Building strong brands is vital for business success, as brands enhance financial value, deliver competitive edge, and boost profitability. However, the approach to brand building is evolving from traditional brand management focused on tactics and single markets, to more strategic brand leadership with a global perspective. The key driver is also shifting from short-term sales and market share growth to long-term brand identity and purpose. To build global brand leadership, businesses must commit to the brand building process, lay a solid foundation, stick to a structured plan, create consistent messaging, and continuously track impact and learn. Ultimately, authentic, consistent, and purpose-driven brands inspire trust and emotional connections with consumers across borders and cultures.
The traditional brand management system that worked well for decades is being replaced by a new brand leadership paradigm. This shift is happening because brands now face greater complexities - more competitive pressures, evolution of sales channels, global competition, managing multiple brands and subbrands. The new approach makes several key assumptions: Brand building strategy must align with overall business strategy; brand leaders should be visionary, not just tactical; brands are long-term assets that enable premium pricing and future success when built up over time. Brand value is hard to quantify but can be estimated as a percentage of earnings. This new paradigm is rapidly replacing the old brand management system that was effective when brand managers were proactive planners and doers. Today's more complex business landscape needs a more strategic, forward-looking and experience-based brand leadership approach. Consider today's brands aiming for leadership: Virgin Atlantic founded by Richard Branson to provide top-quality, low-cost travel; L.L. Bean with its 100% satisfaction guarantee; Marriott extending into hotel residence inns; Adidas now focused on mass participation instead of just elite athletes; Nike with flagship stores and Air Jordans; Swatch building a youthful brand around fun watches; MasterCard sponsoring the World Cup. The old view was to build brand equity; the new paradigm pursues overall brand leadership. Old system brand managers had a short-term tactical view with less experience. New paradigm calls for long-term, strategic visionaries. The old conceptual model featured simple brand image and equity. Today multiple, complex brand structures are the norm. Scope used to be single market and product; now it’s global and diversified. Communications used to look outward only; now they also build internal brand culture. Sales drove strategy before; now brand identity leads. Brand manager used to coordinate teams; now they provide overall leadership. To assess brand strength, identify earnings streams for each major product, determine the proportion attributable to assets, processes and the brand itself. This provides a subjective but useful 30% measure of brand equity - awareness, quality, associations and loyalty. By tracking these, brand builders can measure if equity is increasing. Customers ultimately drive brand value. Brand strategy must follow business strategy. Leadership brands inspire employees and customers. Short-term metrics alone erode brands; a mix including awareness and loyalty builds them. Visionary branding makes the task exciting and drives growth.
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