Today’s killer marketing skill? - Blue Marlin

Brian Mansfield, managing director of Blue Marlin Brand Design in Australia discusses branding and how every aspect of a brand should ‘choreographed’.

My favourite definition of “What is a brand”, from the hundreds I’ve seen in my career is simply, “a promise made and kept”.

As brand owners and agency partners we tend to devote a disproportionate amount of our energies and budgets to the definition and communication of the first half of this description, the ‘promise’. Whether the reality of purchase, consumption and after sales service lives up to the expectations we have created through our strategy and marketing communications isn’t really our primary concern, is it? Well, it should be!

Today’s branding landscape is richer and more complex than ever before with the traditional 4 P’s just the beginning of the new marketing mix. Consumers engage with, shape and market their favourite brands on their own terms. They do so through channels and media which make absolute control over every aspect of a brand’s experience nigh on impossible. Brand marketers no longer have command over every lever and facet of the brands they seek to define, drive and deliver and this has a profound implication for the skills they must possess in order to be able to follow through on the delivery of their brands to meet the ‘promises’ they so carefully craft and communicate.

In the hey-day of brand marketing months were spent poring over research and segmentation studies; fine tuning the wording of brand keys, onions and pyramids and placing brand communications with accuracy that would make the US military proud. This model and the skill set that went with it is no longer effective or valid.

Truly successful marketers in the new branding era have to act as brand choreographers for their brand with both internal (customer service staff, HR departments, sales force etc) and external audiences (customers, agency partners, suppliers and distributors).

Like a great choreographer they must provide the artistic vision, inspiration and meaning in their work. They must ensure consistency, coherence of performance and connection with the audience.

So less analysis and more engagement. Less tell, more ask and less dictation and much, much more inspiration.

It means we have to get out of the marketing department and reach into areas of the business hitherto untouched by the fancy dans of marketing. If marketers are going to ensure flawless delivery of their brand promise then this promise must first be understood internally so that it can then be delivered consistently. Sales force briefings; training (and listening) sessions with front-line customer service staff; influencing recruitment specifications through HR and heaps of internal communication about brand performance and the remedying of any consistently weak aspects of brand delivery are the types of activities that need to be undertaken with as much gusto and enthusiasm as meetings to review advertising creative or brainstorm new product ideas.

Budgetary control was traditionally how marketers exerted their influence within the business and also with agency partners, but this just doesn’t hold sway any more. Instead they have to become diplomats and ambassadors for their brands, moving around the business to ensure brand values are lived; communication is single minded and the voice of the consumer is heard.

This skill set can already be seen in evidence at today’s most progressive marketing companies where the brand is a living organism and the marketers behind them choreograph their performance like a master pupeeteer manipulating his marionette.

Think Apple, Virgin or Unilever’s Lynx and you get a feel for how this challenge is being met and turned into a source of competitive advantage. For these organizations the brand is pervasive and the marketers guiding them are teachers and evangelists.

Here’s a little exercise for you to try. Take a sheet of paper and draw your brand in the centre of the page. Now mind-map all of the internal and external constituencies who influence, deliver, shape or support your brand. Scribble next to each of these how much of your marketing budget you allocate to supporting this relationship and ensuring it is ‘on brand’. Against each relationship also write the approximate date of the last time you had a real dialogue with that constituency about the performance and direction of your brand.

I guarantee the results will make for interesting reading. Every time I have ever done this exercise for my own or my client’s brands it has quickly become evident that brand choreography isn’t a skill many of us spend our time and energies developing. Should it be? I’ll leave you to decide. My mind is firmly made up.

Source: mad.co.uk | Published: 06 August 2007 12:00