Brands in the Boardroom

“If you are able to demonstrate how brands generate value and can orchestrate the intangible relationship between an organization and its stakeholders, you will be heard in the boardroom.” – Marc Cloosterman, CEO @ VIM Group

Marc Cloosterman’s Brands in the Boardroom series explores: 

• how branding is seen from a boardroom perspective; 
• the financial side of branding and what brand managers need to know when discussions spin around finances in the boardroom; 
• the three key areas accelerating change in the world of brand management; 
• the advantages that come from brand unification, explaining why it’s now time to unify brand architecture and operations.

Here are a few excerpts from the series…

PART 1 | The Business Side of Branding

My recommendation here is to always speak about the brand as the most valuable intangible asset and to demonstrate how this asset can support business performance, which is why I love the business side of branding. On average, brand value represents around 20% of the market capitalization of the top 500 companies in the world (Brand Finance).

If you are able to demonstrate how brands generate value and can orchestrate the intangible relationship between an organization and its stakeholders, you will be heard in the boardroom. After all, exhibiting this relationship is not an easy, one-dimensional thing, but it’s what board members understand. Achieve this and I predict that you will instigate questions like, ‘Okay, how does that work then and what do we need to get it right?’ And right there, the journey of making the business case and roadmap for your brand growth begins. This thinking will enable you to sketch out the why, what, and how to go about this, and to obtain the mandate that goes with it to start your journey. You’ll soon be coordinating the brand to drive business performance. And isn’t that the most valuable brand purpose?

PART 2 | Financial Engineering for Brands

When looking at the internal use of corporate-brand licensing, the advantages are evident:

• Central governance and control of the companies’ most valuable intangible asset: the brand.
• Obtaining an understanding of the internal valuation of the brand, from the heads of tax and finance.
• Changing the paradigm around accounting for the brand — shifting from cost to profit, which generates value.
• Legal contracts between a licensor and licensees ensure and enable discussions at arm’s length about the rights and obligations of both parties. This governance is quite a contrast to a central brand management function that governs the brand in a larger organization, without having a clear mandate, which often leads to a lot of discussions, triaging and negotiations as a consequence — all leading to a less orchestrated brand experience.
• Great preparation and governance to begin deploying corporate brand licensing with external parties, either in adjacent geographies or to extend the current use of the brand across other categories.

Apart from these valuable, financial engineering considerations, there’s an even better reason to look at increasing governance for corporate brands: The changing paradigm on how to manage brands to be fit for the future. Whereas ‘brand’ used to be ‘simple’ corporate identities, consisting of simple elements like a logo, color, font, and possibly tagline, it has now become an omnichannel and omnipresent brand experience. Managing or policing that has become impossible and ‘orchestration’ of that experience is the new way to go.

PART 3 | The Future of Brand Management

Gone are the days where organizations could manage their brand or corporate identity by putting it on everything and logo-stamping their way around the world.

Today, brand management is about orchestrating the dialogue between your organization and its various stakeholders. It’s about doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do right, and becoming increasingly agile – developing the organizational ability to move fast, give room to new initiatives, evaluate, and adapt.

Thanks to these developments, managing your brand has become much more interesting but simultaneously much more complicated. The era of simply steering, controlling, or managing your identity is over and we have entered the era of orchestrating your brand experience – a complex symphony involving the organization and its various audiences. Orchestrating a brand experience sounds simple, but it isn’t. It’s the whole spectrum of expressions, (behavior, actions, verbal and non-verbal communication) that create an impression of who you are and what you stand for.

PART 4 | Unifying Brand Architecture & Operations

Unification creates value at almost all levels, and given the number of organizations that have already embarked on this process, it seems that the business community agrees. Fundamentally, unification promotes harmonization of the experiences brands deliver for stakeholders, including customers. 

This combined coherency of brand experience enables organizations to create deeper, more powerful connections, translating into brand loyalty and advocacy. 

Unification, and simplification, are therefore important mechanisms to reduce operational expenditure, streamline internal processes, and improve overall brand performance – highly desirable outcomes for leadership teams.

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