corporate identity Tag

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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December 8, 2014 In Blog, Identity, Identity and Brand Strategy, Sports By Philip Durbrow

Spokespeople are No Substitute for a Strong Identity

Spokespeople are No Substitute for a Strong Identity

We have encountered prospective clients who believed that the best way to build awareness and enthusiasm for their corporate identity or brand was to find a charismatic and compelling spokesperson to represent them.

My personal favorite Spokesman is George Foreman. His delivery and personality are infectious (See his current TV pitch for Inventhelp), but when you sign up with George Foreman, you get a human being who could become inappropriate despite his charm.

Hiring celebrity spokespeople can be a dicey strategy. People, or their circumstances, can change. Consider the following situations:

When Lance Armstrong finally admitted cheating, he was dropped like a stone by all his sponsors. When Tiger Woods was caught cheating on his wife, however, Nike stuck by him.

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September 17, 2014 In Blog, Corporate, Identity, Video By @MarshallStrategy

Building a Strong Corporate Identity

Most organizations realize that having a strong brand identity brings many benefits, among them more motivated employees, competitive advantage in the marketplace and a clear brand promise to engage customers and stakeholders.

But it’s not always clear how to build a strong identity if you don’t already have one. What does it take? And how do you know what to aim for?

 

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June 26, 2013 In Identity By @MarshallStrategy

3 Signs You Need to Reconsider Your Identity

 

Courtesy Brian Talbot

Courtesy Brian Talbot

We’ve written before about the ways that a strong identity benefits leaders. Identity work can have tremendous positive impact on internal audiences, but it’s more likely that clients will come to us because they’re being misperceived by their external audiences. Here are three of the most common scenarios that signal it’s time to reconsider your identity:

  1. You’re losing business because of how you’re perceived: We’ve seen clients have multimillion dollar deals killed at the last minute because of how the brand was perceived in the marketplace. Other times, misperceptions can slowly erode your relevance with key audiences.
  2. You’re too narrowly defined: We’ve had clients with a great set of services and products, but they’re known for only one thing. If you’ve made your name in one area, great. But it might be time to communicate that you’ve got more to offer.
  3. The market you’re in is changing: Maybe you’re in an industry undergoing significant change. To stay relevant you need to be ahead of that curve when markets shift.

Transforming Into Something New
When you do change your identity, whether the change is evolutionary or revolutionary, it needs to be communicated in a way that is relevant. An identity change signals to both internal and external audiences that something is fundamentally different about your company. You need to make that difference as clear as possible.

One of our clients had acquired several regional cold-chain supply companies to create a cold-chain logistics company with national connectivity. The challenge for this client was that even though they were bringing together multiple smaller companies, they didn’t want to be perceived as a big, impersonal corporate roll-up and lose the family-owned, regional heritage of the acquired companies.

We created the name Lineage Logistics to convey a sense of history and legacy coming together to form a fully connected, forward-looking service business. The new name communicated to employees that the heritage of their companies was important to the new company, and signaled to customers that existing relationships weren’t going to go away. The benefits of the new company–increased efficiency and coast-to-coast continuity–were established without sacrificing regional understanding and local relationships.

Making Change Successful
An effort to change your identity involves more than changing your logo or tagline. To make the shift successful, you must understand how it will affect your people, your culture and your customers. When you communicate a clear a reason for change, you can effectively engage both internal and external audiences. Customers, prospects and clients understand where you’re going, and your internal audience sees that there’s something they can believe in and get behind.

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May 30, 2013 In Blog By Philip Durbrow

The ROI of Identity

ROI
Can thinking strategically about brand identity translate into bottom line results? Our experience is that it can. The benefits of identity projects—such as greater employee satisfaction, increased clarity of purpose and a stronger culture—have been shown to correlate with improved corporate performance. Some authors have suggested that these cultural aspects can account for a difference of 20% to 30% in corporate performance.

The ROI of Branding and Corporate Identity

Brand Identity and the Bottom Line
Corporations consider identity projects for a number of reasons:
• They want to increase awareness
• They want to enhance perceptions of their company
• They want to eliminate malaise and have higher-performing teams
• They want to position themselves in a way that’s more compelling for the times they’re living in

But what’s the real reason underpinning all these efforts? Simple. Companies want to increase sales. They want to increase profits, shareholder value and market capitalization. Our clients understand that by working on identity they are actually addressing their bottom line.

