Brand Stewardship

I interned at an famous PR firm last summer, and its 360 brand stewardship help clients to manage their brand stewardship. This is a perspective from an agency to help their brand management. It might be useful for those who are interested in brand management at an agency.



The Brand InfluencersIf you have been involved in branding a company, a product, a service or even a public education program during the last decade, you have quickly come to realize Figure 1, below, is a simplistic way of looking at brand communications. Frankly I'm not sure this model was ever in sync with reality, but it was the way branding was viewed up until the late 80s and by some into the mid 90s. It was a simple world back then—or at least we thought it was. A company created a product's brand image, brand attribute and brand promise. Then it communicated the brand—usually through advertising—directly to each of its target audiences.

Figure 1 Mass Communication Transmission Model
Marketers slowly came to realize that "the company" was not the only holder to the "brand key." Marketers who continued to rely on the Transmission Model fell behind. We saw products like Levi lose their foothold on the blue jean market partly because there was more competition in the marketplace, but also because they did not realize other influencers were affecting the buying habits and brand loyalty of their traditional customers. More direct advertising wasn't the answer to Levi's troubles in the 80s and 90s, what Levi's needed was to identify who (in addition to the company itself) was influencing their marketplace and more importantly their products' image.
Smart marketers quickly embraced the Network Marketing model of brand building (Figure 2) in the late 80s. But when they did, they realized that the hard work had only just begun. Once they agreed that there are multiple influencers who affect a brand's position in the marketplace, they realized it was vitally important to identify each influencer and communications build programs to reach them—traditional advertising was only one tool and not always the most effective way to influence a specific target.

Figure 2 Network Marketing Interconnection
Figure 2 is actually a simplistic 2-dimensional model of the interconnection between brand influencers. The model should actually be 3-dimensional and include arrows between and among all the target audiences—they influence each other and in turn influence the perception of the brand. There is no beginning and no end. Welcome to the world of Ogilvy PR's 360° Brand Stewardship®. Ogilvy PR developed 360° Brand Stewardship® to identify all the potential brand influencers and create a process for communicating to each of them, not just through advertising but by the most powerful channel available depending on the characteristics of the specific target. The premise of the Ogilvy PR process is that the brand must actually surround the target audience through every channel and influencer appropriate whether that includes advertising, direct mail, the Internet, public relations, community relations, events and promotions, word of mouth or product placement.
If you are a brand manager, how do you start the process of identifying all the brand influencers, how they communicate and how you can communicate with them? Charting it out on paper is the first step. Listening closely to your customer and their customers is also important. Understanding the competitive, consumer and cultural context of your product is absolutely essential. And remember, just when you think you understand each and every influencer—the marketplace dynamics will likely pull the rug out from under you so don't become complacent.
Smart brand stewards keep an influencer chart on the corner of their desk constantly updating it and making notes in the margins. There is rarely a week that goes by in which they don't hear an insight or uncover a piece of research worth noting.

Your communications partner should be doing the same thing no matter which marketing discipline they call home. At Ogilvy PR, we start from a brand-neutral perspective and then combine the right messages, with the right messenger and the appropriate communications channels to reach brand influencers and ultimately our target audience. Today, successful brands are not constructed, they are nurtured, massaged and painstakingly molded, and refined over time.