From Brand Vision to Brand Evaluation The strategic process of growing and strengthening brands

From Brand Vision to Brand Evaluation

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From Brand Vision to

Brand Evaluation

The strategic process of growing and

strengthening brands

Second Edition

Leslie de Chernatony

AMSTERDAM • BOSTON • HEIDELBERG • LONDON • NEW YORK • OXFORD

PARIS • SAN DIEGO • SAN FRANCISCO • SINGAPORE • SYDNEY • TOKYO

Butterworth–Heinemann is an imprint of Elsevier

Butterworth-Heinemann is an imprint of Elsevier

Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP

30 Corporate Drive, Suite 400, Burlington, MA 01803, USA

First edition 2001

Second edition 2006

Copyright © 2001, 2006, Leslie de Chernatony. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7506-6749-4

ISBN-10: 0-7506-6749-4

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To Carolyn, Gemma and Russell, with love

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Contents

Preface xi

About the author xvii

Part One: The Changed Notion of Brand

Management

1 A balanced perspective on brands 3

Summary 3

Why the interest in brands? 3

A balanced perspective on brands 5

Successful branding through bridging the

external promise internally 7

Staff and brand-building 9

The multifaceted nature of brands 11

Structuring to manage brands 18

Conclusions 20

Brand marketing action checklist 21

References and further reading 24

2 The diverse interpretations of ‘brand’ 26

Summary 26

Spectrum of brand interpretations 26

Input perspectives on brand interpretations 28

Output perspectives on brand interpretations 48

Time perspectives on brand interpretations 52

Facilitating a company-wide integrated view

about the brand 55

Conclusions 60

Brand marketing action checklist 61

References and further reading 66

Part Two: Planning for Integrated Brands

3 A strategic process for building

integrated brands 71

Summary 71

The importance of integrated branding

programmes 72

Models to enhance integrated branding 74

Striving for integrated services brands 79

Striving for integrated digital brands 81

Developing integrated brands through

understanding employees’ motivations 82

The stages in building and sustaining brands 86

Conclusions 90

Brand marketing action checklist 91

References and further reading 96

Part Three: Employing the

Brand-building Process

4 Brand visioning 99

Summary 99

The brand’s vision 99

Envisioned future 106

Brand purpose 110

Brand values 114

Core vs peripheral values 122

Aligning brand and staff values 123

Conclusions 128

Brand marketing action checklist 129

References and further reading 137

5 The importance of organizational

culture in brands 139

Summary 139

The link between organizational culture

and branding 141

Perspectives on organizational culture 141

Defining and measuring organizational culture 146

viii Contents

Contents ix

Auditing organizational culture 148

Appropriateness of the organizational culture 151

One or several organizational cultures? 155

Striving for a merged unified culture 156

Strengthening a brand through organizational

culture 158

The impact of organizational culture on brand

performance 162

Conclusions 165

Brand marketing action checklist 166

References and further reading 169

6 Setting brand objectives 171

Summary 171

Long- and short-term brand objectives 171

Long-term brand objectives 173

Short-term brand objectives 177

Catalytic mechanisms 180

Conclusions 182

Brand marketing action checklist 183

References and further reading 184

7 Auditing the brandsphere 185

Summary 185

The five forces 185

The corporation 187

Distributors 192

Customers 196

Competitors 208

The macro-environment 215

Summarizing the impact of the five forces 218

Conclusions 218

Brand marketing action checklist 219

References and further reading 221

8 Synthesizing the nature of a brand 223

Summary 223

The shape of the promise 223

Understanding the brand essence through the

brand pyramid 225

Alternative perspectives on brand essence 230

Models characterizing brands 234

From brand essence to brand positioning 238

From brand essence to brand personality 244

Conclusions 249

Brand marketing action checklist 250

References and further reading 253

9 Implementing and resourcing brands 255

Summary 255

Structuring to deliver the brand with its unique

mix of resources 255

Internal considerations about the value chain 257

Mechanistic internal implementation considerations 258

Staff implementation considerations 269

Arriving at the final form of the brand 286

The atomic model of the brand 286

The integrated brand 295

Conclusions 295

Brand marketing action checklist 297

References and further reading 300

10 Brand evaluation 303

Summary 303

Multidimensional evaluation 303

Brand vision 307

Organizational culture 308

Brand objectives 308

Brand essence 309

Implementation and brand resourcing 309

Summarizing the brand’s health 310

Conclusions 311

Brand marketing action checklist 312

References and further reading 312

Index 313

x Contents

Preface

Since the first edition of this book managers and academics have

become more attuned to the need not just to focus branding activ￾ity on customers, but rather to take a more balanced perspective –

in particular paying more attention to staff as brand-builders.

