At BrandingBusiness we believe that brands are at the heart of B2B companies relationships with their customers. They shape all interactions with the customer. Every customer experience becomes a brand experience: each one impacts the perception of the company and its ability to drive sustained preference and intent to buy throughout the sales cycle. There is immense economic power in this interpretation of a brand: one that needs to be measured and managed over time with precision. To assist with this need, BrandingBusiness has developed the Brand Performance Platform™, specifically engineered to evaluate the equity of B2B brands along the continuum of the customer experience and then help to unlock their economic power by linking their effectiveness to market outcomes and, in particular, long-run market share. MORE

The world’s greatest corporate brands — Apple, Disney, Google, and others — are more than just profitable enterprises and stellar brands: They inspire enthusiasm in consumers and dedication in employees. What sets these companies apart? They are anchored on more than just a revenue-creating business model. Each of them has, at its core, an inspiring ideology that is intrinsically linked to the company’s brand. James Collins and Jerry Porras, authors of Built to Last, have also observed the presence of “core ideology” in visionary companies. Their research indicates that “authenticity of the ideology and the extent to which a company attains consistent alignment with the ideology counts more than the content of the ideology.” In other words, a coherent and authentic unifying idea that transcends the profit motive and serves as a touchstone in all organizational decision making is the vital ingredient in the most effective More

Unless you are a consumer products giant like Procter & Gamble or a serial entrepreneur, there are few occasions in business life that you will have to think about creating an entirely new brand. If you are actively thinking about it, then it’s probably because you are starting a business, merging two businesses together, spinning off a business or launching a new product or service. All four of these circumstances are different and challenging in their own unique ways, but they are very similar in that they involve brand strategy and naming. Start-ups have the relative luxury of time. Being new they are unknown they a veil of anonymity behind which a business can create itself before launching itself on the market then a well structured brand is essential to quickly establish the company. Facebook, Apple, Google and Microsoft were all start-ups at one time More

The subject of branding appears on the corporate agenda in times of change. Change can be abrupt and discontinuous. Transformational events such as a merger or a spin off force executives to think about the creation of a new company in terms of its brand – what it’s going to be called, its identity, it’s competitive positioning, its reason for being. As daunting as it may be for the companies concerned, these are rare opportunities to create new, fully-formed corporations with new brand realities. There are other, less dramatic, forms of change. There is evolutionary change. It happens incrementally over time until the question of corporate positioning becomes an insistent issue that demands to be addressed. All successful companies evolve. They grow and acquire, expand into new markets, new market segments, new product areas and new categories. They shift business focus according to changing customer needs, regulation MORE

Globalization, technology, increasing product parity and communication overload have out increasing focus and attention on the power of global brands to transcend national borders and languages in their universal appeal and recognition. At BrandingBusiness we have helped to introduce global brands such as Toyota, Huawei, Sharp and Samsung make entry into the US market very successfully by first understanding that strong brands are more than just globally recognizable. A global brand must also be elastic enough to allow for reasonable category and product-line extensions, flexible enough to change with dynamic market conditions, consistent enough so that customer who travel physically or virtually won’t be confused, and focused enough to provide clear differentiation from the competition. The BrandingBusiness Brand Power Index (BPI) enables us to verify and balance the universal values of the brand with both local market dynamics MORE

The continuing trust and loyalty of customers is what every business trades on. That trust is based on both tangible and intangible elements – the quality and reliability of its products and the continuing innovation necessary to keep both its products and the corporate brand strong and relevant. A strong, well-managed corporate brand is essential in the B2B world. It defines how the enterprise makes strategic sense as a whole, a key investor message, and also makes an important customer promise of reliability and innovation that underpins the performance of individual business units and product groups. But they, in turn, must also have the flexibility and tools to compete in their competitive market environments. How do marketers in a division of a large corporation balance the visibility and value of a strong brand with the marketing needs of their business segment in which competition may be fierce and focused? How does American Airlines MORE

Mergers happen for what seem to be good business reasons -- access to new markets and distribution networks, scale in consolidating industries, product diversification and new revenue streams, acquisition of strategic assets such as technology, etc. But most of them fail for one reason: cultural differences and the subsequent failure to integrate. A stream of studies has shown that corporate mergers have even higher failure rates than the liaisons of Hollywood stars. One report by KPMG concluded that over half of them had destroyed shareholder value, and a further third had made no difference. So why do mergers go so terribly wrong so often after such great promise? In many mergers, especially mergers of equals in which neither party wishes to be perceived as being acquired, a "we-they" mentality can quickly set in. Rivalries develop. Integration becomes nothing more than political trades as employees cling to the old ways of doing MORE

Businesses get complicated as they grow. Companies are acquired. Along with these acquisitions come business names, product names and products with branded features. No one is sure how effective these legacy brands are, which ones should be supported, or when or how to brand a new product. So the proliferation continues. Every new product gets a new name, weak brands continue to soak up marketing dollars at the expense of stronger brands and the corporate brand, unloved and uncertain of its role, is marginalized and weakened. Microsoft called it “The hidden cost of brand diffusion”. How does a company get to grips with this kind of debilitating and expensive complexity? BrandingBusiness employs a rigorous Brand Architecture evaluation process that weighs, assesses and filters complex brand portfolios against the needs of the market and how customers prefer to buy. We ask key questions: is it a brand or a product name; is it strong MORE

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Peter Drucker’s celebrated quote isn’t saying that strategy doesn’t matter, but rather strategy will only be successfully executed if it’s supported by an accepting culture. Studies have shown again and again that there may be no more critical source of business success or failure than a company’s culture – it trumps strategy and leadership every time. In today’s challenging business environment companies and organizations face increasing competitive and social pressures that impact business performance. The need to actively align and engage employees in the delivery of strategy is more critical than ever. As the world’s highest performing companies know, actively engaged employees are more productive, more customer-focused, more loyal, and ultimately, more committed to business success. While definitions of employee engagement may differ, there is growing consensus that true engagement is an active MORE

We live in an age of connection. These days people not only want to know the “what” – what you do, but the “why” – why should I care? How is this connected with and to me? Successful companies with strong brands recognize that it’s no longer just about making and selling products, it’s engaging people in a dialogue with each other, through the medium of the brand in ways that matter to them. A brand is the medium in which a dialog is conducted with all the people who matter to you – employees, investors, customers, communities, suppliers, distributors, etc. Each conversation has to be rooted in an authentic Brand Voice that ensures a consistent understanding of who you are and what you stand for and, more importantly, it has to be conducted on a level that is particular and meaningful to the individual. A Brand Voice encompasses a set of key elements: the Positioning Statement, which articulates the company’s strategic business MORE