My business partner and I have a meeting with a client today. We’re going over marketing and media plans for 2009 and talking about a whole host of issues related to what we accomplished this past year and where we’re going in the next.
But when I talk to some of my friends who are either freelancers or own their own small agencies, they’re too busy scrambling to get work done for this year to even think about sitting down with clients and talking about the year to come. And that’s a major problem.
As I mentioned in my post on Marketing in a Recession, you have to make sure your happy customers are exactly that: happy. And that’s because the 80/20 rule quickly turns into a 90/5 situation. The economy will force more of your eggs into a smaller basket – to not take the time now to make sure that basket belongs to you is foolish.
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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…)
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
