1. Failure to identify and articulate a compelling set of brand values
2. Failure to express the company's mission and vision meaningfully
3. Failure to help employees understand how their jobs have an effect on the brand
4. Failure to motivate employees to become active ambassadors for the brand at all times
5. Lack of know-how in the basics of branding at the operational level
6. A silo mentality within company divisions that wrecks cooperation on building the brand
7. Managers' resistance to changes that would benefit the brand
8. Lack of resources to make changes in how the brand is presented to customers
9. Lack of processes and tools that would make good branding automatic
10. Unwillingness to carry out the adjustments recommended by market research and customer feedback

These shortcomings are not peculiar to any one company, segment, industry or market. According to many leaders in branding I've spoken to, these problems are nearly universal. For each of the ten shortcomings, I've suggested strategies and lessons about how they can usually be resolved.

Let me start by defining briefly what brand implementation is, as well as what it isn't. Brand implementation means making the essence of the brand idea an intrinsic part of every product or service, every item of communication and every employee behavior. These must all be conceived, designed and realized with the brand concept foremost in mind.

The whole of a company's operations and partner relationships must be brought into alignment to drive brand implementation , gone are the days when branding was an incidental function of marketing.

Implementation is often less glamorous than the strategic or creative phases of branding. It involves hard work, investment and change management. Implementation isn't about slapping the logo on everything in sight. Nor is it diving into the latest theory of Emotional or Experience Branding. It's not about Guerilla Marketing or creating a slick brand manual, or recruiting a "logo cop" in Marketing, although those things can be part of the process. Proper brand implementation means a constantly revitalized Brand Experience, a brand manual that is dynamic, constantly updated and a logo cop with real clout to effect changes across the organization.


1. Failure to identify and articulate a compelling set of brand values

It's incredible to some, but a lot of companies actually lack a focused statement of what the brand should mean to its target customers. The result is brand communication that tries to be all things to all people, and ends up meaning nothing to anyone. Many a CFO or VP of Sales will cringe at the idea of excluding any potential customers from the marketing message. They naturally want to cast the net wide. But efforts to broaden the message necessarily dilute it, reducing its impact on those who would love the brand for life, if it were compelling to them.

The classic illustration of this is Apple Computer, which skidded under one visionless CEO after another in the late 80s and early 90s. The company tried to grow market share by broadening the product range, licensing the OS and making the brand more mass-market. Disaster. Only after founder Steve Jobs (a powerful brand unto himself) returned, unveiling the now-legendary "Think different" campaign and getting the company back to its original values, could Apple recover.

Lesson: set your sights on a specific target and put every effort into hitting it precisely. Identify a unique quality that customers can love and put it into a succinct statement. Define what the brand isn't as well as what it is. It often helps to envision and profile a typical (imaginary) customer. What is she like? Why does she love the brand?
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2. Failure to express the company's mission and vision meaningfully

The CEO should be the one person in the company who knows exactly what she or he wants. But when the CEO's vision isn't trickling down to managers and employees, the company functions as if on autopilot.

Mission and vision are essentially the same: an expression of goals and values. They should be original and down-to-earth. For some reason, many CEOs seem enamored of trite phrases like "leader in our industry" or "improving the lives of..." which are so trite they fail to motivate anyone at all.

Lesson: Vision can't be delegated, but by putting it into words it can be. Most large companies have senior officials responsible for strategy, communication or corporate affairs and even the smallest companies can retain a PR specialist occasionally. This person can articulate the vision to employees and other stakeholders.

Be wary of muddling corporate vision with the (shorter-lived) marketing claims of a particular product, even if it's the main product. Genuine vision is broad and lasting.

Once the vision has been nailed down in plain language, it should be enthusiastically disseminated: not just in the frontispiece of the annual report, but in as many employee and partner touchpoints as appropriate. Exploit office accessories like calendars and notepads that have to be bought and paid for anyway. Never be shy about the vision - it's what's driving the company.
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3. Failure to help employees understand how their jobs have an effect on the brand

How many times in our lives have we all said to ourselves, as we chose one shop over another, "people seem nicer (or more knowledgeable) in this place", or "I hear they have lousy customer service there". I have a hunch that a lot of people choose airlines, restaurants, banks, phone companies and many other products and services with the same thoughts in mind.

Few of the people hired to work in sales, call centers, delivery fleets, maintenance or warehousing can be expected to have backgrounds in marketing, PR or other branding disciplines. Yet all of these people routinely have direct contact with hundreds of customers. They are often the only human contact with the brand - the brand ambassadors.

