Anchoring your brand in your company

A company with a clearly defined profile sends out a consistent and attractive message to existing and potential customers at every point of contact. In this sort of company, the brand is central. Brand content provides the frame of reference for all organisational functions and fields of activity for that company. The brand exerts a controlling influence over decisions, processes, resources and capacities. Consistency and unity of purpose are apparent to the public when the various strands that make up a company are all lined up behind the brand. For this reason, it is essential to anchor the brand content within the company in such a way that the entire management are familiar with the brand profile, and that organisational processes are designed in such a way as to reinforce brand profile.

Although anchoring of the brand within the company must surely be one of the most important tasks that fall to management, very little systematic knowledge of this subject has found its way into management literature or company practice. In many companies, brand content is the responsibility of the marketing department; as for other departments or divisions of the company, it has little or no impact on the way that staff think or act. Consequently, the company profile fails to impose its presence in the market. That is the reason why this year’s Brand Logic MARKEN-SYMPOSIUM is addressing the issue of ‘anchoring your brand in your company’. We aim to shed light on the following key themes that are decisive in getting your company on the right brand-focused track.

• Topic 1: The role of company management

  Whether or not a brand can be successfully anchored in a company crucially depends on how active a role senior managers play. Successful examples from actual business practice reflect the key duties and roles of senior management in the process of anchoring the brand within the company.

• Topic 2: Focusing organisational functions on the brand

  In many companies, the various organisational functions are not focused on the actual brand content. They are often quite disparate in nature. We will show methods and techniques for ensuring that organisational functions and company departments are focused on the brand content.

• Topic 3: Directing processes designed to anchor the brand
  
  

  How can the company as a whole be steered towards realising the brand profile? To fulfil this task, senior management must get to grips with a range of processes: how to deal with resistance, how to disseminate brand content, how to initiate learning and change. At the Brand Logic MARKEN-SYMPOSIUM 2009, we will demonstrate tried and tested instruments and techniques for systematically managing the anchoring process.