Branding is one of those words that has become a marketing sound bite. Everybody talks about it, but not many actually understand how deeply branding needs to penetrate your organization. Branding — building and managing your company’s or your product’s brand — can affect everything from employee recruitment to your bottom line.

Your brand is not just the outward symbol of your company — your name or your logo. It is more than your corporate colors or your signage or the look of your stationery. Your company’s brand is that intangible quality, which in your customers' and potential customers’ minds, makes you different from other companies. One business writer said, “Your brand is the result of constant reinforcement of a distinctive core benefit that your company or product delivers to your customers.” Said another way, your brand is the pledge your company makes, both to your employees and to the outside world, and it can be very powerful indeed.

Peter Pan has been one of America's best-known and best-loved brands for years, but when the product was linked to salmonella outbreaks in more than 40 states, and all Peter Pan peanut butter products were taken off store shelves and destroyed, Peter Pan effectively broke its

As published in Inside INdiana Business

pledge to consumers. Parent company ConAgra CEO Gary Rodkin estimated the preliminary cost of the recall to be as much as $60 million. With production facilities retooled and product back on the shelves in August, the company focused on brand management, issuing a 100% consumer satisfaction guarantee in an attempt to assure consumers its peanut butter is safe (without reminding them why it had been off the market for six months). The cost to Peter Pan’s brand reputation can be assessed only after it is known if consumers are now accepting or rejecting the product.

Why Brand Building Matters

In a world where consumers are bombarded by communication messages all day long, your brand can be the difference between being noticed and being ignored. A solid brand can make it easier for over-stimulated consumers to see your product through the forest of messages and can influence them to choose your product over all the others.

Your brand separates you from your competitors when there may not be a whole lot of difference in the actual product or service you sell, or in the price. It can be the factor that motivates people to buy.

Companies spend millions building their brand and striving for brand loyalty, because they know that it can translate into increased market share and greater profits. It has been shown that for publicly traded companies, a strong brand alone can contribute to shareholder value.

Achieving Branding from Within

Historically, branding has been achieved by pumping dollars into advertising and flooding the media with press releases. But these days, very few companies, especially small ones, have an unlimited "blue sky" budget to follow that formula. To achieve branding, companies need to turn their focus to the things they can control and that will be more effective in the long run. They need to go a layer deeper in the effort to build and support a strong brand.

Today, branding begins with a company's culture, an area that can be overlooked in brand building, because it is a difficult process and one where it is almost impossible to identify an immediate return on investment. However, the importance of company culture to the branding process has been documented in several studies.

A study from the Conference Board, “Managing the Corporate Brand,” looked at organizational factors that are critical to brand building. It identified “a distinctive corporate culture” as one of the important factors contributing to brand strategy success. Equally important, the study concluded, are “CEO leadership and support” and “support from a broad spectrum of employees.”

David Aaker, a pioneer in brand management, has pointed out, “Until everyone from your CEO to your receptionist can accurately and consistently articulate your brand’s ‘pledge,’ how do you expect your customers to?”

A 2005 research project on the ROI of integrated marketing conducted with 75 companies over a three-year period by the Promotion Marketing Association (PMA) Educational Foundation, Inc. and Northwestern University found a direct link between a company’s commitment to an integrated marketing strategy and improved profits, and went on to suggest that if integrated marketing is to be effective it must be embraced by the company’s employees.

According to a white paper developed from the PMA study, motivating employees to embrace integrated marketing can be accomplished through internal marketing. Internal marketing refers to “the degree to which there is a robust internal communication of marketing objectives, the brand pledge and active motivation of employees to live the brand mission.” Internal marketing, or “ culture-building,” is, then, a significant determinant of a company’s performance.

MAG - An Essential Brand-Building Tool

At MillerWhite we use a culture-building process called Unlocking the Power of Your Pledge®, which provides clients with a formal, fact-based method of developing a pledge, tagline and Message/Action Guidelines (MAG). For clients with an existing pledge and tagline, the MAG development takes culture-building a step further.

The MAG is a valuable, fundamental tool in creating a common culture and supporting the organization’s name/brand recognition and active pledge. It gives all internal audiences — from the CEO to the mail room and all points of customer contact in between — one solid, consistent voice. It provides an essential training tool for new staff members. The MAG, uniquely developed to support the client’s defined pledge/tag and build a common culture, is a practical formula that helps employees establish top-of-mind awareness for the company’s consistent brand.

Taking the Long-Term View

In today’s competitive landscape, branding should be treated just like you would treat a stock you were thinking about buying:

• You need to do your research to reach the proper brand positioning decision.
• You need to commit to supporting and holding on to it for the long term to realize value and growth.
• You need to be prepared for ups and downs.
• And remember, it is an investment that may not show an immediate, measurable ROI.

Bill White is a partner in MillerWhite Integrated Marketing. Now in its 27th year in business, MillerWhite is a recognized leader in integrated marketing, setting benchmarks for the industry. A finalist for the Kelley School of Business’s 2006 Johnson Center Entrepreneurial Award of Distinction, the firm pioneered the VeriSyst interactive verification system, which “seamlessly” brings a viewer from a DVD direct mail to any web site. MillerWhite’s clients benefit from its proprietary protected marketing formulas, MW Fusion® and Unlocking the Power of Your Pledge®. The firm provides integrated marketing/research, public relations, advertising and interactive media services from offices in Indianapolis and Terre Haute. Go to millerwhite.com to learn more and sign up for the firm’s eNewsletter, mwfusion.