Technology

April 20, 2017 In Airlines, Blog, Branding, Consumer, Corporate, Cultural, Identity and Brand Strategy, Technology By @MarshallStrategy

Culture Drives Brand Value – Where Will It Drive Yours?

I recently published an article in Inside Higher Ed describing five strategies of great brands, and how they apply to universities.

One of those five strategies is: brand inspires behaviors – you build a brand by being something, and letting that culture shape the way you behave and communicate. A successful brand strategy must lead to tangible behaviors, ways of thinking and acting that can differentiate you and your company in measurable ways.

Consider FedEx, Southwest Airlines, GE, and other brands that have become legendary for their corporate cultures. They all recognized the importance of defining and articulating not just their customer promises, but their internal behaviors for fulfilling those promises. Customer satisfaction and business success are the rewards that reinforce these behaviors, creating a cycle of growing brand strength.

A recent example of this is San Francisco’s own Salesforce. Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, has fostered a culture of “Ohana” within the company, a set of principles that inspire everyday behaviors against which employees are evaluated. Ohana is a Hawaiian word with deep meaning, which translates very roughly as “extended family”. What it means is that all members of a family, and their greater community, support each other. This culture extends externally for Salesforce – their number one mission is “customer success.”

The emphasis on culture has major effect. Benioff recently said, “There’s all this incredible energy in your company and you can unleash it for good. All you have to do is open the door.”

With this attitude, it becomes evident why Salesforce is one of the world’s fastest growing companies, and is ranked among the “best places to work” wherever it has offices.

Compare Salesforce’s results, and the brand benefits they accrue, to recent events at United Airlines and Uber. These two companies have dominated the news cycles lately, for all the wrong reasons. Within each story is a tale of bad behavior and poor choices, revealing crippling or even toxic corporate cultures. People who describe these woes as “PR problems” aren’t dealing with the core issue, the deep cultural flaws that threaten the very existence of these two companies. When United loses $1Billion of market valuation in one day and Uber has over 200,000 customers deleting its app, that threat is clear and present. These companies need to focus on their cultures at all costs, or they will lose any customer loyalty that remains.

We hope that more companies will take a close look at what promises they really want to make to their employees, customers and shareholders, and what those promises mean for how they act, speak, and treat each other – as well as their customers. Iconic, customer-centric brands like Salesforce and Southwest show strong evidence that placing a priority on building and living a positive culture results in loyal customers, healthy companies and strong brands.

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.

April 7, 2014 In Blog, Branding, Consumer, Names and Naming Systems, Naming, Technology By Ken Pasternak

High-Risk Naming: Can Google Trademark “Glass”?

High-Risk Naming: Can Google Trademark “Glass”? Google, which we’ve held up as an example of both good and bad when it comes to branding and brand naming, recently applied for a trademark for the word “Glass.” Not Google Glass, just Glass. Not surprisingly, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is not going to give in so quickly. Everyday terms, such as glass, are usually not ownable by any one company, especially when they are descriptive of the product or service itself.

Trademarking Generic Terms
Generic terms are typically difficult to trademark, and for good reason. They are undifferentiating and cause confusion in the marketplace. The reason Apple was able to trademark an everyday word was that a word for a fruit does not in any way describe computing hardware. Glass, however, describes the appearance, apparent composition and function of the Google product. (Although, as this Mashable article attests, the product is not actually made of glass)

READ MORE

February 21, 2014 In Acquisitions, Brand Architecture, Technology By Ken Pasternak

4 Questions to Ask When Developing a Brand Architecture Strategy

4 Questions to Ask About Your Brand Architecture as Your Organization Grows Let’s imagine you are Facebook. When you first started, you had a clear idea. You created messaging, a user experience and an identity platform to guide it as it grew. You made the hard decisions to whittle your brand’s message down into one clear, coherent thought.

But now, you’re acquiring additional brands at a very high cost, adding complexity to your brand. Now you’ve got Instagram and WhatsApp. You say you are committed to preserving their independence. We say it’s time to revisit those hard decisions, to keep your brand architecture intact and your brand strong.

We see organizations—especially those in the technology and digital fields—take a “ready, fire, aim” approach to acquiring brands and working them into their brand architecture. As a result, any of the following situations may occur, creating a complex and unwieldy environment:

You’ve brought in a little monster that’s unlike the rest of the monsters in your zoo, but you love it anyway.
You decided to preserve the equity of an acquired brand because you don’t want to “mess it up.”
You are developing a new brand in response to a short-term market need or competitive threat.

