You Can't Brand Without These Two Things
By Jacky Tai
Principal Consultant, StrategiCom
5 Mar 2007

You probably know these sayings, "It takes two to tango" and "It takes two hands to clap". The same applies to branding as well. In order to build a strong and successful brand, you need a number of things - and all of them come in twos. If you have one but not the other, you diminish greatly your chances of building a powerhouse brand.

Marketing & Innovation
Peter Drucker is probably the greatest business guru that have ever lived and he is certainly widely credited as the father of modern business management. He wrote something over 50 years ago that is still as valid today as it was back then.

"A business has two basic functions - marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results. The rest are expenses."

Before you stand up and object, let me say that even if you are performing a support function like administration, customer service, accounting or logistics, you still need to innovate. If you don't your competitors will and they will steal your lunch. And eat it.

A brand is all about marketing and innovation. Without marketing, even the most ground-breaking products will sit in the warehouse collecting dust. The truth will not just get out without some help and that help is in form of your marketing activities. But without innovation, your products will become obsolete and nobody other than an antiques dealer wants an obsolete product.

Strategy & Execution
Strategy and execution are equally important for branding success but strategy must come first. There is a time and place for everything, and the time to execute is after the strategy is properly developed and validated. If the strategy is wrong, you can forget about achieving your goals no matter how well you execute the details. That is why great military thinkers like Sun Tzi and Klaus von Clauswitz say that the battle is won even before the first shot is fired. It's the same in business.

When it comes to branding strategy, there are also two ways of going about it as I shared with a client earlier this week:

1. The Bottom Up Strategy
2. The Top Down Strategy

The Bottom Up Strategy is driven by what you already have in your company, what you already do well. For example, if your strength is in manufacturing high quality packaged food, then try to use that to formulate your branding strategy. Singapore has many food manufacturing companies that have made a name for themselves by building on their strengths. But what if those strengths that you have are not enough for you to build a branding strategy on? What if your competitors are stronger everywhere? Then, you may need a Top Down Strategy.

The Top Down Strategy is more aspirational. It requires senior management with vision, courage and commitment because the Top Down Strategy will dictate that the company try something new in order to build a brand. That may require the company to invest lots of money and time into building a new category and the risk is potentially high.

But sometimes companies have no choice but to do it. For example, Kodak is a powerful brand in photographic film. But the advent of the digital camera, which ironically was invented by Kodak in 1976, has practically killed the film business. Kodak eventually launched its own line of digital cameras. Sales are growing rapidly but the margins are low. So, Kodak embarked on a high-cost, high-risk project some years back to invent a new category of pigment-based photo printers with prints that can last 100 years instead of the usual 15. BusinessWeek reported recently that this new line of Kodak printers will be ready for launch soon.

That is Top Down Strategy.

Brand Champion & Brand Ambassadors
You need two types of people to build a brand. A brand champion and an army of brand ambassadors. The brand champion has to be the CEO of the company. No one else is qualified to do the job. If the CEO doesn't champion the brand, then the brand will be pulled in a hundred-and-one different directions by internal and external forces. Every big brand in the world has an equally big brand champion behind it. Microsoft has Bill Gates. Apple has Steve Jobs. Ferrari had Enzo Ferrari. Disney had Walt Disney. Oracle has Larry Ellison. Southwest Airlines has Herb Kelleher. FedEx has Fred Smith. The list goes on.

The brand champion needs to set the direction for the brand - the brand strategy – and he (or she) needs to rally the rest of the company to buy into the brand's brand vision and work together to achieve that vision. A brand champion sometimes needs to get rid of people within the company that are not supportive of the vision no matter how good or brilliant they may be because they will poison the other brand ambassadors. That was one of the things that Jack Welch had to do as CEO and brand champion of General Electric.

Brand Name & Category Name
You need two names. I am not trying to turn you into a secret agent but you need two names to build a strong brand. You need a brand name and that brand name needs to be short, unique, memorable, easy-to-pronounce and works well in the English language. Names like Google, Xerox, Kodak, Lexus, iPod, Apple, Hyflux, Zagro, Osim, Intel, DeWalt, Otis - just to name a few - are names that work well.

A brand name also needs to be linked to a category name. Intel is a strong brand only because its name is very strongly linked to a category called microprocessors. Google is a strong brand because its name is strongly linked to a category called online search. DeWalt is a strong brand because it is strongly linked to a category called power tools.

Public Relations & Advertising
A brand is built by public relations (PR) and maintained by advertising. Again, if you have a new brand or a brand that has been around since the Jurassic Ages that nobody knows about (which means it is for all practical purposes a new brand), you need to use PR first to get the brand known.

PR has credibility because it is what 3rd parties (the media - newspapers, TV, radio, magazines, journals, etc) say about you. Advertising is less credible because it is what you say about yourself. What you say about yourself is only credible if you sing the same tune that is already in your audience's head - meaning it must agree with the idea that PR has already planted in their minds.

But a brand needs advertising to live. Eventually, brands run out of stories to tell the media. When that happens, that is when advertising kicks in to maintain the brand.

If you have any questions or comments about this article, please e-mail me at jacky.tai@strategicom.com. I would be most happy to discuss them with you.