So how should you look at the potential ROI of identity work?

How Identity Increases Value
The long-term ROI of communications efforts are hard to quantify. But by clarifying what the company is and what people can expect from it, identity strategy has the potential to engage and motivate employees as well as capture the attention of customers, shareholders and funders.

For example, we might have a client with $10 billion in sales who is currently suffering from numerous symptoms of identity problems: The company isn’t well understood, people aren’t attracted to it, employees aren’t happy and leaders are spending so much time putting out fires they’re not able to set a course for the future.

We go in and fix that. Now everything’s firing on all cylinders and there’s a new excitement about the company, its products and services and its people. This new energy and shared purpose takes the management burden from executives, freeing them to lead. Employees require less management, because the company’s purpose is clearer and what’s required of them is better understood. From a change like that you might expect anywhere from a 1% to 10% increase in sales. But even a one-tenth percentage point increase in sales will be a return of $10 million in added revenues every year.

I believe there’s nowhere else that you can get return like that. Legendary investor Warren Buffett buys companies with strong identities for a reason: They represent a future stream of revenue he can count on. Identity is an investment that pays multiple dividends.

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February 7, 2013 In Politics By Marshall Strategy

What the Republican Party Really Needs – Neither a “Rebrand” nor a “Facelift”

What-the-Republican-Party-Really-Needs

What the Republican Party Really Needs

When the term “rebrand” is referred to as a “facelift”, (as it often is) it is a disservice to the work of brand strategists. Anyone who believes a facelift is going to fundamentally change how people see them is generally wrong. The same holds true for companies. When an organization decides to “tweak” its image, rather than address the fundamentals of its business, the resulting reactions range from ambivalence to cynicism to outright fury.

A facelift is a cosmetic procedure performed to change an appearance. When a “rebrand” is approached in the same way, it is about appearances, not reality. If the new appearance does nothing to change the reality of the organization behind it, the exercise is shallow and wasteful. In a recent Fast Company article* advising the Republican Party on “rebranding” themselves to win more support, the author suggests many ways the GOP could alter its appearance to be more appealing to voters.

We agree that the Republican Party will continue to lose momentum and credibility (as the 2012 election showed) until it can come to some consensus internally. But this article frames this problem from the outside, in, rather than the inside, out. It suggests that the party must change to please voters, rather than clarify and affirm what its members really believe in. This is a recipe for short term success and long term failure, because the party will just continue to tack its way from election to election. Clarity on who you are (and not just who others want you to be) is a requirement if your brand image is to be credible, sustainable, and ultimately, successful.

Identity and image are the yin and the yang of your organization’s brand. Your brand identity is who you are. It’s your purpose, what you care about, and why people should be glad you exist. Your brand image is how you are perceived by your critical audiences.  If these elements are out of balance, they need correcting. Many great organizations suffer because their images do not reflect the true value of their identity, and many so-so (or worse) organizations spend mightily to gloss over who they really are, setting themselves up for failure in the process.

Of course, politics is a challenging context –most politicians will try to be whoever voters want them to be in order to get elected. The drawbacks to this philosophy are clear today and represented by the lowest approval rating for congress in history. Consider this, Republican Party – if you worry only about how you appear on the outside, your insides will continue to eat away at you. Find your true identity, and your image will follow.

* http://www.fastcompany.com/3005471/rebranding-gop-can-marketing-facelift-overhaul-republican-party

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July 29, 2011 In Blog, Branding, Corporate, Identity, Identity and Brand Strategy By Marshall Strategy

Strategic Identity and Your Corporate Image

Corporate Identity Branding and Strategy

Some people believe that “image is everything” when it comes to marketing their company. Others think ” brand identity” begins and ends with a logo.

The reality is, both are important, and identity and image have a critical relationship in telling your unique story.

We believe that a strategic identity should help you clearly articulate who you are, what you do, and why you matter to your key audiences, in ways that are ownable, believable, beneficial, sustainable, and profitable.

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June 6, 2011 In Blog, Branding, Corporate, Identity, Identity and Brand Strategy By Marshall Strategy

Corporate Identity and Branding – A Reality Check

Some people believe that “image is everything” when it comes to corporate identity and branding. Others think “identity” begins and ends with a logo.

The reality is, both are important, and corporate identity and image have a critical role within brand marketing strategy. Branding consultants are a great resource when designing your successful branding strategies.

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