Disney chairman Michael Eisner calls the term "brand", "overused, sterile and unimaginative." Indeed branding has had something of a bad press in recent years.
The arguments against branding are encapsulated in "No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies" by Naomi Klein. The book argues that brands have become divorced from the products they represent. For example, Nike has moved from being a sneaker manufacturer to a brand that represented a lifestyle characterized by the "essence of athleticism."
Companies such as Nike abandoned production, outsourcing production and other areas to Asia and Latin America. Disconnecting product attributes from the "brand" also forced manufacturers to create an "image," usually by ubiquitous advertising.
Klein quotes Jonathan Bond and Richard Kirshenbaum in their book, "Under the Radar--Talking to Today's Cynical Consumer:" "Consumers are like roaches. We spray them with marketing, and for a time it works. Then, inevitably, they develop an immunity, a resistance".
Branding has also seemingly become something to use to censor and run to the Courts with. Wal-Mart will remove a publisher from its shelves if a magazine or album cover offends it. McDonald's used its enormous legal resources against a two-person Web site in U.K. that criticized its anti-environmental practices.
The anti-globalisation movement has been gaining momentum and influence. So how are companies responding?
In their book, "Driving Customer Equity," Roland Rust, Valarie Zeithaml, Katherine Lemon point out that ethics is one of the drivers of brand equity: "In considering whether to do business with a firm on a long-term, basis, customers will examine the extent to which the values of the brand or of the firm are consistent with their values." Brands must represent good corporate citizens who support their communities, live by their ethics and promote environmentalism. Remember that the Cadbury and Kellogg's brands started with the way the firms treated employees and their local communities.
David Meerman Scott asserts that "branding is only for cattle"! His arguement is that marketers who "obsess about brand usually focus on aesthetics over buyers. They are more interested in the colour scheme of the Web site than in meeting their buyers' needs with a content marketing strategy. They care about logos not buyers."
Whilst I feel David is harsh in saying that "marketers are a bunch of flaky wimps", he does make very sensible points for those engaged in marketing and branding in the business-to-business market space. He maintains that "while the rest of the organization is focused on metrics and revenue and ROI and reaching buyers, these ineffective marketers are worried about how the T-shirts look."
So is it time that we start to rebrand branding? There is much misunderstanding about what branding is, or should be, even among marketers let alone hard-nosed CEO's and engineers.
Interesting reference sources
Jonathan Salem Baskin (2008) Branding Only Works on Cattle: The New Way to Get Known (and drive your competitors crazy) published by Business Plus
http://www.webinknow.com/2007/03/branding_is_for.html
Rust R, Zeithaml V, Lemon K(2000) Driving Customer Equity : How Customer Lifetime Value is Reshaping Corporate Strategy, Published by Free Press
Klien N (2002) No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, Published by Riemann Verlag
Bond J and Kirshenbaum R (1998) Under the Radar; Talking to Today's Cynical Consumer, published by John Wiley & Sons Inc
Profile
Professor Dr Chris Preece is based at the International Campus, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Kuala Lumpur. He was for 14 years at the University of Leeds, UK. His specialist research field is in the area of business and project management in the construction and engineering sectors. He is a recognized authority in international business development and marketing.
2 comments:
It seems to me that the purpose of branding work is not only to create a consistent message in the marketplace, but is there mainly to help everyone within an organization stay on the same page. Without it, employees tend to do their own thing and wreck havoc for a company's ability to deliver that consistent message.
As for the statement that brands move away from the products they represent, I disagree. A company has to make its money on one thing, do that really well, and then move within the category and into other categories if it wishes to keep growing. Therefore, it is inevitable that a large brand would become more about the essence of the category instead of focused on a specific product.
As for the marketers who focus on creating consistency within an organization, if aren't keeping their eyes on the big picture of how their job creates return for the company, than management isn't training them properly.
In recent years the value and understanding of BRANDING has been reduced by the uneducated who assume it is a company mark or corporate colors. BRANDING is a higher level of thinking. While a BRAND is not something a company can dictate (it is a gut feeling about a product or service) you can create and control the identity that individuals react to in order to create brand perception.
In my opinion the best thing we can do to alleviate a need for "rebranding branding" is to educate the less brand-saavy on what branding is and how you can create and control your identity pieces and all extentions of your brand to create the most ideal brand.
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