Mergers

How to Turn Your Employees Into Brand Advocates
December 12, 2017 In Acquisitions, Brand Advocates, Branding, Consumer, Corporate, Cultural, Higher Education, Identity and Brand Strategy, Mergers, Positioning, Positioning Strategy By @MarshallStrategy

How to Turn Your Employees Into Brand Advocates

Your employees are your biggest marketing opportunity. Why? Because if they are engaged with your brand, they can be your number one marketers and boosters of brand equity. How do you convert this potential business-changing force into brand advocates? Achieving employee brand engagement was our topic at the last Silicon Valley Brand Forum.

Empowering employees as brand advocates is critical to successful brand evolution. When you change or evolve your brand identity, your internal audience is just as important as your external audience. Ideally, your employees are the engine driving brand transformation. For that reason, we ask every client to engage their employees when changing their brand identity.

Engaging your employees

To be effective, brand identity work must inspire employees as an idea they can rally behind. Quantitative research can give you data, but qualitative research helps you hear and feel culture from the key voices and the personalities who make it real. You can’t just change your logo and tell employees, “All right, everyone, fall in line and be part of this.” Your brand essence starts within your company, and employee brand advocacy requires investment, cultivation and authenticity. It also must capture your employees’ spirit and passion. If your employees are engaged, you will have a firm foundation for moving forward with change.

Four factors for empowering employees as brand advocates

A new brand identity should be both aspirational and authentic to employees. It’s essential that employees:

  1. See themselves in the new positioning
  2. Believe in the vision and aspiration behind the new identity
  3. Understand that the new brand has meaning and value
  4. Feel recognized for their part in adding value to the brand

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managing brand reputation
November 10, 2017 In Acquisitions, Blog, Branding, Media, Mergers By Marshall Strategy

Managing Brand Reputation: Media Brands Live or Die by Their Integrity

The news of AT&Ts attempt to acquire Time Warner without shedding CNN brings the value of media brands back into the spotlight. CNN has seen its share of criticism over the last year –primarily from one powerful voice – but its position, and the debate over “fake news” raises an important issue for media brands everywhere. Embellishments and dramatizations may be acceptable in politics and in the corporate business world, but in journalism, they violate a universal standard: integrity. When a writer or editor runs afoul of that hard line, it reflects on the overall media brand. Inability to earn and sustain public trust can kill a brand, or forever damage a business. That balance, trust over mistrust, fact-based journalism over sensationalism, is harder to achieve than ever.

managing brand reputation

The News of the World phone-hacking scandal from a few years ago is a perfect example of how to mismanage brand reputation. Executives of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. covered up allegations and evidence of gross misconduct instead of exposing those responsible and holding them accountable. Now, with criminal investigations under way and News Corp. employees in jail, News of the World has folded and Rupert Murdoch’s personal and corporate brands are damaged beyond repair.

Some media brands have managed their brand reputation effectively under challenging circumstances. When Stephen Glass of The New Republic and Jayson Blair of The New York Times were exposed as frauds, their editors immediately made it known to the public and took steps to make it right. This American Life took the extraordinary step of retracting a story when it was discovered that a nonfiction storytelling piece on Apple supplier Foxconn was rife with falsehoods. Editor and host Ira Glass went on air to explain the failures in his and his team’s fact-checking that allowed the story to air. Oprah Winfrey confronted author James Frey for lying in his memoir, A Million Little Pieces, which she had promoted. Each of these media giants avoided long-term damage to their brands by being forthright about their errors in judgment.

Managing brand reputation is essential to any organization, but especially to media organizations. At the end of the day, it’s the brand that takes the biggest hit when credibility and integrity are questioned and restoring the integrity of the brand is most critical. How media editors, publishers, and executives respond in crisis can dictate their brand’s survival.

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It Never Pays to be a Copycat
August 15, 2016 In Acquisitions, Airlines, Branding, Consumer, Corporate, Identity, Identity and Brand Strategy, Mergers, Positioning, Positioning Strategy By @MarshallStrategy

It Never Pays to be a Copycat.

A recent WSJ Article trumpeted “Copycats Rule the Skies.” It was about how the three largest U.S. airlines have all become so much alike.

Why are the Delta, American and United brands so much alike? Patrick Moynihan, the former Harvard professor and U.S. Senator had a theory called, “The Iron Law of Emulation.” His theory held that nations that competed against each other became more and more like each other. This certainly seems to be the case with our airlines, hotels, banks, etc.

Moynihan pointed out how the U.S. and Russia once emulated each other: We got the bomb, they got the bomb; we got intercontinental missiles, they got intercontinental missiles; we got nuclear submarines, they got nuclear subs, and on and on.

During my 20 years at Landor, we designed the brand and identity strategies for dozens of leading airlines. Our purpose, always, was to differentiate each airline in a way that was relevant, true and compelling. To create a preference or command a premium, we built on each airline’s unique brand characteristics which were often its national characteristics: British Air was about their understated global competence. Singapore Air was about the pride that Singaporeans take in providing personal service. Alitalia was about Italian style. Hawaiian Air was about sunshine, flowers and relaxation. These identity strategies influenced all the decisions each airline made. Whom to hire, how to train, what kind of fleet to operate, and what passenger offerings and style of operations would reinforce their particular identity.READ MORE

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One word is critical to M&A Success – CULTURE
June 2, 2016 In Acquisitions, Airlines, Branding, Corporate, Cultural, Identity, Identity and Brand Strategy, Mergers, Technology By @MarshallStrategy

One word is critical to M&A success – CULTURE

We learned last week that Hewlett Packard Enterprise is merging its enterprise services unit with Computer Sciences Corp (Read the full story). This is a perfect opportunity to talk about the consequences of mergers on identity and brand, and how having a solid strategy for both is key in your merger’s success.

Research has shown that as many as 83 percent of mergers fail to achieve their original business goals. Brand value, or goodwill, suffers right along with business value, often destroying the appeal and premium that might have inspired the acquisition in the first place. Why is this? Because culture, and the purpose behind each organization being combined, is often ignored in favor of the numbers.

These deals are put together by attorneys and investment bankers, who fail to consider the cultural implications of the merger. These people think in terms of “synergy” and 1 + 1 = 3, when the real goal should be 1 + 1 = 1.

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