More is being spoken about internal brand-building, and a grow￾ing number of brand success stories are being attributed to the

importance of the brand-ambassador role of staff. Organizations

internationally, developing either products or services in con￾sumer and business-to-business sectors, are increasingly per￾turbed by the way that technology is shortening the sustainability

of any competitive advantage from brands’ functional advan￾tages. Recognizing that brands are clusters of functional and

emotional values resulting in promises about unique and wel￾comed experiences, interest is growing in the importance of sus￾tainable emotional values and the associated brand experiences.

More managers are now seeking to harmonize the way that the

values from staff contribute to the brand experience, integrating

this with clever use of customer communications.

Within this context there are a notable number of organiza￾tions internationally that are adopting more corporate, rather

than line-branding, strategies. This is not a strategy that empha￾sizes the name of the corporation; rather, it draws on corporate

heritage to integrate a brand vision with an appropriate organ￾izational culture that enthusiastically embraces the contribution

staff make through being the living embodiments of the brand

and thereby enabling customers to have trusted and welcomed

experiences. Contributions to brand differentiation result from

an amalgam of the way that employees’ knowledge and skills

contribute to what the customer receives (functional values)

along with the way that employees’ behaviour and feelings give

rise to how the brand is received (emotional values). Competencies

plus organizational culture are drivers of sustainable brand dif￾ferentiation, which are being harnessed by forward-thinking,

successful corporations. Brand management both defines an

externally centred promise and considers how staff inside the

organization can be orchestrated to ensure vibrant commitment

to delivering the promise.

No longer are staff being recruited just because of their intel￾lect and functional knowledge. In addition, they are being

recruited according to the extent to which their values align with

the values of the brands they will be supporting, and whether

they wish to proudly strive towards the brand’s vision.

Customers are more sophisticated, and can see through staff

who pay lip service to a brand’s values, doing little more than

acting out a branding role. They welcome interaction with staff

who genuinely believe in what a brand stands for and are com￾mitted to its delivery. When co-ordinating the activities of indi￾viduals, less effort is demanded in supervising employees whose

values align with their brand’s values.

Brand management goes beyond solely focusing on cus￾tomers, and is increasingly adopting a more balanced approach of

satisfying stakeholders. The classical model of a source inside an

organization instigating and controlling communication with cus￾tomers has gone. Instead, customers learn about brands, amongst

other ways, through communicating with their peers and other

stakeholders, and by selectively using marketer controlled media;

then they may decide with which parts of the organization they

want to communicate. To ensure their brand is perceived as an inte￾grated offering, managers are striving to ensure that staff speak

and act with the same voice and spirit about the brand. By man￾agers being more open with staff, providing them with more brand

information, and through having the confidence to empower staff

who are aligned with the brand’s values, employees are more

likely to present a coherent message about their brand. Moreover,

by recognizing that the brand-building process starts at the staff

recruitment stage and continues through the brand induction,

training and appraisal stages, closer integration helps ensure a

more coherent approach to internal brand management.

In the new branding world, where the challenge is

co-ordination, brand management is less about a brand manager

and rather about a brand’s team. This may be composed of

individuals with diverse functional backgrounds, representing a

variety of departments inside and outside an organization.

Successful brands are more likely to emerge when mechanisms

are developed to ensure that all members of the brand’s team have

values that are aligned with the brand and differences in percep￾tions about the brand are rapidly surfaced and resolved.

