Strategy and the Brand System
In all my corporate work life I never came across a long-range strategy that dedicated more than a PowerPoint slide to brand reputation. Considering brand represents a significant percentage of goodwill on the books, one would think that brand-strengthening and safeguarding initiatives would deserve more respect.
It’s true that B2B enterprises (where I toiled) are less absorbed in brand particulars than their B2C counterparts. Nevertheless, while a B2B long-term strategy may not feature prospective brand activities among key initiatives, the brand usually will gain when strategy is executed deftly.
At any rate, brand-related endeavors often receive attention at team or unit levels through annual operating plans. So, one could argue that brand is never too far from the organizational hive mind, even those of the B2B stripe.
But under the brand system philosophy, a brand-conscious strategy is a necessary predicate for successful brand outcomes.
Remember that under brand system theory organizational value derives from core expertise that’s cultivated effectively. Strategy governs how our organizational expertise will be cultivated and converted into organizational value. At its core, long-range strategy-setting is focused on the sources and methods employed to create and deliver brand value. The terminology of “sources and methods” is another way of saying brand engineering. Following this logic, brand system theory considers brand as the governor of strategy, not just a byproduct of strategy.
Obviously and for good reason, long-range strategic plans center on commercial and financial objectives and the initiatives that support their attainment. However, as the governor of strategy, brand expects additional attention to:
Organizational competencies
Customer and stakeholder expectations
Social responsibility
Workplace culture and employee well-being
Risk mitigation and contingencies
Operational proficiency and improvement
Reputation stewardship
Certainly, this list is not exhaustive, but all of these areas to varying degrees relate to organizational activities that influence brand reputation over time.
The Brand Punch List
Applying the brand system to strategy suggests that long-range plans should account for brand-oriented deliverables. However, these distant-horizon plans tend toward blue-sky market, operational, and financial objectives with meager detail about the initiatives to achieve them or the contingencies when black-swan events render the plans DOA. In this regard, long-range plans are presented with fingers crossed and received with justifiable skepticism. So, as much as we would hope brand earns its place at the long-range planning table, perhaps it’s just as well to keep the brand powder dry for more immediate strategic opportunities.
To that end, brand often receives appropriate consideration in yearly planning, when both organizational objectives and individual performance goals become more proximate and specific. Here is where long-range strategy breaks down into annual punch lists for functions, teams, and each team member. And, per brand system theory, here is where brand expectations should gain purchase among the tactics and initiatives harboring within annual operating plans (AOPs).
Unfortunately, most AOPs are a budgeting exercise, where spread sheets set the mood for the planning process, reflecting the reality of multiple needs contending for limited resources. At the same time, FP&A folks have a hard enough time assessing the merits of each cost center’s various initiatives while also having to judge their brand-building effectiveness.
For that reason, it’s more practical to position brand considerations as bonus points in determining which tactics and initiatives get funded. After all, even the FP&A folks understand the importance of brand reputation.
Here's what that brand AOP addenda could look like at the cost center level:
How do proposed initiatives and tactics align with or enable us to better represent our brand promise?
Who are the key stakeholders you are trying to influence and what are the brand outcomes you expect to achieve with each?
Describe how proposed initiatives and tactics will differentiate our brand among key stakeholders.
How will you measure the performance of the proposed initiatives and tactics?
Much of brand system theory is about elevating brand as the principal ingredient to achieve organizational cohesion around a shared purpose. Many organizations would claim they already have attained some degree of brand consciousness to that end, and some in fact may have.
However, when it comes to strategy, there are clear signals that testify to an organization’s brand intention. Prominent among the signs is when every strategic initiative includes details about the expertise required, the resources deployed, the processes involved, any corresponding organizational change involved, predictable challenges, and practical contingencies.
The brand represents implied commitments that depend on operational readiness. Major strategic initiatives should be clear about what’s necessary to ensure operational readiness and minimizing adverse brand impacts.