Higher Grounds

There are higher education, higher thinking and higher grounds. Higher can mean more advance, more technical, more difficult and maybe even more irrelevant. However, one of the way to improve ourselves or a brand is to go higher. How high? High enough for us to guage what is coming next and strategize ahead. Knowing how the market might move and how consumers might react to it.

Why brands or businesses hire external consultants is to advise them why and how they should make that move. Consultants cannot tell the future nor have a crystal ball in their suitcase. Consultants are here to elevate you, gain higher ground of added advantage, create value and not make empty promises. End of the day, higher grounds can only be attained if foundations are firm. Foundations such as leadership, foresight and a solid dedicated team that rallies behind a common purpose. Take neccessary risks and learn from failures.

Here is Girl Effect, your chance to be at higher ground and be more than ourselves.

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Why should brands look inward first?

Inward in this context does not mean self brandishing. Rather, inward here means ability to self reflect and build strong foundations for the brand.

Brands are measured in areas of awareness, resonance, impact and sales (profitability). These factors often form the benchmarks of brand research today. Indeed, they are important for the measurement of brand success in the marketplace. However something is missing here which overlooks four major success qualities for brands to go a lot further.

      

Leadership – Great leaders lead great teams. Great teams = great brands.

Tenacity – A purpose-driven belief than can weather hard knocks. Passion fuels their purpose.

Integrity – Ability to do the right thing when tested.

Giving – Social responsibility. Giving always start with an open hand not a close fist. Which one will your customers rather hold?

I argue a brand’s ability to achieve greatness will depend on these inward qualities. The leader of an inward looking brand appreciates longevity and tenacity. Can the team rally behind the leader when stormy weather closes in? Bad product reviews, drop in consumer confidence, declining profits etc. Storms WILL eventually come so do not wait to react before it hits. Enron is an example of a skewed outward looking brand for its stakeholders, employees and customers but we know a weak wall breaks down over time. Short-termism is extremely tempting compared to a marathon which is long and arduous. The high road is always the tougher one but pays to prepare.

Avoiding the pitfalls of hurried and myopic decisions to have short term gains, inward looking brands are with better foresight. Inward looking brands may be giving up some immediate opportunities instead of having it all now but they spend time to work on what truly matters which are the insides; the team behind the brand. 

An inward looking brand always prevails with slow twitch muscles for the long runs. How are those legs for your brands today? Maybe its time to reflect and change.

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Pushing the Reset button

John Hope Bryant is an American financial literacy, poverty eradication activist and above all, a leader of giving hope. He is recently here in Singapore for the Social Innovation Forum '09 and has given a short address to City Harvest Church. He has touched on how the current economy is not a ‘crisis’ but a reset instead. I would like to share how this thinking implicates our current value system and its impact on how consumers view brands around us.

Pushing the Reset button
This economic ‘crisis’ has affected the lives of billions in these 2 years. Word has got out that we are on the recovery path. If we are to purely look at numbers, probably too myopic. The fundamental issue is of power and character imbalance that led to where we are now. All it takes are a group of self proclaim ‘leaders’ who made a series of wrong decisions for themselves. A tipping point of wanting too much and lack of justly character to self correct. This is a fundamental problem of social values that need to be reset which we know is a lot harder to tackle than simply numbers. In Singapore, we are not spared from this harsh reality on our value erosion; rising divorce rates, education scams, underage promiscuity and abandonment of elderly parents. A reset of our values should be in order.

Taking John’s way of love leadership may be an answer to address this reset. Could it be first using love to strengthen and correct our fundamental values? I guess there is only one way to know, try it out!

Resetting brand perspective in the marketplace
Brands that take the brunt of these value scrutiny especially financial institutions have to take the first move to communicate their plans for this reset. Threading back investors and consumers in this process is a tricky process. Surely, consumer perception in their belief of trust and empathy will evolve because of this situation. It will thus filter down to the choice of brands we use tomorrow. Are brands willing to step up and communicate their stand in this reset? Those who do so now will reap the rewards in the days to come.

Picture taken from NTUC Income website.

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Part 2: Leadership Branding for the Franchise Model

I will take a few minutes to talk about renaming this blog. I call it 'Brand Tribes'. It is written for you and if you like what you read please share it (@LimLeong) amongst your own network . If you dislike this, hope you come visit again. Now why Brand Tribes?

A brand is a symbol, a name and logo that represents a product or service. A tribe is a rather 'ancient' word to describe a group of people who got together because an intent or idea they believed in. There is also a tribe leader who leads and manage the tribe or brand owner. Today, brand tribes are groups of consumers or people who follows an idea, cause or brand with a high degree of engagement. These groups are the ones who talks about your brand and in turn, makes them extremely rewarding to have. Both from profit point of view and brand building too. You want to have them. In fact, I believe that is the strongest way to define brand loyalty.

Brand Tribes is a movement to help brands form their own tribes. Brand Tribes intent is to get deeply connected tribe followers (consumers) who follow the brand that provides them with compelling experiences. At the same time, elevating the brand owner to be a successful tribal leader that leads and grow the brand. Read about Tribes by Seth Godin.

Back to the Leadership Branding for the Franchise Model; success factor for replication.

A franchise model works like this. Locate franchisee, build store, manage store and sell. Branding, I hope is not pass on like a manual. Does the franchisee really get it? I believe the brand owner bought into a 'yes' during the pitch. I sure hope its not just about the figures and a big smile.

Oftentimes a franchise model main challenge is controling replication. How does the brand owner ensures that the brand remains true to its brand foundation? How to really control the same standard of brand experience etc. Quoting one of the most successful brands out there that has tackled replication successfully; McDonald's. They applied brand leadership in their replication model (they bought back all their franchise).

The largest fast food chain McDonald's are a little different from country to country today yet having the same quality standards and taste. Realising the importance of cultural needs and their differences, the brand needs to evolve without losing its 'McDonad's brand experience'. Credit to their emphasis on staff training.

More importantly, a large contributing factor goes on to passing down their leadership qualities which ensure the success of the mother brand in different geographic regions. Ensuring proper brand steward training with these right qualities to create the same great level of customer experiences from Norway down to Australia.

Thanks for reading and for more insights on leadership. Read this blog by Enrico Varella who is a tribe leader on this topic. This concludes my 2 part Leadership Branding series.

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Part 1: Importance of leadership branding.

Why brand leadership and not the leader?

Time. A brand can outlive its leader. Its about brand legacy. A great brand may thrive through a set of leadership qualities and has higher chance of survival as a leader does not live forever.

"Leadership matters more because it is tied not to a person but to the process of building leaders." -Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood, LEADERSHIP BRAND. This pretty much sums it up nicely.

In another analogy, quoted by the book, it is not about branding a person (a particular great mum) but motherhood (her great leadership of love, care and values). What this mum is about to hand down has far greater positive effect than herself which has limited timeline. Yes, reality is that I only have 40 over years of shelf life, maybe shorter. A brand life span might be a few times longer, if the sucessor is a great leader of course.

Hence, for any given brand to sustain itself, great leaders must realise that they too must develop a process and system to sustain and permeate their brand leadership qualities. Oftentimes, you see the wise sage hand holding board meetings and making sure every detail ticks. It is pretty Asian in fact. It is the same with certain political parties.

In the business context, success replication of a brand like franchising should take on leadership branding rather than just 'photocopying the brand'. Thinking the brand experience can be applied anywhere. How wrong can that be! I will touch on this in Part 2: Leadership Branding for the Franchise Model.

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