Why do brand related issues belong to product development category?
Does this reflect general belief within companies as well? And how about business strategy for that matter? With all this interchanges about technology, startups, finance, venture capital, risk and change management - brand building and strategy have not already proven their worth in adding value beyond marketing led initiatives. Isn't it time we take branding out of the realm of marketing and product development and put it at the core of companies?
2 comments:
Patrick--I'm with you on this. By Barry Vucsko, Creative director at Dentsu.
Your idea is one that I've shared for some time now. The previous posts do a good job of stating the importance or brand and brand strategy, where it resides and what it means. But I think they're missing your point. You're absolutely correct when you say that brand primarily "happens" in marketing and product development (although I think it doesn't happen nearly enough in PD), even though brand is pervasive, or should be, throughout an enterprise.
Brand is rarely, if ever, considered at the strategy stage. It is correct to say that typically companies use strategic planning to consider product line, financing, capital structure, market segmentation etc, But they rarely think about brand creation, and in essence, who they really are. The exceptions to this are small start up companies or companies with one product or category to market to. But for larger companies, with multiple products, the company and the products usually share different brand equities. The main reason for this is that it is very difficult to diversify a product line and still maintain and single corporate brand--each product often carries its own brand, and the corporation is almost always "brandless". Consider Yum Brands, Proctor & Gamble, Fortune Brands, Unilever and Nestle as examples of this brandlessness. Getting brand into their core is almost impossible at this stage of their existence.
However, going back to the single product, or single category company, getting brand into the core of who they are is much easier (relatively i mean, really, it takes quite a bit of work). Consider Nike as an example of this. Nike did not start their existence with Just Do It. that is something they reverse-engineered into who they are. Again, this was easier for them because this mantra/brand/credo was inline with their identity at the time and, more importantly, its meaning spanned their entire product line.
Great work.
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