Lerman - Building better brands: a comprehensive guide to brand strategy and identity development

Who is the brand champion? The defender of brand equity and force for competitive change? Who can rally an entire organization to live the full promise of a brand? You.

Given the right knowledge, tools, and help you can ensure a bright future for your brand. Just read on.

Every organization, every brand, must grow. While some are defined at birth by a single product or service most companies quickly grow not just in scale, but in complexity. And that complexity extends far beyond products, services, and geographic markets. Over time, the established culture of an organization is challenged by mergers and acquisitions, changing leadership, and social forces, raising fundamental issues of who we are and how we will act.

These are the forces of brand entropy, the decay of order into chaosa descent into random acts of branding. As companies grow, their employees, leaders, and divisions develop their own distinct view of the core purpose and character of the organization and its brand. The result is inefficiency, openings that can be exploited by competitors, and a fundamental misalignment of organizational efforts. Even the bestespecially the bestcompanies begin to unravel a bit as they evolve. Its a natural outgrowth of growth.

So how do you guide the evolution of a brand in a way that returns to the clarity and focus of its founding, while leveraging hard-won scale and diversity? It can be daunting. You must reconcile traditions with aspirations. Shed baggage. Adapt to acquisitions, changing markets, shifting demographics, and more. Win over skeptics and overpower heel-draggers. The benefits (and perils) of redefining a corporate brand are high. Youve got to get it right the first time.

We were a not-for-profit doing great things, but with little appreciation or expertise for developing and managing our brand. We changed all of that.

C ARMENCHU M ENDIOLA -F ERNNDEZ WAS A MID-LEVEL STAFFER WHEN SHE LED THE REDEFINITION OF T HE W ASHINGTON C ENTER BRAND .

NCNB was a Southerner with big ambitionsNationsBank-sized ambitions! Seven years later we acquired (and rebranded) Bank of America.

V AN P ERRY WAS A REAL ESTATE VP AT NCNB WHEN HE LED A TEAM TO CREATE THE FIRST TRULY NATIONAL BANK BRAND .

A third of DuPont was being spun-off. It was a time when you either became an agent- or victim-of-change. We chose to step up with Steve McCracken and change everything.

C AROL G EE WAS GLOBAL BRAND MANAGER OF THE D U P ONT BRAND WHEN SHE STEPPED-UP TO LEAD THE REBRANDING OF DUPONTS SYNTHETIC FIBERS BUSINESSES AS INVISTA.

You may imagine that only a CEO can refocus an organization and its brand, but that hasnt been my experience. While senior leaders often spark (and must ultimately endorse) change, brand redefinition is almost always led by a loyal, perceptive, and persistent person from the rank and file. Efforts must deeply engage senior management, but the real force of change comes from the heart of the organization.

Ive worked with small, medium, and global companies to define their brands and led several of the industrys leading branding firms. But this book is not a recounting of tales from the executive suite or the trenches. It does not extol the brilliance of brands like Apple. It is not a celebration of my greatest branding triumphs.

This book distills what Ive learned from decades in the business into understandable and actionable frameworks for developing and redefining a brand. It includes many of the lessons that I teach at the Masters branding program that I helped found at SVA. It is a practical step-by-step guide for how to change everything. Let me know what you accomplish!

Scott Lerman

Too much of brand development is clouded in mystery and obscured by jargon. While Ill know it when I see it isnt a sufficient standard, you dont need to be a high-powered consultant to evaluate the effectiveness of a brand.

The answer to What does it take to build a better brand? wont be found in brand valuation studies. Arguably, their fundamental analytics arent much more reliable than most sexy man rankings, but thats not the issue. Even a perfect brand valuation methodology would measure an economic symptom, not a cause.

So how can you determine if a brand is effective? What is the right measure for whether a brand, your brand, could be better? Consider three essential elements.

A great brand is actionable, compelling, and true. Two out of three wont do. It must be a blend of all three.