Never before have customers been so diverse, wise, fickle and demanding. Customers want brands that are relevant and appropriate – not just at one point in time, but on an ongoing basis, with offerings customised to their liking. Using brand as a decision filter will allow your company to act decisively and deliver exactly what your customers want, in a way that simply weighing business decisions against external factors and an ever-changing economy never can. And in today’s market, this distinction is vital. Businesses don’t have the luxury of being one or two-dimensional anymore – consumers have less time, are more knowledgeable, and have the ability to access information almost instantly. In what has essentially become a global marketplace, businesses need to be interactive and brands need to be engaging if they are going to succeed in grasping – and keeping – consumer attention. The need for businesses to expand responsibility for their brand management beyond the marketing department and use it to guide decision making across all business functions and geographies is increasing in importance. Rather than just being a driver for communications, a multidimensional, well-considered brand strategy is integral to the execution of your business strategy. A strong brand does more than merely guide what you say as a company – it lets people know what you do, and how you do it; it is your business’s internal compass.
Your brand is the platform that drives everything else, and numerous businesses are ‘cashing in’ on the success that comes with using brand as their core decision-making tool: Apple, Google, Dell, Virgin, and Vodafone are all fantastic examples of how a clear brand strategy can make a business plan engaging and create a practical platform for action, enabling people and businesses to do more. There are many studies that have shown that brand guided companies significantly outperform their competitors, and I’m certainly not the first person to write on the topic. Brand-driven success is common knowledge, which begs the question, ‘Why isn’t everyone doing it?’ Because it’s hard – it often requires businesses to change years of traditional thinking, programming and processes. But, it’s not impossible and the rewards are well and truly worth the effort. What does a brand-guided company look like? A brand-guided company can exist in any industry – it will have clearly defined brand values, which are understood throughout the entire organisation and a firmly established, welldefined ownership, with the entire organisation taking responsibility for management of the brand, from ‘front line’ employees right through to top management level. This enables the brand to become the cohesive force that guides 07