Are you a brand champion?
By Ramanujam Sridhar
Let’s play a quick game. Give me the name of a Cola? A watch? A computer? A
scooter? A pair of athletic shoes? I suspect that your answers might well have been
Coke, Titan, IBM, Bajaj and Nike. At least mine were. All of these brands are top of
mind. They are visible. They are heavily promoted. They are (with the possible exception
of IBM) consumer brands. And yet, there are corporate brands, service brands and techno
brands, which we keep coming into contact with. These brands may not have the
advantage of 60-second TV commercials, extensive merchandising and eye-catching
glow signs to keep reiterating and reinforcing their presence to the target audience. So
they need innovative and different ways of remaining in the target audience’s mind and
that’s no small challenge.
Branding, as we first knew it.
As anybody in Madras (as it was then) will tell you we all grew up on Horlicks. That was
our nourishing beverage until we graduated to South Indian “Kaapi.” This had other
implications too. On the few days that I was helping out in the kitchen or when I was
fetching something from my mother’s kingdom, I was confronted by rows and rows of
Horlicks bottles collected assiduously over the years.
“Where’s the sugar?” I’d yell.
“The third Horlicks bottle from the left,” would be the answer.
“Where’s the salt?”
“The first Horlicks bottle in the bottom row.”
And the guidance would continue.
Yes, consumer brands have multiple ways of remaining in our vision and in our memory.
Not so for corporate or service brands. The challenge as Mike Clasper, president of
Procter & Gamble states is intriguing. “Brands”, he says, “will need to win the battle for
share of mind, not share of shelf.”
Brand Ambassadors v. Brand Champions
Consumer brands rely on brand ambassadors. Parker has Amitaabh, Omega has Cindy
Crawford, Taj Mahal tea has Zakir Hussain, Santro has Shah Rukh and even The
Economist had Kissinger. Of course, one is completely bewildered by the number of
brands for which Sachin is the brand ambassador, but then, that’s another story. The
common thread in all this is that communication is from the outside. And it is driven by
mass media communication. The reality, however, is that these brand ambassadors may
have very little to do with the company or its values. They are used because marketers
believe there is a strong fit between the brand ambassador’s personality and the
consumer’s aspiration. Whilst one recognizes the need for brand ambassadors for some
brands, it is perhaps important to recognize what every corporate brand needs. Every
corporate brand needs champions. And these champions are within the company. They
are its employees. They impact, mold and convey the brand values to various target
publics. Our employees are going to determine our brand’s success or failure.
Let me explain this with an interesting analogy. All of us are familiar with Harley
Davidson. We dreamed about it and yearned to ride it. And yet, there’s an important fact
about Harley. Harley is a brand that created itself as much as was created by its very
owners. So Harley’s image is determined as much as anything else by the people who
buy it and the people you see riding it. If the riders were truly staid and dowdy, it would
certainly impact our perception of Harley. Similarly, our perceptions of companies are
largely guided by the people who work for it. Are they professional, competent and
committed or apathetic, rude and ignorant? Are they champions of your brand or
destroyers of its equity?
Enter the HR manager
Some of my most formative, satisfying and challenging years were in Mudra in the late
80s and early 90s. The organisation was humming with activity and energy. The agency
had “buzz.” It was a bit like standing at short leg when Bishen Singh Bedi was bowling.
You could “hear” the spin even if you weren’t watching the seam. Mudra had an
important system/person in place. A live wire HR manager who was a sounding board,
counselor, trainer and salesman all rolled into one. He had an infectious enthusiasm and a
passion for the company. He was a true brand champion who shared the success stories
of the agency with whomever he came into contact with. A tremendous role model for the
young people who would be future leaders of the company.
“Part of the requirement for a brand is passion,” said Graham Mackay, group managing
director of South African Breweries. And this is what is lacking in most organizations.
Chief executives, often enough, are passionate about their brands. But what about
everyone else? A leader today has to be less of General Patton and more of John
Buchanan. He also has to be a cheerleader. We spend more than half of the day preparing
for, going to, coming from and actually doing work. If that is challenging and
stimulating, then we can certainly be passionate about our place of work and
communicate this to the rest of the world. So today’s organisations need human relations
more than ever before. But its more than recruitment training and compensation. It is
about creating an environment for viewing the company as a brand.
Brand types.
Branding theory classifies employees into 4 types.
- Brand champions are storytellers who spread the brand idea.
- Brand agnostics are interested but not committed.
- Brand cynics are not involved with the brand idea.
- Brand saboteurs are working actively against the brand idea.
Clearly every organization needs brand champions. But the questions that are more
difficult to answer are questions like these.
- How well is the company’s mission and vision communicated internally?
- How well have employees bought into this?
- Are the employees empowered?
Ailsa Petchey, a flight attendant on Virgin Atlantic was organizing a wedding and
understanding the travails of it. She felt it was easier to go to a one-stop shop that would
organize everything. She took the idea to Branson and the result is Virgin Brides - a
chain of shops that cater to everything the would-be bride needs. Gary Hamel, the
renowned management guru asked, “Could this happen in your company? Could a
twenty-something first-time employee button-hole the chairman and get permission to
start a new business?” Not a hope in hell! So the question is “Are our employees
empowered for them to be our champions?
Don’t use the branding word, do the actions.
Most of us tend to be convenient. We believe that the brand is the CEO’s baby. Or it’s the
brand manager’s. Or it’s the human relations person’s. The reality, however, is that it
belongs to every one of the employees. It has to be communicated and even more
difficult, though it may seem, has to be internalized.
As Rita Karakas, a consultant in organizational development said, “An organization has
to come to terms with how it actually owns branding as an attitude, as a presence, as a
state of mind, a politique de presence, where everyone is a communicator and everyone is
an embodiment of the essence of the organization.”
Every organization has a heart. The heart is not just on the outside. You need insiders to
carry on feeding the heart.
Are your employees feeding or starving your brand?
Ramanujam Sridhar is CEO brand-comm.
Feedback can be mailed to Sridhar@brand-comm.com |
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