So how does a growing company develop a brand architecture strategy?

Developing a Brand Architecture

There are four questions you can ask of your company that will guide your brand alignment through this transition:

“How many promises do we want to make to our audiences?”
“How elastic is our current brand in making these promises to these audiences?”
“How many brands do we eventually want to have, and need to support?”
“How does the introduction, or cancellation of a brand, affect the rest of our portfolio?”

These questions must not be thought of in a vacuum; rather, they should be thought of as a connected part of the organization. While some organizations are disciplined about this, others could stand to use some help. Even the most disciplined companies have to revisit this over time.

IBM, for example, is a technology giant and appears to be a master-branded company, but if you look at IBM over time, they have struggled with supporting the master brand in exchange for some autonomy at the sub-brand level. IBM acquired a number of sub-brands over time, such as Lotus, Rational Software and Tivoli. Progressively each company began using more and more of IBM’s resources until the organization made a decision to rein these brands in. Lesson learned: when they acquired PwC Consulting, it rather quickly became IBM Global Business Services.

On the other hand, GE has done a remarkable job of maintaining the GE brand. It’s very simple; it covers everything from light bulbs and toasters to aircraft engines and nuclear reactor services. How did they manage that? GE focused its brand promise on excellent management and ceaseless innovation. Anytime you see that GE brand, that’s what it means. That’s a pretty powerful model. If I were Facebook, I would take note.

Learn more about our brand architecture services.

February 21, 2014 In Blog, Brand Architecture, Branding, Identity and Brand Strategy, Technology By Ken Pasternak

What Is Brand Architecture?

What Is Brand Architecture? One of the corporate branding disciplines that we receive the highest number of inquiries about is brand architecture. We find that for many clients however, it’s hard to grasp what brand architecture really means. Some organizations think of it as market segmentation, others think of it in terms of rationalizing portfolios or acquisition strategy. These are all important concerns, but we think about it at a higher level. Brand architecture explains the degree of relationship that should exist between the corporate brand and its various product and service brands. Should they go with a monolithic Master Brand strategy, corral multiple brands into a “house of brands,” or some combination of the two? What is the strategic rationale for an approach? Without clarity on these issues, your brand promise can become unclear, which creates confusion and can even reflect a lack of confidence.

What is Brand Architecture?

Let’s First Understand The Root of Brand Complexity

Anything that is ever created, whether it’s an app, a product or a service, wants a brand. And why not? Every creator wants to draw attention to his or her creation. By this philosophy, however, one company could easily have numerous brands. Companies often revert to micro-market segmentation as a surrogate for brand architecture. Google, for instance, has set an unusual precedent. The tech giant has many independently moving parts (read: brands) within its organization, but the sum total of those parts doesn’t necessarily create a comprehensive sense of what is “Google.” This is the most common problem we see with brand architecture.

The 3 Questions That Lead to a Strong Brand Architecture

What you call your product and how you identify it is only a tiny percent of the brand experience. Brand meaning and value is based on the promise each product fulfills and how it delivers that promise. Creating a strong and sustainable brand architecture requires answering these three questions:

Do your various different offerings add up to fulfill a promise?
What does each offer say about you as a provider?
How does each one of those offerings help you build your audience, or deliver on your promise?

In our experience, when a new brand is created, there’s not much consideration for the greater whole until it’s too late. A number of tech companies have spent years and millions of dollars cleaning up their brand messes. For example, we saw Sony lose its position as a premium brand partly because its many sub-brands fragmented product teams and distracted consumers from Sony’s core promise. We look at Amazon’s recent purchase of WholeFoods and wonder how strongly Amazon will want to associate their technology and commerce brand with a brick and mortar grocer. Any obvious association is likely to change perceptions of both brands.

Relatively few companies make the hard decisions that we think are necessary to grow their brands responsibly. By doing so, companies can avoid wasted investments and confusion among their audiences.

April 29, 2012 In New Work, Technology By @MarshallStrategy

VMware

At the recent VMworld event in San Francisco, VMware showcased the power and commitment of its unrivaled Partner Network to enable business transformation through innovation, technology, and expertise. This message, and the graphic tools that support it, are the results of our work with VMware to position its Partner Network as a uniquely aligned business and technology ecosystem, “collectively committed to business transformation”.

