The Brand System
Brand practitioners are not programmed to think of brand in terms of a system. In large organizations, brand-shaping practices such as visual identity, culture, messaging, marketing, events, and environments (stores, exhibits, offices, etc.) often operate under the influence or oversight of various roles and functions whose activities and objectives don’t always mesh.
While smaller organizations may enjoy tighter connectivity among these areas, resource challenges (staff, time, budgets) militate against system-oriented brand management. In any case, the notion of brand management as methodical, orderly, and efficient typically yields to the realities of organizational dynamics and priorities, not to mention ever-changing circumstances.
Even beyond the narrow area of responsibility of brand practitioners, a more complex system ceaselessly operates. Every reputational brand is the product of this system. The system operates continuously, pulsating with countless stimuli activated with every organizational action and interaction — whether human or machine, passive or dynamic, programmed or spontaneous.
The intangible asset we shorthand as “the brand” is the cumulative result of thousands of inputs and actions that — over time and in the immediate moment — result in outputs that include products, services, experiences, and other vessels of real or perceived value. These outputs, with additional ingredients related to organizational culture, shape overall perceptions about an organization and its useful relevance.
In this way, the brand is delivered and continuously evaluated across hundreds of touchpoints — be they related to customer, employee, vendor, or other influential constituents. The quality of these touchpoints often is determined upstream through numerous organizational decisions and operational actions that eventually materialize as delivered brand experiences. These extensive, complex, connected and interdependent antecedent events comprise the brand system.
The system’s breadth is at least as large as the members of the organization, multiplied by its automated interfaces, products in use, marketing activity, communications efforts, and brand visibility. Absent a coherent instruction set, the brand system will perform as well as its individual parts happen to cooperate and coordinate, with consequent bearing on brand reputation. Crafting that instruction set is the implicit and ongoing assignment for the organization’s leadership team.
Nevertheless, even when carefully tended a brand system is anything but systematic. Like natural systems, the multitudinous organizational interactions, influences, incidents, and outcomes, many of which are unanticipated, unpredictable or unavoidable, dramatically shape the evolutionary path of the reputational brand irrespective of any guiding hand.
As with any organism, the brand system will reflect its environment, the character of which cuts and clears the path of brand from origin through maturity and long-term viability. The question is how much of the path can be planned, designed, and developed within a system of so many independent variables (with people and touchpoints topping the list).