Every day, business leaders need to realise the potential of their company.
They need to grow its value, command healthy margins and gain loyal customers. They do the necessary. They develop their leadership, cut their costs, optimise their supply chains, improve their call-centres…
But is it sufficient? How do they get their hands on ‘a difference that matters’? How do they bring to the boardroom that Holy Grail – a long-term competitive advantage?
In their ongoing wrestle, how many business leaders treat their brand strategy as an integral part of their business strategy?
A change of mindset is required.
Why would you omit the single largest generator of shareholder value from the development of your business strategy? Far from being the soft stuff, a brand generates 30 to 40 percent of a business’s shareholder value. Your brand has the potential to be your guiding ethos, your difference that matters.
Business strategy and brand strategy should be developed concurrently, informing each other. Together they should generate the twin strands of your company’s DNA.
Developing your brand will help you develop your business.
Many iconic companies make their mistakes, weather their storms, and still grow from strength to strength.
Their competitors look on and recognise what’s happening. The playing field isn’t level. Brands gives these companies what we term, Unfair Competitive Advantage.
Kirsten Foster, former Executive Director of Strategy, Landor
A brand should support your business strategy and company vision. The ability of a brand to deliver the future business strategy… may be a softer measurement of brand valuation, but it is also a more agile measurement that reflects the true value of a brand.
When your business strategy and your brand strategy are developed at the same time, informing each other, they become the twin strands of a company’s DNA. They result in what we term Unfair Competitive Advantage.