Branding and organisational identity

Objective

A brand can be a trademark or a name that is associated with a specific product or service. When it becomes widely known, it is said to have achieved brand recognition. For consumers the said brand represents defined added value, and for its owner the brand may command premium prices and have an intrinsic tradeable value, often called brand equity. Successful brands acquire physical characteristics that create a so-called brand identity, which may include a recognisable logo or phrase. Ultimately an organisation becomes the guardian of its brand or brands for its customers, and brand management seeks to align all the organisation’s activities to underpin defined brand values.

A distinction can be made between contact with the brand and the imagining of it – these are often called brand experience (what it’s like to use the product) and brand image (what we think about the product) respectively.

In parallel, the organisation that owns and exploits product brands makes decisions about its corporate identity. In some cases (for example Apple and the BBC) its identity will match its products and services. In some cases the organisation itself will have a defining business brand, a corporate name, as which it is a manager of a portfolio of product brands. The organisation may also state organisational values which are sometimes found in ethics or values statements. In this respect the CEO becomes the corporate brand and values manager.

Brands are an increasingly valuable asset for organisations when many products and services are becoming commoditised. It is therefore vital that at every level an organisation aligns its use of names, its activities and its values with its chosen brands – and that it understands in a hierarchy of brands necessary similarities and differences between who its staff work for and what they sell.

Every leader at every level must see themselves as a brand manager – and recognise how their actions add to or subtract from brand value.

Context

Working for an organisation is like playing in a sports team or joining a club – there is a sense of belonging. The experience of belonging is a very powerful tool in corralling shared team actions in favour of the customer, in contributing to the development of company brands whose reality matches their promise. This is at its most powerful when what it feels like to belong matches what it feels like to be a customer.

Most people want to feel that they belong to the organisation they are employed by. They want the eight to ten hours per day they dedicate to their employer to be ‘worth it’ on more than a monetary level. They are looking for the rewards of self-worth and pride. They also want their organisation to succeed through capturing dominant market share.

Brand can thus be a symbol of value to the customer and of belonging to the employee. It becomes a recognisable but intangible mechanism that binds customers and employees in a shared community.

Challenge

Brand and identity management can seem rarefied and even remote, especially if you don’t work in a consumer goods business, traditionally the one most associated with brands. But the democratisation enabled by the internet – with far greater access to many more businesses by far more people – has created a ‘flat earth’¹ where brands from all types of businesses can very much more rapidly rise (and fall). Businesses have to avoid three major risks.

• Brand ambiguity – where it is unclear what a brand represents and therefore difficult to align supporting activities effectively – for example the service delivery in a hotel fails to match the promise of advertising campaigns.
• Brand casualness – a brand is used in inconsistent ways suggesting a lack of policing in its application – for example the use of a variety of visual logos.
• Brand confusion – where it is unclear what the brand is at all – for example an organisation uses a wide range of varying brands with no apparent strategy, often mixing product and corporate names randomly.

You may not be in a position where you can directly influence the application of brands but you can:

• identify where brands are unclear in meaning;
• identify where brands are being used inconsistently or casually;
• emphasise to your own teams the importance of brand management;
• convey issues with brands to those colleagues who can influence branding.

This is a specialised area, as much influenced by psychology as by ‘management’. You may find it a tough one to engage in – your primary challenge is to be both aware of and sensitive to the issues and risks.

Success

I suggest that to engage successfully in branding and identity you follow six steps.

1. Be aware that branding and identity are issues that ultimately affect the value of the organisation, and that they can be influenced by the actions of all staff.
2. Be clear that brand and organisational identity are not necessarily the same thing.
3. Know there are at least eight types of brand (a brand hierarchy):
   • company name – the name of the parent organisation, e.g. ‘Corus’;
   • individual brand – the name of a specific product, e.g. ‘Marmite’;
   • attitude brand – a lifestyle statement, e.g. ‘Starbucks’;
   • icon brand – a statement of aspiration, e.g. ‘Apple’;
   • derived brand – a component of a large product becomes a brand in its own right, e.g. ‘Intel’;
   • extended brand – a brand is extended from its original product, e.g. Ferrari-branded clothes;
   • multi-brand – a provider chooses to adopt several brands in the same category, e.g. Cadbury’s various chocolate ranges;
   • own brand – a reseller of brands starts labelling goods with its own name, e.g. ‘Tesco’.
     Your organisation can use any number of them.
4. Recognise that, quite separately, your organisation may use internal, structurally descriptive nomenclature. Let’s say there was a business called Anderson operating in hotels where the hotel brands are Russell (premium) and Mark (mid-market). This might include:
   • management reporting structures (‘Anderson Management Committee’);
   • legal entities (‘Anderson India Limited’);
   • regional management entities (‘Anderson Asia’);
   • country management entities (‘Anderson Singapore’);
   • functional entities (‘Anderson Catering’);
   • market sectors (‘Anderson Premium Hotels Group’);
   • divisions (‘Anderson Premium Hotels Group, Asia’);
   • business units (‘Russell Hotels, China’);
   • product units (‘Mark Hotels’).
     None of these is necessarily a brand.
5. Understand that ultimately ‘brand management’ is an all-company and not a marketing department-only activity. No one is excluded from responsibility for brand performance.
6. Believe and engage in your role in raising awareness of the issues and risks associated with brand management.

Pitfalls

The biggest risk to branding does not lie in branding itself – it lies in the nature of the host organisation, since in the end the values of brands (designed or unintentional) represent their ‘parent’, since the parent organisation can influence the financial value of brands.

These risks crystallise when, for example:

• an organisation is unclear what it stands for – it lacks a clear or convincing vision (for example what range of services should the BBC produce?);
• an organisation’s statements fail to match its brand proposition – most famously perhaps when Gerald Ratner described his jewellery chain’s products as ‘crap’;
• an organisation’s practices fail to match its image – for example allegations that Nike used child labour in manufacturing;
• a product or service fails to deliver promised characteristics – for example perceived lack of quality in the British Leyland car brands in the 1970s.

Your role is to be part of a system of brand monitoring, alert in particular to:

• a lack of clarity of brand purpose and meaning;
• a lack of consistency in and commitment to implementation.

If you do not listen and watch, day by day quite literally, to what is ‘said’ about and done to brands to safeguard their integrity, then you become complicit in potential brand deterioration and devaluation.

Leaders’ checklist

• Be aware that labels in organisations are more than just names – they can become brands with independent value.
• Understand the distinction between brand and organisational identity – and that the two may be different.
• Take the time and trouble to understand brand hierarchy – learn the eight types of brand.
• Remember that brand management is not simply about design and logos – it’s about what all the organisation’s actions say about a product or service.
• Remember too that all staff have a potential impact on brand value.
• Regard yourself, as a leader, as a brand manager – you are the champion and the guardian of all brand values.
• Be prepared to be ruthless in enforcing brand values – they are like any values; once compromised, soon lost.