Majken Schultz Taking Brand Initiative
Taking Brand initiative
Majken Schultz
Professor of Management at Copenhagen Business School and partner in the Reputation Institute
(Kilevej 14a, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark; e-mail: ms.ioa@cbs.dk)
Аннотация. В статье профессора менеджмента Копенгагенской бизнес-школы М. Шульц представлена новая книга «Взятие брендинговой инициативы: как компании могут согласовать стратегию, культуру и идентичность через корпоративный брендинг».
Abstract. In article of the professor of management Copenhagen Business School M. Schultz is presented the new book «Taking Brand Initiative: How Companies Can Align Strategy, Culture, and Identity Through Corporate Branding».
Ключевые слова: бренд, брендинговая инициатива
Keywords: brand, brand initiative
A corporate brand is one of the most important strategic assets in the corporate portfolio. In our globalizing world, companies that manage their corporate brands effectively gain advantages of market entry, penetration and differentiation over their competitors in ways that help them integrate their wide ranging activities. But no brand does this perfectly forever due to constant changes in the environments they face and ever-shifting patterns of competition and fluctuations in stakeholder support.
Alongside its growing importance in the midst of constant change, comes the need to manage the corporate brand differently. No longer do marketing departments rule the domain of branding. Instead responsibility for corporate branding radiates out from the very top of the company to pretty much every nook and cranny in the organization and, beyond even this, into the web of stakeholders that make up the enterprise within which the organization is but a partner. As a consequence of these changes, we believe that current ways of thinking
about corporate branding are in need of an overhaul.
For the past several years we have worked alongside executives as they dealt with a range of challenging business issues. Nissan needed to reinvent itself as a strong niche player to correct past sins committed by copying archrival Toyota instead of forging its own identity. As a medium-sized company from a small country, Novo Nordisk needed to make a broad enough gesture to get noticed on the global stage. Telefónica, a huge bureaucracy trying to reinvent itself following privatization, was flailing about as it acquired the also newly privatized telephone companies of several Latin American countries while juggling the shift from landline to mobile services. Boeing was struggling to redefine itself after its acquisition of McDonald Douglas and to recover from contracting scandals. Johnson & Johnson, rated among the world's top corporate brands, needed to establish itself in China. And the LEGO Group was in the throes of a financial meltdown, the result of not knowing how best to respond
Majken Schultz Taking Brand Initiative
to the shifting play patterns of kids who are growing older younger as they ditch their traditional toys for electronic games and other gizmos.
What brought these managers together was the recognition that they were all facing corporate branding problems. Through the Corporate Brand Initiative (CBI), a 3-year collaborative self-study that produced the frameworks you will read about in this book, we were able to track these managers as they became experts in handling corporate brands, not in the old marketing sense of logo design and consistency of message, but in the sense of drawing on all the people who make up their enterprises.
As the CBI managers learned from each other, so we learned from them how each stakeholder plays an important role in defining the meaning and creating the value of the brand that connects them. Together we developed and learned to use the brand management techniques that you will read about in this book. Below we will present a diagnostic model for assessing how well companies manage their corporate brands through alignment of their strategic visions, organizational cultures and stakeholder images and the theory of organizational identity dynamics that underpins it.
The book «Taking Brand Initiative: How Companies Can Align Strategy, Culture, and Identity Through Corporate Branding. By Mary Jo Hatch and Majken Schultz. San Franisco: JOSSEY-BASS, 2008» breaks new ground in looking past the usual suspects in branding and identify the corporate brand as the key to balancing differentiation and belonging. Looking beyond the marketing value of brands--company-to-customer--and the HR signifi-cance--company-to-employee--this book places the management of brands at the senior level of management and organizational development. The author explain how the brand is just as important to a companies outsiders politicians, suppliers, citizens, analysts as it is to insiders. The book also shows how only the corporate brand can integrate all the
companies staff functions and provide a vision for competition, globalization, etc.
The book provide three cutting-edge analytical model to help gauge the effectiveness of any corporate branding effort: The Vision-Culture-Image Model, The Cycle of Branding Model, The Organizational Identity Model.
In the first part of the book we will guide you through the basics, what makes corporate brands work, and why they sometimes don't. Our examples will show you what corporate branding in the wider domain of the enterprise means, how corporate branding as we see it differs from what marketers and economists describe, and how the managers we studied shifted their practices as they took these new ways of thinking on board in their companies.
Part II examines the variety of management practices and processes involved in the execution of full scale corporate branding. We will begin by describing the varying roles leaders play in branding over the life of the organization. Then attention will shift to how employees serve and are served by the corporate brand they help to build through their everyday work activities and the organizational culture they create. Finally we will explain how brands can become part of the stakeholder communities through which they live without jeopardizing the delicate relationships that sustain them.
Part III concludes the book by pulling together all the threads of the corporate branding tapestry. There we will describe in detail how the LEGO Group found its way back from the brink of disaster by learning to align its vision, culture and images through corporate branding. The final chapter will help you translate the knowledge gained by reading this book into action. It will include reflections on where we think the field of corporate branding is headed, how best to prepare yourself to manage your corporate brand, and the dilemmas branding presents as well as advice for how to confront them based on our studies of the CBI companies and others that have built strong corporate brands.
Journal «Economy and Entrepreneurship», Vol. 3, Nom. 1 (January -February 2009)
Majken Schultz Taking Brand Initiative
In the pages that follow, you will find plenty of examples of brand executives using the ideas we offer to execute brand strategy. The examples are meant to inspire you to try similar things in your organization, but beware of imposing these ideas as readymade solutions. The corporate brand management practices that are right for your company will need to come from the unique values and meanings that you and your enterprise alone can provide. The VCI Alignment Model and the Organizational Identity Dynamics conversation that underpins it all will set the stage for your success. Once you have mastered these tools, you should be ready to lead your corporate branding effort now and into the future.
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