How can I leverage corporate brand assets for maximum impact?
Challenge
A multi-billion-dollar technology leader faced the core challenge of growing sales and building consumer preference in a mature market and commoditized category. After decentralizing worldwide operations and giving business units autonomy, the company looked forward to new levels of innovation and growth. Instead, they found their overarching corporate brand eroding, resulting in share declines, indifferent customers and a decreasing selling price across all channels. The company was thrashing, trying to build a coherent corporate brand strategy while spending heavily on a small army of ad agencies, consultants and design firms to treat the symptoms of a deeper problem.
Solution
A comprehensive, unifying brand architecture that delivered a better, stronger grouping of the company’s brand assets. A carefully crafted, “negotiated settlement” that preserved business unit autonomy while leveraging corporate brand assets for maximum impact.
- Creation of proprietary case studies to illustrate and stress-test plausible strategic options
- Completion of in-depth stakeholder interviews that revealed and validated trouble spots
- Qualitative analysis of industry best practices (both inside and outside the company’s industry) that enabled company executives to see past industry conventions and adopt industry best practices
- A comprehensive stakeholder strategy to guide internal discussion and build agreement for ultimate brand architecture
- A clear, compelling presentation to gain approval at business unit, executive, and board levels.
Result
The Company’s executive board adopted a detailed, far-reaching brand architecture, bringing brand clarity and aligning the interests of corporate and business unit stakeholders. These guidelines, modeled on industry best practices but tailored to accommodate the client’s unique circumstances, provided a strategic roadmap for the company to optimize its corporate and business unit brand assets. The architecture emerged as a valuable marketing touchstone for the company, guiding all facets of packaging, merchandising and global product marketing. As one of the Company’s seasoned marketing leaders said, “We now have a clear brand strategy—it’s no longer just my opinion vs. your opinion. We have clear, agreed-upon principles to inform and drive all aspects of our marketing.”
