Brand Clout

Maintaining Relevance &Profitability Amidst Constant Change

Author: David C. Flynn

Publisher: Cameo Publications
Date of Publication: 2005
ISBN: 0974414956
No. of Pages: 144 pages

About the Author The Big Idea

In the fast paced world of 21st century economics, even change has
changed. The only way to keep afloat these days is to truly abide by
the old Darwinian adage, adapt or die.
Dennis C. Flynn
David C. Flynn shows how one organization can continually morph
As the Founder of The Sonar Group, and still be the most recognizable household name by building up
Dennis is an experienced
management leader, marketer and
brand in this time of chaos.
communications professional with
decades of experience in corporate,
agency, academic and entrepreneurial
environments. He brings two decades'
experience in business and brand
s t r a t e g y, m a r k e t i n g a n d
communications.

For the past eight years, Dennis has

been consulting with emerging growth
and enterprise-level B2B companies
and investors as Founder/CEO of The
Sonar Group, and acts as a board
advisor to several companies.
Previously, he was with Sanchez,
Lonchar & Flynn, a brand
communications & design firm he co-
founded. He led Saatchi & Saatchi's
Corporate Communications Group for
several years and prior to that held
senior management positions at J.
Walter Thompson and BBDO/West.
He has also held senior corporate
sales and brand management
positions with Beatrice/Swift Foods in
N e w Yo r k a n d C h i c a g o .

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 Brand Clout by Dennis C. Flynn

Shift Happens
To say that we lived in a fast-paced world has become passé. People and
companies are caught in a perpetual state of motion, and for businesses, it becomes
a choice of keeping the pace or becoming defunct. Because of the constant
changes the marketplace goes through, companies are faced with the complex and
unique challenge of applying fundamental principles to the newer and more
intimidating market arena.

Technology has changed almost everything we know about products. Not only has it
affected the ways a consumer perceives, evaluates, and buys a product, but it has
also begun to change ways companies buys, makes, sells and delivers its products
or solutions.

Understanding Your Business Model

A business model is the ultimate departure point for any future changes or plans with
regard to a company. Thusly, it should be flexible enough to be able to withstand a
considerable amount of revision as times demand. This allows for a certain amount
of morphing on the part of an organization, keeping its brand relevant in a changing
landscape.

Five Key Components of a Business Model:

Only by understanding the five key components of your business model will you be
able to skillfully manipulate it to meet all your customer/client needs, despite
whatever changes may happen in your environment.

Not knowing your business model leaves you vulnerable. You will not be able to
respond to changes as quickly or as well

The five components are:

Target Audience - Your specific group of customers. Who are these people, and
what are their needs and issues? How are they motivated?

Profitability - How will your company earn money?

Profit Protection (Strategic Control Points) - How will you protect your position
from competitors?

Portfolio - What does your portfolio contain today? What are you providing your
customers with? How does your portfolio change over time?

Brand - How are you defining your brand? What is its personality, as a person, as a
product, and as an organization?

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 Brand Clout by Dennis C. Flynn

Anticipating Shift
The Sonar Model®
®

The Sonar Model® is a tool for guiding a company through an evaluation of their
current business model. This model helps to see the future, in the sense that it allows
a company to clearly see where it's headed, and thus design a business model with
the goal of the future in mind.

It is not a strategic planning process, but rather a template for strategic thinking.
What's the difference, you say? The author quotes Henry Mintzberg's 1994 obituary
for strategic planning: “Planning always as been about analysis - about breaking
down a goal or set of intentions into steps, formalizing those steps so they can be
implemented almost automatically, and articulating the anticipated consequences or
results of each strep. Strategic thinking, in contrast, is about synthesis. It involves
intuition and creativity. The outcome of strategic thinking is an integrated
perspective of the enterprise, a not-too-precisely articulated vision of the direction.”

While strategic planning assumes that the world will hold still as you implement the
plan, that the planners can detach themselves from its implementation, and that all
plans should be formalized, strategic thinking allows for the dynamism so needed in
this day and age.

The sonar Model is a tool and catalyst that will enable companies to:

· Evaluate and reconfigure assets for more powerful business

outcomes from a current and future customer perspective
· Develop new perspectives on existing and upcoming alliance opportunities
· Create increased leverage of brand options for competitive advantage
· Create a process for evaluating and identifying technologies that are and will
be critical in achieving competitive advantage

Component Definitions of the Sonar Model

Market share
An evaluation of how a company or business has performed in the marketplace
versus its competitors.

Solution Share
An evaluation of a company's ability to provide a combination of goods and services
that satisfy a company's/customer's needs beyond a specific product or service.

Opportunity Share
A reference for competing within an as yet undefined or emerging future
marketplace. This is what helps to define a flexible business model.

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 Brand Clout by Dennis C. Flynn

Sonaring®
Sonaring is the menu of 12 questions that an organization's management team must
ask themselves from a current market view and a future market view (6, 12, or 18
months out).