These low-on-the-ladder employees are generally trained only in the mechanics of their jobs. Brand buy-in is glossed over, missing any connection between job performance and building the brand. This misses millions of opportunities to turn a mundane customer touchpoint into a positive brand experience.

This is even truer for job categories that appear to have no direct contact with the customer, such as administrative support. But even when contact is indirect, the customer's experience and satisfaction are greatly enhanced if each employee can grasp the connection between their work and the brand.

Lesson: The highest priority of every HR department should be to help employees understand the brand. Training is paramount, but other operational changes can also have an impact. Positive reinforcement mechanisms should be implemented to let employees know when a customer has appreciated the work they did. Once, when my home phone line wasn't working, an exceptionally helpful technician came and quickly fixed the problem. I tried to post a compliment on the phone company website, only to find there was nowhere to enter such a compliment - only complaints. Duh!
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4. Failure to motivate employees to become active ambassadors for the brand at all times

Companies often balk at asking employees to become brand ambassadors in their personal lives too. "It's just a job, you have to be able to close the door behind you and come back fresh the next day", is the rationale I often hear. But I disagree - we are what we do. In American culture especially, identification with one's work is very powerful.

Why shouldn't someone be so proud of their work that they project their love and support of "their" brand after hours, at home, on vacation?

Lesson: Shyness has no place in a successful business. Once a company has resolved the first three brand implementation issues, getting every employee to become a brand ambassador is a logical follow-on. Employees' friends and relatives will often ask them questions about the firm's products and services, make sure employees are able to answer meaningfully and endorse the brand, 24/7. Wearable items like t-shirts, caps and bags do more than show off the logo: they say, "I'm happy to show the world I love our brand".
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5. Lack of know-how in the basics of branding at the operational level

How many times have we all seen the slick promotional materials of our cable provider, credit-card company, or gizmo-of-the-month club? Then, when the bill arrives, it's an incomprehensible, computer-generated horror tale. This kind of brand disconnect, where what lands in the customer's hands - demanding cash, no less - is utterly removed from the sweet promises of marketing, is frighteningly common.

Marketing will say they had nothing to do with it. Billing is handled by IT, or finance, or operations: and what can they be expected to know about branding?

You can't not communicate, goes the old PR mantra. The same is true for design and branding. It's strange how many companies fail to explain this to their (non-PR, non-designer) managers and employees. Everything produced by a company communicates the brand in some way. If that way isn't the right way, it degrades the brand image. The need to understand this is especially urgent in emerging markets, where employees haven't grown up surrounded and bombarded by brand messages, as in the West.

First lesson: A good way to address this is cross-departmental team building. Brand know-how needs to permeate the entire organization, so start by building contacts between Marketing and everyone else. For instance, designers should visit the computer center where billing statements are printed and mailed; brand managers should have lunch with the operations people, copywriters from the ad agency should visit the call center. The more other departments learn about branding, the better the results reaching customers.

Second lesson: Give employees the tools to make good presentation of the brand automatic. The proper styles and fonts for company letterhead shouldn't just be illustrated in a manual, but installed on every computer as the default choice. The logo artwork shouldn't be jealously guarded by the graphics studio, but be freely available for downloading together with lucid guidelines and contacts to people who can advise on its proper use. The thinking behind the evolution and appearance of the brand should be disseminated as part of the proud lore of the company.

Both of these activities should be accompanied by communication to the employees through company newsletters, Intranets, audiovisual presentations and other channels.
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6. A silo mentality within company divisions that wrecks cooperation on building the brand; and 7. Managers' resistance to changes that would benefit the brand

These two often go hand in hand, so I'll discuss them together. Recently, a local telecommunications company decided to completely change its brand. The old brand was successful on the local market, but there was a change in the ownership structure and the new majority shareholder wanted its global stamp on the operation. It was clear to most observers that the new brand, being global in nature, held additional benefits for the company and customers alike. Yet a stunning thing happened: many senior managers in the company acted and spoke as if the brand change didn't affect them. They refused to discuss the new brand or the impact of the change with their subordinates, neglected to devote adequate resources to implementing the new brand in their area of operations and generally undermined the re-branding project by failing to cooperate.

Branding was perceived as a function of Marketing. I know from talking to a lot of experienced people in the branding field, that this kind of disinterested reaction to branding is endemic in many companies. Change is managed by studiously ignoring it. This is partly due to human nature, since the side effects of change include risk, instability, uncertainty and chaos - all anathema to many managers.