With over 50,000 partners in its ecosystem, VMware required a powerful, yet simple message that could be adopted and translated across thousands of client relationships. The notion of being in a collective effort to transform business was a unique differentiator for thePartner Network. When supported by leading technology and continuous innovation, this story became highly compelling, aspirational and sustainable for both network participants and the customers they serve. One of the most motivational aspects of this simple strategy was the number of ways it could be communicated, broadly or specifically. From giveaways to group events, VMware has begun investing in telling the story of its Partner Network, to increase value for participants and customers around the world.

April 27, 2012 In Consumer, Technology By Marshall Strategy

When Corporate Brand Strategy & Company Culture Collide, Culture Wins

Hal King of King Brown Partners has said of corporate brand strategy, “When strategy and culture collide, culture always wins.”

Those words ring true in today’s marketplace. Having a corporate brand strategy is essential for a business, but it is not enough if the enterprise is unwilling to embrace change and modify behaviors to align with customers’ needs, to keep the brand relevant.

Two stalwarts of the consumer products industry have recently suffered the fallout of the strategy/culture collision, and yet another appears to be facing a similar fate. Kodak recently filed bankruptcy, Sony posted its worst annual operating loss in company history, and now Best Buy is on the ropes with a huge first-quarter loss.

Neither Kodak nor Sony was ambivalent about changing times. Both companies made strong statements about where they needed to go, yet neither appeared prepared to steer their corporate cultures in that direction. On the other hand, Best Buy continues to cling to the culture that earned the retail giant its reputation of a big-box powerhouse in the 1990s, ignoring major changes in consumer buying habits in the process.

Kodak’s downfall was blamed on its inability to make the leap to digital media. But Kodak has been positioning itself as a digital imaging company for more than a decade. Why was it unsuccessful? Because at its core, Kodak is a chemical company whose culture embraced film coatings and processing. When digital media came along, Kodak rebranded itself as a digital imaging company, but the move took it further away from its chemistry-based roots, and company culture could not adapt.

The Sony brand faces similar challenges. Sony has spent billions of dollars marketing itself as an entertainment company, yet has not been able to make the transition in the eyes of the consumer or its employees, who still see it as a manufacturer of premium hardware.

Best Buy may be next. The culture of the company is deeply rooted in consumer choice and selection at its retail stores, but it is exactly this choice that dooms the company; consumers now choose to buy their movies, music, and electronic equipment online. They no longer comparison shop in stores, they comparison shop on the internet, and Best Buy is not a value leader in online sales.

In contrast with these companies is Amazon. Amazon has grown from the world’s largest bookstore into the world’s largest retailer, and is now extending its brand to hardware (the Kindle e-Reader) and cloud computing and storage. Since it began, Amazon’s brand strategy and organizational culture have always been aligned with customer satisfaction, scale, and delivery. This enables them to remain a global player, even in changing economic conditions.

We believe strongly in brand-driven business strategy. What that means is, a solid corporate brand strategy should inspire a company to be have in a certain way. This requires cultural resonance. If those new behaviors aren’t imbued or embraced, the strategy will likely fail. The longevity of a brand relies on a culture within the corporation that thrives on meeting customers’ needs at every level, while at the same time retaining core values.

May 2, 2011 In Technology By Marshall Strategy

Forecast: Cloudy Days Ahead

As discussed in this recent article that appeared in The New York Times, companies the world over, large and small, are waking up to cloud computing. It’s one of the most referenced – and recognized – terms in business today.

Brands and their audiences are taking notice. You’d have to be living off the grid entirely to miss Microsoft’s advertising blitz, bringing the cloud to businesses and consumers in ways that increase information availability and computing power, reduce cost, and generally make life more convenient. With brands like Azure, Microsoft’s enterprise cloud computing platform, Cloud Drive from Amazon, and Sales Cloud and Service Cloud from Salesforce, we’re seeing a frenzy of meteorologically-themed branding that could soon rival the “e” naming craze of the late 1990s.

The challenge for tech companies, from a naming point of view, is to be a part of the buzz without relying too heavily on the buzzword. “Cloud” is currently a buzzword – like “branding”, or “innovation,” “e-“ or “dot.com” have been before it. In today’s rapidly paced market, what was once “new” will become table stakes in a very short time. The key is to position your company and products in a way that is familiar, meaningful and appealing to your customers in the near future, but also unique, differentiating and sustainable over the long term.

Read The New York Times article.

Technology

Developing a Brand Architecture

What is Brand Architecture?

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