According to a study by the Association of National Advertisers, 64% of CMOs and brand managers say their brands do not influence decisions made at their companies.
What’s up with that?! 
If companies are not going to use their brands to guide decision-making, then what’s a brand for?
The way I see it, a brand is a bundle of values and attributes that define a product or service’s value delivered its customers and the way of doing business that is the basis of a company’s relationships with stakeholders. As such, a brand should be more than symbol of the business — it should be its driver.
I’m not sure what to think of the study results — do they mean that most companies are pouring millions of dollars into marketing and advertising without really basing their business on the values and attributes they’re communicating? If so, they’re limiting their businesses by relying only on the expressive value of their brands. Companies that want to leverage the full value of their brands must express AND operationalize them.
Brands can — and should — guide and power the business.
“What’s up with that?” is right. That’s a truly incredible statistic. It’s a great reminder for those of us in the branding community not to assume that everyone (or even most people) are on board the brand express.
It also suggests that companies could do OK with the smaller marketing budgets they are likely to have when the recession hits if they take the opportunity to use a branding approach to target their efforts.
This is terrible, Denise! 64%?!?!?!?! Where are these folks working? I’m kind of shocked. And we wonder why the average tenure of a CMO is down to what… 18 months now? 15, even? This is sad.
Great blog, by the way. Thanks for commenting on mine.
Cheers,
Olivier
[...] and brand managers say their brands do not influence decisions made at their companies (I’ve previously posted on this sad fact). And in research that I conducted along with one of my partners, Coogan [...]
[...] I first read that report, I was stunned -– nearly 2/3rd or companies are pouring millions of dollars into marketing and advertising [...]
[...] range of organizations say their brands do not influence decisions made at their companies (see a previous post of mine on this shocking finding), it’s likely there’s a disconnect between the brand [...]