Branding & the CEO
How do I create real impact through a branding project & sustain the momentum? Are you ready to make these 2 commitments before embarking on a project:
Commitment #1 Ensure change goes beyond communications
When you define your brand, you are articulating your promise to customers. Delivering this promise requires the entire business to work in unison. This means your people, product offering & channels needs to behave in line with the brand promise. Imagine customers asking “What do you do that makes me believe in your brand promise?”.
An effective branding programme needs to be comprehensive – it needs to go beyond communications & effect real change in the way your business behaves. It dedicates time to defining an “on-brand” service culture, signature products that reinforce your promise & re-designing the customer’s experience in your retail & digital channels.
Commitment #2 Be involved & involve the organisation
Branding should align the different parts of the business to deliver its full impact and the CEO is the person that can make it happen. CEOs need to be brand activists, not just brand endorsers. It means playing an active role by building buy-in, aligning strategy with the brand & encouraging collaboration. For a CEO, branding can become a valuable organization transformation tool. Well articulated, a brand promise can be an effective “lighthouse”, providing clarity & the emotional “hook” to align the organization towards a new future.
If your answer was Yes in both cases, you’re ready for a highly engaging & worthwhile branding journey.
“At GE, we believe that innovation can solve the world’s toughest challenges. That belief motivates our people. It is why GE works. It’s the basis for ecomagination.”
Initiated in 2003, Ecomagination is more than a rebranding effort to add a “green” message to the industrial & financial behemoth’s brand. It is a cross-divisional initiative to translate GE’s philosophy of “Imagination at Work” into a new business engine that addresses environmental challenges that the world & customers face, as well as an initiative to relook at GE’s own internal practices. With 140 solutions & US$105 billion in revenues, Ecomagination is growing faster than the rest of GE. Its success has come from Jeff Immelt’s, its CEO, active role in spotting the opportunity, envisioning the possibility & getting his organization to work together to make it tangible.
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