Comments on: What branding was and what branding is

By: Buildabrand – Automatically generated branding? « John Lyle’s new brand thinking

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:35:04 +0000

[...] referring back to my previous post about what branding was and what branding is, it clearly isn’t a system to build a brand, it’s a system to sell you merchandise with logos [...]

By: John Lyle

John Lyle — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:28:13 +0000

Thanks Marcus.

I agree with our role being more akin to Management Consultants. What is really weird is that when we set up back in 1991, we were looking as to what businesses to align ourselves with and we always felt that we would move more towards management consultants in the future as they get in at board level rather than marketing manager level – and this is where we can make a real difference to the whole look and feel and not just the pretty stuff around the edges.

It could be worse though, we could be moving towards accountancy, actuarial services, drug dealing or even law!

Cheers

John

By: Marcus

Marcus — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:14:12 +0000

Branding does now include the kitchen sink, and we’ve had this discussion in the office because we often find ourselves sounding like management consultants (imagine telling your kids you are a management consultant – the humiliation!).

This is because every single department in an organisation has a major role to play in the successful delivery of a brand, whatever industry. Even accounts needs to know when a customer prefers to receive invoices and should ensure those invoices arrive then and not when accounts prefers to send them out.

I think that our role is that of brand management but we are responsible for aligning all departments to the core values and communicating those values and the role the department plays in delivering those values on customer terms.

I beleive that we also have a role to play in ensuring successful implementation, at least in the initial stages.

I think you should add, in no particular order, consumer, customer and segmentation research, content development & management, measurement, education (internal & external), metric development, customer engagement training and development. Probably more.