Brand Central Station

We’ve spent a great deal of time talking about the power and importance of a corporate vision. Once you’ve gone through the process of clarifying a vision for your company and you’ve had a chance to share it inside your organization, there’s still something you need to do in order to bring your vision to life.

You need to make a public declaration.

The media – whether it’s a blog, a corporate newsletter, television, local newspaper, whatever – has a way of making promises firm and turning ideas into commitments. And depending how you handle it, vision-related media coverage can be tremendously validating. But don’t do it just for yourself.

Every key constituency group has a relationship with multiple sources of news and information. The time you invest in understanding those people who mean the most to your brand and what matters most to them pays off as you craft and present messages that reflect the values and beliefs represented by your vision and the promises made by your brand.

Don’t consider the publication of your corporate/brand vision to be a one-time effort, however. You need to realize that media messages don’t last long at all (consumers are exposed to millions of commercial messages a year), so in order to build recognition of your brand and its unique attributes you’ll need to reinforce your vision and messages in the media over and over again.

Hey, this brand-building thing isn’t easy.

Developing a corporate vision sounds like some kind of creative exercise, doesn’t it? Well, in one sense it is. After all, the project essentially asks all participants to think of their company in the future and to discuss it openly.

But while there’s probably some value (however little) in sharing “blue sky” dreams about a company with co-workers – we prefer to take a much more measured and deliberate approach. This approach is specifically designed to help employees achieve greater inter-dependence; assist managers in day-to-day decision making; grant customers greater emotional ownership in the brand; and give vendors an opportunity to succeed by making the company more successful.
We begin the visioning process with research. After all, the best clues as to what the future holds for a brand is to understand its journey to the present. This research process uncovers all sorts of insights behind innovations, traditions, customs and practices that help define the brand for what it is. (more…)

On our other blogs, we’ve been touching on the importance of having a corporate or brand “vision”, the process for developing it and realizing the successes that can come from internalizing it. But the most critical factor in making a “vision” valuable for a company is the way corporate leadership understands, supports and manifests it on a day-to-day basis.

The first thing a corporate leader needs to understand is that charisma alone won’t cut it when it comes to crafting a vision for the company. Your job is to lead, yes, but a vision must be shared to be understood. If your vision is “to be the largest widget maker in the United States” your team needs to understand what that means for them. (more…)

Do you know what your company’s mission statement says? Chances are, even if you do, many of your employees and most of your customers and vendors don’t … and don’t want to!

Why is this?

Because if your company is like most, your corporate mission statement isn’t all that different from anyone else’s. White out the product-specific stuff and the name of your company and your mission statement probably says something about commitments to quality, profitability and innovation. About half of the mission statements I read say something about “our people are our most important asset.” And another forty percent are sure to through in jargon that doesn’t really mean anything to people (e.g. synergies, strategies, paradigms, et al).

There isn’t anything wrong with having a stated commitment to quality, etc. That’s commendable. But why is it, after a management group has spent a while (sometimes days or weeks) squeezing a multi-paragraph statement down to a few sentences, that employees are under-whelmed and customers and vendors don’t really seem to care?

Why aren’t people excited?

The answer is relatively simple – most mission statements sound like a lot of hard work that will result in relatively little in terms of personal or professional gain. As my 14-year old is fond of saying when I give him a mission (like cleaning his room): “So what?”

As rude and self-serving as that may sound, there is a point to the question. People (whether they’re customers, employees or vendors) need a reason to commit to a mission. They need to know their agreement to do whatever it is you want them to do will result in something they want to have happen to them. In short, they need to “see” their own success first in order to be motivated to make the success a reality.

We call this process “visioning” – while not a particularly clever term, it does describe the process we use. When put into practice, clients are able to clearly and succinctly explain what they are trying to do with their business in three to five years. This answers the “So what?” question for most people and gives them an opportunity to create their own, personal vision of their success in the future.

Making sure the vision of the company is shared is the responsibility of the CEO and senior management team. But internalization of that vision is everybody’s job. In fact, the visioning process makes the development of a mission statement much easier:

“Live up to the promises we make and turn our vision of the future into a reality.”

Plentiful communications inside the enterprise helps reinforce the fundamental changes required to realize the future. As more and more people start to see the role they play in the company’s future, though, something remarkable happens. So remarkable, in fact, it’s actually measurable.

Internally, people begin to take advantage of opportunities to make the corporate vision a reality whenever and wherever they present themselves. This “strategic opportunism” can lead to productivity gains in the most unexpected places. Vendors, armed with the relevant parts of the corporate vision, start presenting proposals that fit within that framework – not only is it easier to sell to a client when you know what they’re trying to do, you have a steak in their continued success and prosperity.

“Strategic opportunism” can be found on the sales and customer support side, as well. Sales leads become easier to evaluate and targeted leads worked faster once ideal customer types are identified and the brand’s USP is clarified. With existing customers, lifetime values can be maximized according to the company’s plans for the future.

All of these are examples of companies making their own reality – turning their “vision” into success.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Strategic Planning, Corporate Vision, Brand, Brand Equity, Branding

For the past few weeks, I’ve been working with a client on matters concerning their “corporate vision.” It’s all a part of the brand development process outlined in our BrandCrafting blog – but the point I wanted to relate here is that this client (and many others, I assume) needed to understand the relationship between “vision” and “value” before he would move ahead with this project.

It’s not as obvious as it sounds, I think.

Creating a “corporate vision” sounds pretty loose and fluffy. Not a lot of implied value and plenty of “naval gazing” (as my dad would have called it). But to easily dismiss the visioning process is to close out real opportunity to formulate consensus among corporate management when it comes to setting a direction and a general plan for growth and development.

Personally, I opted for “vision” work like this years ago. As a cultural historian of sorts, I can see plenty of examples where things worked better when there was clarity of vision at the top. As a result, I’ve always worked with clients to help them identify their own personal version of success – and that’s the trick.

By getting clients to define where they want to be it becomes much easier to talk in concrete terms about potential stumbling blocks like budgets, deadlines and obligations for success. Arrangements are easier to make with vendors if the company has a clear idea of what kind of products it’s going to produce. Prospect lists are culled more easily once there are some rules in place that will help qualify and quantify sales leads.

But even though a clear vision can impact operations and customer relationships, its biggest impact is on the perceived value of the brand. Exactly how that value is imparted on the brand may surprise you.

Brand value improves not due to the boldness or uniqueness of the vision, but rather because everyone involved in adding value to the brand is informed and in agreement on how the brand will be successful. The lesson is simple and obvious: if everyone works together to make the brand what they agree it should be, the brand will be more successful than the alternative (of not working together).

There is another aspect of “vision” work that I enjoy. You see, when you develop a corporate vision, you have to take the time to make sure you understand how each constituency (i.e. market) will interpret and value that vision. As a result, the messages created to convey the vision (and its related values) are developed and targeted to specific markets and through specific media channels. The “promise making” part of brand equity building becomes much more precise and deliberate.

The result of all this sharing and communicating is the clarification of the “mission” so often overlooked by employees today, from the rank-and-file to the C-level executives. The corporate mission statement – once a bastion of bad grammar, convoluted buzz words and jargon – can now be distilled to one simple phrase:

“Live up to the promises we make and turn our vision of the future into a reality.”

It’s a clear and simple challenge that requires a fresh start every day. And with a healthy investment in a clear and succinct “visioning” process in place, mission statements don’t come much easier to understand than that.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, Strategic Planning, Corporate Vision, Brand, Brand Equity, Branding