Expert Advice

I'm convinced that we've got a brand issue which needs resolving, but I'm struggling to convince senior management of the need to invest it - do you have any hints on data which will help me to convince them?

A. Perhaps the simple answer is that every brand always has a brand issue and that it should be seen as an area of continual focus and investment rather than a one-off quick fix. However, you need to start at sometime and this is often best done when there is something significant and tangible that non-brand aware boards can relate to.

Believe it or not, now during the worst recession in memory, is the ideal time. The data required will very much depend on the issue that needs resolving so let’s just ignore that for the moment.

The real challenge here is convincing the board and most good boards are engaged if you can demonstrate the impact in one of the following areas:

• Increased revenues
• Increased margins
• Achievement of the corporate strategy
• Increased productivity

I don’t know from your question which of these commercial goals is most appropriate so let me illustrate with an example of my own. A recent client had a brand with weak positioning and was almost always competing on price. Their issue was poor differentiation. They were actually better than their competitors in some parts of their market due to their heritage but they were too nervous to align themselves too strongly with just part of the market. The effect was a lack of confidence in the sales operation and a lack of pride everywhere else. The challenge here was to convince the board that by aligning their brand with a sector they could achieve higher margins within that sector and gain and retain more higher value clients as a result.

The approach was to do a quick and dirty survey of clients and non-clients across sectors to demonstrate that they were serving one sector much better than the others, that a sector specialism was valued by prospects and that by doing the numbers they would be significantly better off than by pursuing their current strategy. We didn’t need to do an internal survey but that would have also demonstrated the lack of clarity within the business and it was an option we considered.

With boards nothing is more convincing than data and so by investing a small proportion of your budget into research you move your issue from being an “opinion” to being “what the market thinks”. If however the board ignores that then my suggestion would be to move to a more enlightened business because you would be fighting a losing battle.