The questions are as follow:

1. What business are we really in?

2. What are our true core competencies?
3. Who are our customers?
4. What do our customers value?
5. What is the specific marketplace/space in which we are competing?
6. Where are the revenue/profit opportunities in the space/spaces we
compete?
7. What are our firm's strengths and weaknesses?
8. Whoa re our main competitors and what are the strengths and weaknesses
of each?
9. What is our portfolio?
10. What are the major influencers that affect our market?
11. Who are potential allies/ strategic partners?
12. What are the brand and branding implications as a result of our answers to
the above questions?

Let's Talk Brand

What Is A Brand?
Technically, a brand is “to deliver on a promise” or “getting your prospects to see you
as the only solution to their problem”. However, today, it is access, more than
anything else, which defines brand.

Experience Reflex
This is the sum of a customer's accumulated experience with your company or
product. It can usually be summed up into two or three sentences, and is usually
made up of the first things that come to a consumer's mind when asked, “What do
you think of company X?”

In light of this, companies should always aim to add value to the customer
experiences, in order to create positive Experience Reflex.

Moments Of Truth
Every moment that a customer interacts with your product counts - access points,
touch points, and experience reflex. These are proof points, or moments of truth, on
which your brand will be built.

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 Brand Clout by Dennis C. Flynn

The Sameness Of Things

Competition has gotten so fierce that companies have begun marketing their
products in such a way that they aren't simply things, but a whole way of life, or a set
of ideals.

Satisfaction is the name of the game - and in order to find out whether or not you're
satisfying your costumers, you have to ask them, and ask constantly! Otherwise you
may never know what your customers expect, or if you're giving satisfactory service
or producing satisfactory products.

Brand Equity
Brand equity is a multi-variable equation consisting of the following:

Brand Awareness - brand recognition

Brand Loyalty - represents t willingness of your customers to repeat the brand
experience
Perceived Quality - measured quality before, during, and after the buying
experience
Brand Associations - positive ad negative image associations, both absolute and
compared to the competition
Brand Personality - customer/user view of the brand versus the company's
aspirations
Other - patents, trademarks, channel relationships, strategic alliances,
partnerships, etc.

It is important for companies to monitor these variables, both to check on their

success or failure and to be able to make minor adjustments when they are called for.

It should be mentioned that even though a product has strong brand equity, it is no
guarantee that it will dominate the market.

Brand Identity
For the purpose of this book, the author makes use of David Aaker's model of brand
equity, which consists of two segments: Core Identity and Extended Identity.

Core Identity -The core identity of a brand is something that is critical and central to
a brand's identity. It can also be transferred to other businesses or categories with
the same brand name.

Extended Identity - A brand's extended identity focuses on product attributes and

should result in customer-perceived beneficial points of difference.

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 Brand Clout by Dennis C. Flynn

Brand Image Versus Brand Identity

Brand identity is how you would want your employees, customers, and other
stakeholders to view your brand. Brand image, on the other hand, is how they
actually do view the brand.

Why Is Brand Important?

Engineered well, a strong brand can provide a company with:

· Extendible, long-term competitive advantage.

· A platform for premium pricing as the foundation for long-term profitability.
· Higher “stakeholder tolerance” when mistakes are made and a stronger
springboard to recovery.
· An umbrella for expansion of product, program, service, and intelligence
offerings
· Entry into new markets, or brand portability.
· Added leverage in alliance and partnership activities.
· Added merger and acquisition leverage and value.

Thinking Outside The Brand

It is a reality that one brand cannot cover all the possible ground available to it.
Despite all the effort made to concentrate on brand, you must realize that part of
making a brand stronger is the ability to recognize its weakness and find a way to
compensate for it.

This is what alliances, better known as Multiple Brand Solution Sets, which are
becoming quite popular.

An example of such a solution is the case of Kodak and Sony. When Kodak was
introducing a new product concept, they did research on how many customers
preferred the new product when it was offered with the Kodak name alone, as
opposed to when it was offered in tandem with Sony.

The results were astounding. 82% of those polled said they'd buy a new concept if it
was offered under the tandem brand name, as opposed to the 22% who'd buy it
under Kodak. Such is the power of co-branding activities.

Brand Leadership
It is indisputable that the CEO of a company has a great deal to do with the brand
strength. They motivate their people to become the brand, really live it and work to
bring out its ideals.

Real power is not in the size of a company's advertising budget, it's in the ability of
the company to maintain consistent and continuous brand communications
throughout their organization.
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 Brand Clout by Dennis C. Flynn

The Emotional Investment Model

Because we are all human, it only makes sense to track a customer's emotional
investment when buying your product. The Emotional Investment Spectrum is a
good tool for doing so, allowing you to compare customer's emotional investment in
your brand versus another brand, and the valuation of that investment.

