one’s favor.
While everything to do with finance and HR is measurable on a daily basis, the same cannot be said about the reputation.
In product brands it is still possible with the established tracking mechanisms available (although I have my reservations about their accuracy and objectives as well). Therefore, the brand management function enjoys the pride of place in such organizations. However, management of product brands has also become increasingly mechanical and the total lack of imagination has increasingly led to particularly the fmcg space losing its prominence.
But organization brands are far more complex and abstract. The current techniques of tracking them do not represent an adequate appreciation of their uniqueness and the standardized methodology just looks for things like recall which are not just inadequate but seriously misleading.
What is needed is an ongoing tracking, particularly with opinion leading constituencies like B-school students, financial analysts, media etc. which tracks a corporation for the primary unique values associated with it.
Goldman Sachs, on its website mentions the management of its finances , people and reputation as its foremost priority. And they are one of the most unique and admired company brands in the world. One wonders if these finance wizards know a trick or two about reputation measurement as well which we marketing types would have missed.
Musings on the business of brands with a focus on company brands, life in the Indian corporate space, and ocassional observations of a curious mind...
Places i visit
Twittering away...
Contributors
Followers
Ashutosh Wakankar
As someone who sees oneself as a student of brands, those that represent organizations rather than products, excite me the most. As one of the partners at Centre of Gravity, i believe we have an opportunity to articulate a new humanistic approach to corporate strategy that takes into account not just the rational, linear and the analytical but the intuitive, the creative as well as the inspirational. In the process, if we are able to inspire a few organizations to work out of a context of not just how much money they want to make, but what kind of organizations they want to be, it would be time well spent on this planet.
Consulting for Organization Brands
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a
narrow field!
Neils Bohr
Posts
