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Reasons why brand strategies remain only on paper In brand management, the main attention is paid to developing a strategy, forgetting about the most important and time-consuming stage - its implementation. Therefore, many (even very good) brand strategies are not implemented. There are 7 main reasons that prevent a brand strategy from being realized. 1. Strategy (only) for the sake of creativity. Brand strategies that creative agencies create are not designed to be implemented. They are made to provide a foundation for an advertising campaign, because creativity is the main margin of advertising agencies. Such strategies are not even brand strategies, but rather creative platforms. And, unlike real strategies, they don’t last long. Maximum - a year and a half (2-3 advertising campaigns). 2. Search outside, not inside. Often, the development of a brand strategy is based on an analysis of external factors. We devote 90% of our time and attention to market monitoring, tracking trends and (especially) analyzing the behavior of competitors. And only then do we go to see what’s going on inside the company, and then just for show. This is idiocy. In 15 years of working with strategies, there has not been a single case when the behavior of competitors became a revelation and somehow helped the company. We do this out of habit - simply because it’s the way it is. Although, by and large, this is a purely external story that does not give anything. Understanding what is happening with the market is certainly important, but all the answers lie within the company. If you look at legendary brand strategies, it becomes clear that they are almost never dictated by external factors. They are built from the inside out. I like the example of Honda with its The Power of Dreams strategy. They worked with the legendary agency Wieden+Kennedy, but W+K did not come up with the brand proposition; he lived within the company for many years. When the agency won the bid to work with Honda, strategists did not understand the meaning of the phrase “the power of dreams”; it seemed like an empty set of words. But when they began to study the company from the inside and communicate with engineers, they learned that these were the words of Soichiro Honda, the founder of the company. Honda believed that nothing was impossible for a person with an engineering mindset; he could implement any idea. That's why it's so important that engineers can dream. This idea became part of the company's DNA and still lives on in what Honda does today. I also really like what LEGO does. They have a cool brand essence: “We develop the imagination of those who will build tomorrow.” They have long gone beyond the limits of children's construction sets: they produce various things for working sessions, design thinking, prototyping, and so on.
3. Lack of competencies. If the first two reasons are related to the specifics of the market and the vector of research, then the next ones are related to the way strategies are communicated and laid out into real steps. Here you need to remember that any brand update is the introduction of changes. Some large companies have specialists who do this. They are usually called Change Manager or Chief Transformation Officer. They are the ones who make sure that the strategy comes to life: they prescribe how it changes processes at different levels, introduce implementation progress indicators, and so on. Often, agencies that develop strategies simply do not have such specialists. This means there are no competencies needed to implement changes. True, now this is beginning to change - and in large international agencies there are people who help changes happen. 4. No personal interest A big mistake is to think that creating a brand affects only the marketing department. In fact, every employee of the company is a brand bearer. And in order to enlist the support of workers in its construction, they need to be somehow interested. It is important to show a person what kind of profit he will receive from a strong brand, and how this will simplify his part of the work. No one will change anything unless they see it as a benefit for themselves. Once motivation is found, it is important to integrate indicators related to the strategy into KPIs - so that everyone understands how this affects their daily work and the life of the company as a whole. For a strategy to be perceived as something that actually works, people must see that it changes their work processes. 5. Changes from top to bottom It is important to involve employees not only during the implementation of the strategy, but also at the stage of its development. If they feel involved in the changes, they will be less likely to reject innovations (and this is a natural reaction to everything new). A strategy that was born within the company is always more effective than a PDF that was sent down from above. During an internal audit, take a closer look at which employees are most interested in a strong company brand. Form them into a “transformation team” - make them drivers, ambassadors of these changes. Don't limit yourself to marketers. The more diverse the team, the more areas and departments it touches, the greater the chance that the strategy will take root. Even a former employee can become useful (provided that he is a fan of the company). We had such a case while working with one large client. During internal interviews, we were able to communicate with a member of the board of directors - he worked in the company for 40 years and retired, but did not lose his authority among management. He advocated for the company so much that he went through all the working sessions with us, although he was not required to participate at all. The more such charged people you can find, the better. The agency will sooner or later leave the project, but the employees who are passionate about the idea of the brand will remain and will be the conductors of these ideas. 6. Conflict with corporate culture Management classic Peter Drucker has a legendary quote: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Corporate culture is truly a very strong thing that takes many days to form. And she will easily crush any innovation that goes against her. They say that one of the first things that German Gref did when he headed Sberbank in 2007 was to fire all top executives over 45 years old. He understood that the future was digital. And I also understood how difficult it is to convince the older generation of the need for digitalization - specialists who have worked in a traditional bank for 20 years. Therefore, he acted radically: he cleared the ranks and “rejuvenated” the C-level. Another management theorist, Henry Mintzberg, has a very accurate statement on this matter: “Managing what changes without managing what does not change is called anarchy.” The manager will not be able to introduce changes in the company alone - his position must be shared by all top managers. If they don’t do this and you can’t convince them, it’s easier to hire new ones. If you can't change managers, replace them. 7. Strategic gap Another stopper for strategy implementation (especially in companies with a multi-level structure) is incorrect communication. It is important that every single participant in the change process - from the top manager of the main office to the employee of the regional division in the county town of N - knows about the new strategy and understands its meaning in the same way. A survey will help clarify the situation. Ask employees to describe the brand of the company they work for. What do they associate it with? How do they understand the brand's core message? To what extent is this idea actually manifested in the company’s work? When implementing a strategy, it is important to find these same “strategic gaps” - when, due to the peculiarities of internal processes or lack of communication, it turns out that regional marketing does not understand at all what is happening at the company’s head office. We recently had a case: we conducted an internal audit in the client’s branches and discovered that the head of the marketing department in the region was using a slogan in communication that the brand abandoned in 2016. Old ideas and habits of a company (and its employees) sometimes become the main barriers to the emergence of something new. |
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