Brand vs. Branding

Last week, Lisa was talking with a friend about what we are doing to build the EC Stewart brand. In the middle of the conversation her friend stopped her and said, "I don't think I understand, what do you mean by brand?" It was a bit of a surprise question, but Lisa did her best to try and explain in as simple a way as possible what a brand is and why it is important.

Later she asked me how I would answer this question. Over the years my personal definition of brand has continued to evolve to the point where today I see "brand" and "branding" as two distinct things.

Brand is the sum of the perceptions that are held about you, your company or your products. This includes perceptions held by both external and internal audiences and stakeholders.

Branding is the universe of activities you undertake that affects those perceptions. In order to effectively build a positive brand perception, you must engage in both internal and external activities which are aligned to deliver a consistent impression of who you are.

Essentially, your brand strength is directly attributable to your branding activities. And the thing to realize is that you only have partial control of the perceptions that your branding activities are affecting and no direct control of the perceptions held by your stakeholders.

At the same time, you must understand the outside factors that affect the perceptions of your brand. Competitors, media, blogs and other external factors are more powerful than ever before and can doom your brand if not adequately monitored, understood and addressed.

So ask yourself - "What are the perceptions of my brand and what am I doing to affect them?" Hopefully the answers will be positive ones. If not at least these definitions give you a way of aligning your activities and their desired outcomes.

Destroying Internal Brand Equity With Soul-Crushing Leadership

"The truth of the matter is that our CEO considers you all [marketing] to be a necessary evil. At this company you either develop products or sell products. Otherwise you're just an expense."

How's that for motivating? A friend recently shared this quote with me. It is from the head of the marketing division he works in at a global company - that shall remain anonymous - where there is an obvious disconnect between management practice and internal brand strength.

This is a perfect example of what I call Soul-Crushing Leadership. The ability of some corporate executives to tell a large group of employees that no matter how hard they work, their efforts will not be valued at the top.

The result often destroys any sense of loyalty that the employees have. In turn, this causes the corporate brand to rot from the inside out.

Brands are built on the collective perceptions of all stakeholders, both external and internal. When you start to poison the relationship between employer and employee you begin to erode brand equity in ways that may not be apparent at first.

Many executives view brand building as a messaging, product development, sales and advertising process, but they are only part of the equation. Internal leadership that is motivating, consistent and unifying often has a greater impact in total brand equity than any amount of money spent on advertising or trade shows.

If I'm a marketing employee in my friend's company, I have no incentive to try and help my employer succeed. Instead, I have two options; one is to look for another job and take any IP I have to someone who values it. The other is to stay and become an indifferent employee who collects a paycheck and has benefits, but really doesn't add much value.

Either way the simple act of soul-crushing leadership has unlinked the personal motivations, goals and objectives of the employee from those of the company. The employees have no reason to work with either sales or new product development since they are the "golden children" and can do no wrong. Nor do the employees in sales or product development have any incentive to work with marketing since it is clear that they are viewed as merely an expense. Remember, marketing is just a "necessary evil."

In this case the employees were told about their necessary evil status, but given no reason to even understand or believe they are necessary. Over time, this kind of demotivating leadership will do serious damage to the brand. Unfortunately, most companies do not bother to check on internal brand health and don't realize the damage is done until it is too late and their internal brand equity is damaged beyond repair.

Are you checking your internal brand health? Check to make sure that you're not practising soul-crushing leadership and causing your brand to rot from the inside. You'll be glad you did.