Your Company and Brand Demand Driving Effectiveness

In the previous chapter -this still feels like the Batman TV series- we brought you into the fascinating world of the five big dilemmas for companies and businesses:

What are our values and raison d’être?
What are our main strategic objectives?
Who are our key stakeholders?
With whom do we compete?
How can we achieve lasting growth?

Now it is time to see how this is translated into a promise that is functionally and emotionally responsive to what the company’s key stakeholders expect of it.

Click here if you want to read Chapter I

The Brand Equivalence

From a practical point of view, what we’ve seen in Chapter I leads us to ask ourselves certain questions that, in a major strategic effort, ought to be answered to transform the company, its business and its brand, with the aim of reaching new heights of development, presence, transcendence and admiration. Fewer questions than we imagine, simple in their form, complex in their answers.

Starting from the very end -yes, the butler did it-, below you can see how things shift from corporate dilemmas to questions about branding as a lever for transformation and growth. It’s the same logic, going from higher to lower abstraction level.

Here you can download this diagram

Why are we presenting it now? Essentially to show that the process follows our ABCDE™ approach, Anticipate, Blend, Create, Distil and Execute. It is an iterative process that diverges and converges, that comes and goes, and that you have to know how to manage.

That’s why companies like yours, during the night, turn on their distress signal device to summon us, the Bat-Signal!

For all practical intents, you’ll find that you may use the same process to shape your business as to frame your brand. The big dilemmas, in one way or another, address the critical questions of purpose, strategy, stakeholder, context, and aspirational realisation.

The Liaison between Business and Brand Strategies

There was a time when business and brand strategies were developed by different areas of the company and under different assumptions. Business strategy was developed by the company’s top management – if it exceeded the barrier of “10% more than last year”- while brand strategy -if it existed at all- was developed at the marketing level.

Reality has taught us -in many cases, learned the hard way- that aspirations and promises are intertwined and are indivisible parts of the same reality, the former more associated with what the company is -identity-, the latter more associated with how it is perceived -image-.

In a customer-driven reality and with increasing demands from other stakeholders, any company that does not consider them in its decision-making system is likely to become irrelevant.

Relevant Issues to Bear in Mind

Purpose, Mission and Vision

Without a clearly stated purpose, there is no compelling reason to undertake a specific company endeavour.

A purpose thought out and defined with sincerity and conviction never changes. It lasts for the life of the company, even transcending its founders.

Returning to the ladder of abstraction, remember that purpose, mission and vision are animals that inhabit the same zoo, relatives, yet live in different cages. It may help, as a mnemonic rule, to think of Pokémon:

It’s important to understand that the process, which is followed considers all five dilemmas, and while the first is the one most strongly linked to purpose, it cannot be developed without taking into account the other levels of abstraction simultaneously and making sure their mutual support.

Key Stakeholders

As stated in the previous chapter, it’s not just about customers, nor is it just about employees, still less about shareholders.

It may sound like a cliché, but the relationship between the different key stakeholders, properly understood and managed, is a virtuous circle. Yes, I know, it’s very obvious, yet often forgotten.

Nevertheless, remember that good companies connect with different people in diverse roles, yet they do not go to everyone with everything, nor do they appeal to everyone. As Sir Winston Churchill famously said:

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

Competitors

Branding is often thought of in terms of differentiation, but the first thing a company and its brand must demonstrate is its belonging to a certain category. Recognising the category in which it competes is key to understanding the dynamics of the market. Although sometimes this is obvious, if you start from the company’s purpose, you may arrive at a broader and more diverse conception.

Once you belong to a category, the game changes, and while maintaining the same dynamics, it starts to make sense to talk about differentiation, singularities, or emotional benefits. In this case, the underlying objective is to seek success by creating a temporary monopoly in the minds of our key stakeholders.

Then you can look at more pedestrian issues such as whether you have the right skills, how you fill the gaps, or how you increase your credibility, among other issues.

Achieving Lasting Growth

To succeed and grow, or simply survive -which for that matter requires the same kind of effort- in today’s volatile environment, it’s necessary to have the ability to innovate and continuously adapt to changing circumstances.

This is a cultural issue carried forward by people who know how to push the company forward with small contributions that trigger major changes.

This begs the fundamental question: Why will people choose our brand over others and thus make us grow? Is it just a question of innovation?

If your answer is “because what we do is better”, you may be lying through your teeth.
- People rarely know what’s better.
- They often base their decisions on secondary cues such as popularity, rankings, tribal identity or price.
- Performance-based data is often less persuasive than you might think.
On the other hand, if your response is “because we are the cheapest”, you may not understand the brand’s aim.
- A well-built brand allows more people to buy more things for more years at higher prices.
- Trying to win by lowering the price strains the brand to less – except if the brand is based on discounting.

Great brands are neither the best nor the cheapest. They are unique, different, meaningful and compelling to people. Those are the very foundations of lasting growth.

Let’s talk about your business and your brand

Learn more about transforming and growing through your brand, people and experiences while raising its conscience. Read our cases, visit our blog, subscribe to our newsletter, or join us for a good cup of coffee as we discuss the possibilities of helping you build your business towards sustainable growth in value, results, and positive impact.

And, if you find yourself in need of a business, branding, and marketing partner to help grow your company, shoot us a message -we’d be thrilled to learn more about your goals and explore how we can help.