Thus, this book is about:

• having a more balanced perspective that looks both inside and

outside an organization to satisfy stakeholders’ needs, and

xii Preface

• developing integrated brands through a planning process

that seeks to bring about a brand vision through an appro￾priate organizational culture with stretching objectives,

which results in a novel brand essence, coherently enacted

to meet the regularly monitored performance metrics.

Workshops run internationally on the thinking contained in the

first edition of this book showed that the ideas and the model for

growing and strengthening brands worked. Regardless of the

continent or the sector, managers spoke about the need for a

holistic, pan-company approach to brand management that sat￾isfied both internal and external stakeholders. These comments

were also echoed in my classes with MBA and MSc students who

were taking a career break to strengthen their management com￾petencies. However, as time progressed, further research, learn￾ing from applying the ideas with managers, and the helpful

feedback from key audiences stimulated the intention to revise

the first edition. The result is a refreshed text that augments the

principles of the first edition with new material. Each chapter

has been updated, the examples, exercises and readings supple￾mented and new advertisements included.

Years of working with students (both undergraduate and

postgraduate) and managers has brought home the importance

of enabling them to internalize ideas. Explaining new concepts is

part of the process, but another contributor is getting people to

apply the ideas to particular problems. This book follows this

philosophy by raising questions in the activities sections in each

chapter, then proposing, in the discussion sections, possible

ideas for moving matters forward. At the end of each chapter,

exercises have been devised to enable readers put more of the

ideas into practice.

This book is intended for both business school students and

managers. It is grounded in a considerable literature that draws

on numerous disciplines. By pulling on such a rich literature, it

has been possible not only to acknowledge the work of many

respected writers, but also then to build on this to develop the

logic behind the systematic brand planning model. At the end of

each chapter is a references and further reading section for those

who wish to delve deeper into the supporting literature.

A theory is only as good as its applicability. As such,

throughout this book there are examples and advertisements that

strive to bring the material to life. Generalizability is a further con￾sideration in the adoption of a brand-building model, and the

ideas within this book can be applied in consumer, business￾to-business, product and services sectors, as well as in both for￾profit and not-for-profit sectors.

Preface xiii

This book is divided into three parts.

Part One: The Changed Notion of Brand Management consists of

the first two chapters, which lay the foundations for the move

away from classical brand thinking.

Chapter 1 presents the case for managing brands by adopt￾ing both external and internal perspectives. A unifying definition

of a brand is proposed and the move to team-based brand man￾agement is explored.

Chapter 2 reviews the spectrum of brand interpretations to

enable people to realize that in the same organization there may

be different interpretations of a brand, resulting in sub-optimal

use of branding resources. It considers how different interpreta￾tions can be surfaced in order to have a more coherent approach.

Part Two: Planning for Integrated Brands focuses, in Chapter 3,

on the need for an integrated branding programme. It considers

instances where inconsistencies can arise in branding pro￾grammes and reviews some models to minimize inconsistencies.

The sequential, iterative process for building and sustaining

brands is overviewed.

Part Three: Employing the Brand-building Process goes through

each block of the process for building and sustaining brands,

explaining the key issues and considering their applications.

Chapter 4 focuses on the three elements of a powerful brand

vision, i.e. an envisioned future, the brand purpose and the

brand values. Ways to surface these three elements and encour￾age coherence are explored.

Chapter 5 acknowledges the impact organizational culture

can have on the nature of the brand, considers how to character￾ize an organization’s culture, discusses how to align staff with

the desired culture and explores the culture characteristics asso￾ciated with enhanced brand performance.

Chapter 6 discusses the importance of setting long- and

short-term objectives, and the use of catalytic mechanisms to

focus employees’ attention on achieving these.

Chapter 7 reviews the five forces in the brandsphere that

enhance or impede brand success, i.e. the corporation, distribu￾tors, customers, competitors and the macro-environment, and

considers how to assess the favourability of these forces to

capitalize on opportunities.

Chapter 8 considers how the core nature of a brand can be

summarized through the five levels of the brand pyramid, and a

crisp statement of the brand essence. Alternative models are pre￾sented. The integration between the brand pyramid and the

brand’s positioning and personality is discussed.

Chapter 9 explores some of the factors critical to ensuring the

brand promise comes true. Mechanistic then staff implementation

xiv Preface