However, as I've discussed above, virtually all operational areas produce some kind of customer touchpoint, and employees who can't relate to the brand will do work that transfers that lack of brand interest to the customer. The risk to the company is that a few departments will scuttle the best efforts of everyone else, oblivious to the one thing that has the power to make them successful and keep their jobs secure: the brand.

Those with entrenched fiefdoms will guard their turf and resist change fiercely. Indeed, it can be hard to persuade a recalcitrant VP to act, if the downside of inaction will only be apparent after the damage has been done.

Lesson: I've seen even the most stubborn managers "get religion" once a groundswell of enthusiasm for the brand swept their departments. When a grass-roots understanding develops among employees of how the brand is relevant to the whole company, being on the "brandwagon" becomes the path of least resistance. Cross-functional cooperation can begin.

A good internal communication program is critical, getting the word out to the rank and file despite managers' recalcitrance. If it's well-packaged, employees will be interested to learn about brand values, company vision, what the brand means to the bottom line and how each department contributes to delivering on the brand. Technology now makes it easier than ever to communicate in parallel with middle managers, rather than through them. There are many channels for doing this - employee pep talks, newsletters, intranet sites, road-show presentations, team-building activities, even the annual picnic.
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8. Lack of resources to make changes in how the brand is presented to customers

How many times has a creative agency, or a go-getter in the marketing department, come up with an exciting, breakthrough brand promotion idea, only to see it shelved because "there's no money for it?" We all know the cliché of the art director complaining that his award-winning ideas for new packaging ended up in the trash, just because they cost a few cents extra. Sometimes hot shots do get carried away; but often, good ideas do simply fall victim to corporate budget inflexibility, especially where investment in the brand is concerned.

Volumes have been written about how to nurture creativity and innovation in business, and I don't intend to recap that subject here. But I do have a few pointers for brand champions who face the "no-budget blues" on a regular basis in their organizations, and find their brand implementation efforts stalled or frustrated by lack of resources.

First, exploit what has already been budgeted for. Often, a contribution to brand building can be made simply by tweaking the design of something the company is already planning to pay for. Look at all the sales kits, giveaways, accessories, calendars, promo mailings, forms, brochures, packaging, signage and other "stuff" the company produces. Find ways to improve or alter it when it comes up for renewal , without affecting the budget or schedule. Tweaking an existing item need not involve commissioning (or paying for) new design work - it can often be done by people whose time is already paid for. Switching to a new vendor who can deliver better for less might also pay off. Changes need not be limited to graphics: tweaking the functionality can also have a positive effect on the user experience.

Sometimes, just bringing someone new into the loop can result in dramatic improvements. Believe it or not, corporate departments often get going on a project that has a major impact on a customer touchpoint, without bothering to bring in anybody with brand know-how until the very end, after it's too late to change anything.

First lesson: As brand champion, you have presumably been building up an awareness of branding throughout the organization, and positioned yourself as a helper rather than a hindrance, so it should be easy to get invited in on projects early enough to have some meaningful input - even if only informally. The important thing is to contribute to an end result that benefits the brand, regardless of who gets the kudos for it. Beware of causing any "creep" or shift in the parameters of the project and exercise the proper spin control so that your efforts to promote the brand don't come off as meddling, hijacking or subverting someone else's project (even if that's what's really happened).

If you feel you haven't reached this position in your organization yet, start working on it today. Over time, you'll be glad you did – and brand implementation will improve.

Second lesson: Hunt for hidden resources, especially in large firms. Some departments always seem to be better funded than others. Maybe Personnel has an untapped training fund, or an underused budget for communication. Maybe one of the sales channels has accrued unspent money that can be reassigned to a branding activity. It's not unlikely that your technology people saved on their original budgets as costs dropped. It never hurts to ask around. Sometimes, a simple cost-saving idea in one area can allow extra expenditures elsewhere. Be creative.

Third lesson: Petition management for inclusion of the big idea in the next budget. If an idea is worth doing, it's worth doing right. No money this year? There's always the next sales cycle, or next year. Use the down time to flesh out the proposal with SWOT analyses, market surveys, ROI estimates, and whatever else clarifies the win-win nature of your proposal. Then, when it's time to draw up new budgets, get your idea approved in a stress-free atmosphere.
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9. Lack of processes and tools that would make good branding automatic

Years ago, shortly after Czechoslovakia freed itself from communism, one of my first jobs in Prague was with a new advertising agency. One of our most prominent clients was a large, still state-owned enterprise that spent a significant amount on advertising in the daily press. We were retained to revamp the brand and develop a slick, western-style image campaign. Since it was a very prestigious client, we invested heavily in the project, bringing in consultants from France and the UK at our own expense and devoting weeks of creative time to developing and helping implement the new brand.

