Brand building is a crucial part of business strategy

I’ve been building brands since the beginning of my career, and I truly believe it’s one of the most interesting aspects when it comes to unleashing a business’ full potential. Branding is by no means “just” a marketing maneuver. There is much more to it than logos and brand films. It’s about reading your market and making strategic choices -and importantly about being relevant.

Today we live in a digital world and brand building is more important than ever due to the fact that many decisions are made in front of a device and not in a physical context. A strong brand is an effective tool in building customer affinity, loyalty, as well as creating the foundation to charge premiums beyond the functional value delivered. A strong brand can also withstand change better, see e.g. Edelman’s Special Report on Brand Trust where 60% state that in this time of a crisis, they turn to brands they are absolutely sure they can trust. A brand is an asset that ties a business together and creates an emotional connection which transcends functional product choices. And more importantly – a strong brand enables one to win more business.

Effective brand building while managing risk

Since Maersk’s transformation strategy was created back in 2016, we have focused on transforming Maersk going from a conglomerate to a customer-driven global leader within container logistics. This has of course included a range of strategic choices when it comes to Maersk’s many different brands. Up until then, Maersk’s brand architecture was a product of numerous acquisitions and re-organizations, which some brands have been retained, others extinguished and some revived. None of which was consistent with the vision of connecting and simplifying customers’ supply chain as the integrator of container logistics – therefore not giving us the ability to unleash the full potential of the Maersk brand.

Back in 2017, we made calculations on Maersk’s estimated brand value based on effective brand realization and rationalization. It was estimated up to 750m USD. Stating that the potential is enormous would be saying the obvious, however in all seriousness, it takes more than just looking at data to fulfill. 

You don’t make a business strategy and build a brand accordingly overnight. At Maersk, we have set a long-term strategy for how we most effectively could build a Maersk brand which supports our vision. And when I say long-term, I really mean long-term. We are talking about a horizon of 8-10 years. We work with maintaining as few brands as possible, but as many as necessary to win in the market. More brands allow for customers who’s needs are not well served by what Maersk offers and stand for to still do business with us, thus minimizing our business risk. At the same time, some of our brands bring equity, and we therefore strategically work on how they complement the Maersk journey. It’s what I call a practical path towards the long-term objective, while managing short term risk. And it’s especially relevant in times of crisis, where all investments go – and should go – to where we gain the best ROI.

Data is (also) key here

The brand transformation follows the strategy plan and is orchestrated by clear and strategic choices based on analytics and data. But how do we determine whether a brand adds incremental value to our portfolio, you might ask? 

It is no surprise for anyone who knows me that we of course focus on ‘customer first’. We want to understand the customer’s starting point in order to build the adequate journey as the end goal remains to build towards Maersk being strong and relevant to all customers.

Secondly, we look at the perception of the brands in question and see how strongly these meet the drivers of decision making. It is a purely data driven exercise supported by external unbiased researchers from top leading partners. The data give us an understanding of the theoretical potential, which is then later matched with the practicalities of implementation before a final decision is made with the CEO. It can take up to a year to conclude an analysis and make a final decision. An example of such a decision is when we turned Maersk Line into Maersk as we no longer only handled ocean liner shipping.

Because we put massive weight on data, analysis and quality execution our decision making is consistent and well-founded. And we see that it pays off. According to the year on year results in our latest brand analysis targeted brand perception changed +13%, our top of mind awareness increased +20%, favorability +8% and consideration +13%. And most impressive is the 34% increase on willingness to recommend brand.

Build a strong future

As part of the brand building journey, we also look at which parts of the business are best shared across brands, and how we ensure certain things are built for standardization and reuse – and combined appropriately for differentiated and targeted customer growth. It’s the exact same thing we do, when we build platforms or digital products. To have two of the same products offered with same service and price – but just with two different colored logos is simply a waste of resources. But to leverage the same strong backbone packaged as three different offers suited to three different customer groups e.g. Maersk, Hamburg Sud and Twill – is simply deploying B2C thinking to effective management in B2B.

This brings me back to where I started.

Brand building might be born in marketing, but it is a crucial part of a business strategy that can make or break your ability to unleash your business’ full potential and win the market. But it takes a village. It involves the whole organization starting from management going all the way through to customer support, and in our case the colleagues loading ships on docks all over the world.

With that being said, the responsibility of setting a clear direction, providing the right analytical and data-based foundation for the strategy and decision making, and going to market in a brave, open and trusting cannot be a result of democracy, but a tight collaboration with those who best hold the capabilities and who is in charge. I am so proud of the relevance and power in what it brings, and I am proud of Maersk choosing to move forward with change. Maersk are clearly and continuously becoming more meaningful to people around the world, our NPS has the last four years grown from -20 to plus 23 and probably more importantly where our industry was before seen as a risk to business we are now an enabler of growth or sound business partnering -as seen many places around the world during Covid-19.

I hope you know what the essence and value of your brand is, but also that you are ready to choose change to be relevant and build a stronger future for your company as we have been able to do at Maersk.

So in closing -watch this video, maybe again, but think about whether you are willing to change to be relevant or become a memory.....