Whiteboard

Occasionally we invite friends of Pendry White to contribute guest articles to Whiteboard, highlighting a best practice innovation in our own world of reputation marketing. We invited Gideon Wilkinson, Founding Partner of Endpoint, to share his thoughts on an innovative new approach to the complex issue of brand management and implementation

Anyone who has had anything to do with managing a brand knows it is expensive and complex when it is done right, and very expensive when done badly. Fortunately, a new discipline is making a consistent brand image across the whole business a much greater probability, with the added benefit of controlling costs and improving quality. Brand Implementation Advisers are beginning to play a critical part in the smooth rollout of new and revitalised brands, working alongside senior brand managers, creative consultants, and internal resources to deliver a brand that works, on budget and on time.

All too often we see senior management focus enthusiastically on the front end creative aspects of a new brand identity, a rebrand or even a simple brand refresh. But, when the glamorous bit is done, the truly critical phase, the physical implementation, becomes a ‘simple’ operational matter left to others.

So many organisations fail to recognise that this part of the process will in reality cost many times what you spent on the expensive creative thinking – some estimates put this at 10-20 times the front end design spend. Put that in numbers to get a measure of what it means – if you pay £1million to develop a new brand and visual identity, expect to pay up to £20million to make it work as the creative consultants told you it would – and that will be your problem, not theirs!

It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, your brand is critical to your business. Yet when it comes to major changes to your brand so many organisations allow the all-important implementation programme to become fragmented, with control over costs and quality moving away from the brand guardian to other “operational” areas, such as property, facilities, IT and many other distant parts of the business.

We recently conducted a small survey among a panel of senior marketing professionals, who between them had managed a significant number of brand change programmes. We asked them what typically happens when there is any kind of brand change. Their answers were consistently ‘inconsistent’ i.e. it seemed to happen in a different way every time. And that is not surprising, you don’t rebrand every year and the level of past experience within most organisations in reality is limited – so it tends to “get made up as we go along” as one of our interviewees said.

Again not surprisingly, it is pretty much common practice to bring in a brand consultant to help to shape the brand messages, the corporate visual identity, to develop the brand guidelines, and so on. Our panel all said this was the norm and, while expensive, it was worth it to get the visual brand and the brand communications in alignment.

But when we asked what happened next in making the new or reenergised brand work at a physical level, in all locations and all functions, there was almost universal agreement that, at that point, the “Brand Director” lost control and became reliant on others to make it happen across the organisation. Indeed, there is often no central idea what the total real cost of that implementation might be as it gets lost in departmental budgets, already planned replacement spend, and other ongoing initiatives. And that meant parochial politics, local priorities, in-house people with their own preferred suppliers, “not invented here” syndromes, and a myriad of other factors which influenced the speed, efficiency, and cost effectiveness of the brand implementation.

Major brand change programmes can be driven by a number of factors – merger (usually a total new brand – like the recent Towers Perrin/Watson Wyatt merger to form Towers Watson) or acquisition (often imposing one on another (e.g. Santander with Abbey and Bradford & Bingley), a brand re-launch or brand refresh (such as Ernst & Young did quite recently).

Let’s take a current example and just speculate for a minute to illustrate a point. Nobody knows as yet what Orange and T-Mobile will do with their new merged business entity, assuming it gets the necessary clearances in London and Brussels. However, here we have two very strong brands, with two equally strongly branded parents, neither of whom will want to see their brand devalued – somewhere along the line one or more brands will become redundant. Whatever happens, there will almost certainly need to be some changes to the brands of both of these High Street operators, even if it is only to reposition them as sister organisations. Or it could result in a complete rebrand. The probable scale of those changes will necessitate careful planning and implementation from their brand managers.

The marketing people will be looking at the front end on the consumer brands – but is anyone taking a view across all aspects of the combined businesses where brand change is going to be necessary? For example, on buildings and other property sites, in internal systems and processes, at corporate presentations and events, and a multitude of other areas where change could and should happen.

Has anyone added up the potential cost of those changes in real terms? How do you build brand engagement on both sides of the new entity? Does the Orange brand culture absorb and take over the old T-Mobile brand culture, or vice versa? And who is taking both the big picture view and looking in detail at the actions needed? For both, cost reduction must be critical to pay for the deal, so they will need to be very cost conscious when deciding how they intend to manage the new brand going forward.

It is in situations like this, making the brand strategy a reality, where the newly emerging role of the Brand Implementation Adviser offers a major step change for organisations going through brand changes. Let me declare my self–interest: Endpoint is one of consultancies leading the development of this new approach to brand implementation but today I am simply explaining the approach and the benefits – if you want the sales pitch just call me!

In a nutshell, what the Brand Implementation Adviser does is sit alongside the brand guardian/owner within the client organisation (usually an over worked Marketing Director who is also trying to make sure the brand is implanted across all his or her own highly visible marketing activities) and provides the day to day linkages to all other parts of the business.

It doesn’t replace local accountabilities, doesn’t interfere with existing preferred supplier arrangements or step on in-house toes. But what it does do is make sure that the brand is being implemented as it should be; that schedules are being met; that costs are being controlled and monitored; that quality is being maintained; that wheels are not being invented twice.

At one level it is about a massive check list of actions that makes sure nothing falls between the cracks. At another level, it is an independent eye offering experienced advice and guidance when and where it is needed. And at a third level it is a point of arbitration, even head banging when needed, to ensure the programme is not derailed by issues of “my patch” or different perceptions of priorities.

For example, with the Santander re-branding of Abbey, the master check-list had an action to replace branding on all ATM machines. Simple statement, complex to implement! There are huge variations in the type, location and size of all the ATMs and this complexity had to be managed along side the bigger branch rebranding programme, the changes to literature and other corporate materials, the IT changes necessary to implement the new brand and so on.

Just as the brand creative consultant sits at the front end of the process, the Brand Implementation Adviser should also sit at the front of the process because he will be the ongoing link that makes the creative consultants’ award winning ideas actually appear wherever it should, when it should and in a format that actually works! We can all think of examples where an expensive new corporate identity just hasn’t worked in real life as it was envisaged by the designers. Could these have been avoided with better planning and programme management? Almost certainly!

So today, when there has to be a real, measurable bottom line cost to any branding exercise, Brand Owners really should be putting someone in place to ensure best value and best practice is delivered. They should work with the creatives at the front end of the branding process. And then with the management team and all the people around the organisation, with an interest in or responsibility for making it happen, at the back end of the process. In this way, you will greatly improve the chances that the corporate goals that drove the rebranding in the first place are actually achieved, on time, on budget, at the right quality …. and definitely ON BRAND!

Gideon Wilkinson is one of the founding partners and is a director of Endpoint Limited. He can be contacted on +44 (0)20 7089 2670 or by email at gideon.wilkinson@endpoint.co.uk. You can learn more about Endpoint at www.endpoint.co.uk