The implication of such an instrument is that the stronger an emotional response a

brand can illicit, the more difficult it will be for users of this brand to switch to another
brand, even one with the same basic benefits.

For example, when comparing Bayer Aspirin with a generic brand of aspirin, the
people who choose Bayer trust this brand more, feeling that there is something
“extra” in the branded aspirin, and are wiling to pay a premium for this added benefit,
real or not.

Customer Intelligence - Fuel For Growth

As companies try to move a way from the market-share driven business model, they
are becoming increasingly aware of a new source of invaluable information. As
mentioned in a previous chapter, it is better for businesses to become Customer
Experience centric, and to do that, one must be in touch with one's customers.

The tool used to harness this fount of information is the Voice of the Customer®
research. It is a qualitative methodology for generating a view of the brand form all
its stakeholders.

The methodology used is a one-on-one in-depth interview with as many

stakeholders as possible, with the ideal of being able to interviewing all of them. This
prevents an overload of information and instead provides usable, differentiating
information.

However, the author is quick to point out that it s not the information alone that is an
invaluable asset to a company, but also its ability to analyze the data that is
presented to you.

Generational Markers
.

Over the next ten years, the four major age groups will undergo major transitions and
life stage passages. These four groups are Gen Y, Gen X, Baby Boomers, and
Matures.

Knowing how each of these age groups react and function will be highly beneficial to
the customer-driven company. For example, as Baby Boomers age, there will be a
marked shift in their sending, investing, and wealth patterns.

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 Brand Clout by Dennis C. Flynn

The Customer-Made Trend

One of the most exciting trends impacting branding is the Customer-Made Trend.
Defined as “the phenomenon of corporations creating goods, services and
experiences in close cooperation with consumers, tapping into their intellectual
capital, and in exchange giving them a direct say in what actually gets produced,
manufactured, developed, designed, serviced, or processed” by
Trendwatching.com, it's one of the newest things to hit the marketing scene.

Employees - Your #1 Customers

It has always been said that the company who can attract, maintain, and develop the
best talent will win.

Southwest Airlines' Chairman, Herb Kellher, says, “You have to treat your
employees like your customers. When you treat them right, then they will treat your
outside customers right.”

Key variables in the employee equation are:

· Communication - Listen to your employees. Don't just tell them “no” when
they're suggesting something. Making them feel like a valuable part of the
enterprise will encourage them to be more productive.
· Direction - Communicate your Mission, Vision, and Values as clearly as
possible.
· Empowerment - Give your employees the real thing and not just lip service.
True support, autonomy and direction will go a long way.
· Create a Risk-Free Environment - Reward smart failures.

Rewarding “Smart Failure”

True leaders encourage risk-taking by removing some of the stigma of failure.
Because the business landscape changes so rapidly, no one is totally sure anymore,
and it is becoming more and more of a requirement to be willing to try new things.
Prudent risks, when taken, hold some chance for failure. However, one must
consider that no risks taken at all may entail certain doom.

Dialoging With Employees

Even when management asks for feedback, the employee response is often
negligible, because they fear retaliation from superiors. Creating true channels of
dialog and communication between management and rank and file will work
wonders for one's staff, and ultimately one's company.

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 Brand Clout by Dennis C. Flynn

Setting The Course: Vision, Mission, and Values

A CEO has many roles, including Chief Passion Officer and Chief Perception Officer.
In these roles, it is his or her duty to properly set the course for the whole company,
and communicate such clearly to everyone involved.

Thusly, it is a CEO's responsibility to define and set the implementation of the

following:

Vision
This defines a desired end-state for the entire organization. The entire organization
should be behind it 100%.

An example of vision would be McDonald's “to dominate the global foodservice

business”.

Mission
This states what the company does in pursuit of the vision. It should be able to make
the individual employee realize the answer to the question: “How is my small role
0974414956 within the organization contributing to the corporate mission?”

A good example of a mission statement is Lotus/AA's “Provide superior learning

opportunities anytime, anyplace through collaborative, methodology-enabled
technology.”

Giggle Test - To test if you have a good mission statement, gauge your employees'
reaction to it when you're not around. Do they joke about it around the water cooler?
When your mission statement passes this test, you're good to go.

Values
Many companies refer to these as core values. They represent the guiding
principles of an organization.

Ten Commandments of Continuous Relevance

1. Understand the components of your business model.
2. Constantly challenge the status quo
3. Look at your market space as a new entrant rather than an ongoing
concern.
4. Brand relevance is about maintaining your brands emotional and functional
relevance.
5. It's not about your product: it's about your customer's total experience.

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 Brand Clout by Dennis C. Flynn

6. Branding inside and outside are equally important.

7. Multi-brand solutions will have more power than single-brand solutions.
8. Understand your brand's experience reflex from each of your stakeholders,
including your employees.
9. Each of your stakeholders has made an emotional investment in your
brand.
10. Listening to and interpreting the voice of the customer will provide the
necessary fuel to sustain brand relevancy.

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