By M. Isi Eromosele

In the current global environment, market conditions have changed and will continue to do so in the years ahead. The current economic situation will reinforce this trend and ultimately make the effects of this change permanent.

In this new market paradigm, it is not advisable for global companies to make abrupt changes to established brands. Even in cases involving a solid brand positioning and a coherent brand identity, brand management methods should be thoroughly evaluated.

Establishing Future Brand Success

There are eight key points that brands managers will need to keep in mind when devising a brand strategy in the years to come.

Efficiency

Inflated demands, growing cost-consciousness, increasing complexity and communication overspill all result in a need for branding efficiency. Investments in optimized brand management structures and processes provide the efficiency that is needed.

These investments are also worthwhile because they create value at a time when sales pressure is increasing and it is necessary to exploit cost synergy effects and enhance efficiency.

Convergence

Brand worlds often collide when innovation cycles merge with new technologies. This demands a great deal of flexibility and foresight on the part of brand managers.

Multi-channel

The increasing diversity of new media and formats means brands can no longer be visible everywhere in equal measure. At the same time, the line between communication channels and distribution channels is becoming increasingly blurred.

Brand builders need to provide sustainable, adaptable answers regarding the scope and type of exposure they want their brands to have in selected media/channels and they need to manage them within an integral system.

Self-segmentation

Like communication, distribution is also no longer a simple one-way, top-down undertaking. In the future, clients will increasingly decide on a case-by-case basis, at each point along the experience chain on how much proximity or interaction is desired. The brand builders of tomorrow will do well to adapt their expectations to specific market environments, while always remaining true to their brand values.

Diversification

In addition to the trend toward increased integration of branding measures, strategy-driven diversification is also becoming more and more important in the branding arena. This is due to expansion into new markets and the acquisition and the creation of additional brands designed to make the portfolio more resistant to crises.

Future brand-building activities will include analytic processes that provide quantifiable decision-making tools to help minimize risk, as well as structural models and decision trees for efficient management.

Individualization

The trend toward the individualization of product offerings continues unabated. Branding activities must ensure that brand strength is not diminished by the sheer quantity of variants. At the same time, it would be necessary to integrate stakeholders into the service performance process.

Globalization

Globalization has been embraced not only by large corporations, but by small-to-medium-sized businesses as well. However, there are still no simplistic answers to issues of global brand management.

Answers to questions such as:

Social and Economic Change

The world is changing. Multiple global issues are effecting fundamental, long-term changes in the way society thinks and acts. Brand-builders of the future will be called upon to react to these changes, and in some cases take the lead in shaping the world of tomorrow.

Existing brand management structures have often been inadequate in meeting the complex demands of the future. In the area of integrated communication, there are organizational and structural barriers to successful implementation of branding strategies is an area in which management will continue to be challenged, and will be.

Brand managers will continue to be challenged in this area. In the future, managers will need to establish organizational and decision-making structures that transcend theory-based “either/or” considerations and instead allow for pragmatic “both/and” solutions.

Looking Forward: Thinking Outside The Box

When facing these new challenges, brands must avoid traditional solutions and instead think of innovative and far reaching ones. Below are four new ways to think about brand building.

Centralized And Decentralized

Previously, centralized brand management was considered fundamental to successful branding. However, currently market and business realities point in another direction. There is now a need to be close to markets.

More global factors influence brands than was previously believed. As such, brand building and brand management require more decentralized structures that would engender efficient management.

This requires clearly defined responsibilities between central and decentralized departments, as well as authoritative entities capable of ensuring that coordination processes facilitate cooperation on clear, common objectives.

Responsibilities must be assigned on the basis of a brand’s experience chain and the relevant communicative focal points, including their relevance for the brand’s business. Establishing rules for dealing with conflicts can turn disputes about power and resources into constructive solutions.

Interactive instruments such as brand management portals and brand filters will enhance the exchange of information as well as facilitate consistent, efficient brand-building activities, even in companies with decentralized organizational structures.

Integration And Differentiation

In global branding, the issues of integration and differentiation have always been salient one. In light of the increased significance of brands as a factor for creating added value, they are more crucial today than ever before. Up until now, companies have had to choose one of the two models to the exclusion of the other.

Today, however, it is no longer possible to adhere to a purely integrated brand model. The need among companies for more differentiation is putting pressure on the integrated brand model.

In the world of business, gut decisions are simply too dangerous. The risk of damaging a successful brand through integration is too great. At the same time, there is tremendous pressure to take advantage of the alluring effects offered by integration. Brand management must find a way to respond to these trends and enable both flexibility and stability.

The future of brand building requires decision-making tools for processes such as these. First, it requires a clearly defined brand model for managing the portfolio, which sets out peripheral activities in addition to the brand’s core areas. This makes it is possible to bring all the various options, from integration to differentiation into alignment.

Second, it requires necessary tools and methods to perform quantitative analysis. They make it possible to raise the value, customer preferences and stretch of the brand. They develop and bring to fruition strategic scenarios that add value to the brand.

National And International

As a result of globalization, many companies see their brands facing unknown challenges in diverse foreign markets. National brands that led the field in their domestic markets must confront unfamiliar socio-cultural conditions and communication channels in foreign countries.

A national brand in a foreign country is not automatically one that’s international. And an international brand is not automatically the same in every country. The spectrum of issues requiring strategic steering decisions is broad, from different languages and tastes to local customs and cultural aspects.

Brand builders with a long-term strategic vision must respond to these challenges with an international brand management structure - a set of clearly defined responsibilities, ranging from global development and decision making to communication and regional implementation, including any adaptations that may be required in respective national operations.

All these must be established on the basis of a clear brand vision and brand personality, with the help of ongoing coordination among all divisions and individuals involved. And it must all be done by a competent, preferably intercultural team, and from a strategically chosen location.

Cross-media And Cross-channel

The blurring and merging of communication and distribution channels can be seen as one of the most important developments of the past few years. In the future, communication with indirect references to sales offerings will be even more crucial than today, when it comes to establishing customer loyalty, identification with the brand and proximity to purchase decisions.

On the other hand, distribution is increasingly becoming a key facet of brand communication. Here again, strict separation between the two categories hinders the exploitation of the brand’s full potential.

From now on, efficient interaction between brand management and sales management will be a decisive factor for brand success.

So to make optimal use of brand management and add value to the company, it will in the future be necessary to analyze all of the diverse brand touchpoints. Once the most important touchpoints have been determined, it will be necessary to formulate the brand themes and define how each of the brand’s various appearances can work in concert to create a coordinated brand identity.

The crucial point here is to think beyond traditional “advertising media.” In the service sector in particular, where customers can’t “touch” what they are buying, customer service and therefore employees themselves becomes a key medium for transporting the brand identity. Once again, there is great potential for success through carefully coordinated interaction between the two disciplines.

Future Branding

The future of brand-building and brand management lies in defining, integrating and steering all of the above requirements. In addition to a more flexible understanding of brand management structures and state-of-the-art instruments, this will also require a new self-image.

Because the relationships are so complex, brand management must demonstrate a high degree of intelligence and competence in the area of relationship management. Successful brand-builders will not simply rely on existing, static organizational structures but create new, more suitable ones.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

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