Meanwhile, this company also happened to have an in-house marketing department, which continued to churn out tactical advertising - price promotions and the like - using their old logo, dreadful design, off-message copy, etc. Our ads and theirs would even run alongside each other in the newspapers. The MD of our agency was livid, but his protests to the client fell, if not on deaf ears, then at least on powerless ones. The in-house agency was under the control of a different division, and they wouldn't be dictated to by outsiders. This absurd situation continued for some months, until the old media placement contracts ran out and the communist-era marketing people could be reassigned.

This is obviously an extreme example of corporate mismanagement of the brand, but to a less egregious extent, similar things happen in a lot of companies, even non-state-owned ones in non-post-communist economies.

Most large companies have at least a few written procedures; many have reams of them. In well-organized companies, the creating and updating of those procedures company-wide is centralized. In such cases, it's a relatively simple matter to build a branding check step into the flowcharts, if you talk to the right people.

Next comes internal communication: non-brand managers need to be familiarized with the mantra that "it's all about the brand". Simple online tools like templates, manuals and intranet pages devoted to branding can go a long way to making good branding easy to do. At least one of the world's leading brand consultancies operates corporate identity hotlines for its largest clients: whenever anyone in the client company has a question or needs help with the brand, they pick up the phone and get an immediate, competent answer.

For larger companies with more complex branding needs - perhaps covering many different markets - the answer may be what I call the brand lab. A brand lab is a collaborative space – physical, virtual or both - either in-house or at an agency, where brand practitioners can share know-how and resolve branding issues. The brand lab serves as an archive of brand materials, providing references to what worked (or didn't), a snapshot of how the brand developed over time and, for multinationals, the chance to learn from approaches in different markets.

Lesson: Deploying the brand in the best possible way should always be the default option, if not a no-brainer. Company procedures should eliminate harmful or chaotic branding practices in the shortest possible time and replace them with tools and methods that ensure the brand is promoted rather than degraded.
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10. Unwillingness to carry out the adjustments recommended by market research and customer feedback

Many branding theorists talk about the importance of constantly re-evaluating the market, the competition and the customer, then adjusting or updating the brand accordingly. In practice, many companies skip this step, or if they begin it, fail to finish.

Why? Usually, it is the logical consequence of one or more of the nine shortcomings listed above.

Just as customers' expectations shift and grow, brands must keep pace or lead the way, to keep customers satisfied. When a brand fails to evolve to meet changing customer expectations, all the money invested in the brand to date risks going to waste. Investment in a brand can bring a tremendous return over time, but the implementation of the brand must always be relevant and compelling.

There is no simple formula for why companies fail to keep their brands current, since it depends too much on the specific business to allow generalization. But for the last two years, I have kept a bright orange Post-It™ note on my computer. On it are scribbled four points I once read on Monster.com about surviving in a changing environment:

• Tolerance to ambiguity
• Flexibility
• Adaptability
• Willingness to take risks

These were offered as essential qualities for managers. They're right on the money, because they're exactly the qualities needed to build strong brands.


Lesson: brand champions everywhere would do well to encourage those on whom their implementation programs depend to internalize these four qualities as well. Looking back, I realize that all my professional successes came when I was able to convince a client or a CEO to act in accordance with these points and make a leap of faith for the sake of the brand.


Summary: Overcoming these shortcomings to brand implementation takes work: dedicated people and resources, time and money. It takes a commitment from the top and a genuinely company-wide focus on the priorities of the brand, together with planning and follow through.


With expert guidance, a solution can not only be achieved, but the return on investment can be tremendous. What's at stake can be described without exaggeration as the difference between a brand - and a company - surviving, or eventually going under.


Do it for the love of your brands.


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Contributor: Matthew Healey Trained as a graphic designer, Matthew was originally attracted to design management because he loved the way "soft" design could solve "hard" problems. After the fall of the Berlin wall he went to Eastern Europe, opening his own design and branding studio in Prague in 1993 to help clients maintain their global standards while adapting to local needs. Later he joined a telecommunications start-up in the Czech Republic where he worked to reposition the brand up-market and delved into brand implementation issues that went far beyond the obvious marketing activities. During 2002, he played a central role in successfully rebranding the whole operation to T-Mobile. Matthew now lives with his wife and son in New York City, where he is a freelance brand consultant and graphic designer.
Email: healey_matthew@hotmail.com



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