does your company do “brand-as-business”?
Earlier this week, I spoke on “Gaining the Competitive Edge: How Companies Drive Business Growth by Operationalizing Their Brands without Huge Marketing Budgets” at the Marketing Forum. The workshop outlined the “brand-as-business” management approach — that is, the deliberate and systematic management of the business around the brand — thinking of the brand as the business. (You can read more about the workshop here.)
I took the participants through the differences between using a brand as a marketing asset and using it as a management tool — I invited them to complete this assessment of their organizations to help them identify where the biggest gaps might be. I invite you to take the assessment and let me know the results.
Based on the discussion in the session, it seems like a lot of companies are not realizing the full value of their brands. One notable exception was IBM — their marketing director described how they have distilled their brand into clear values and attributes and are always working on driving them into their services, R&D, etc. It was great to hear about their efforts and their success. You go, Big Blue!