23 Aug 2011, by Jens Lundgaard, Founder & CEO, Brandworkz

How to make your brand more valuable than the competition

How do some of the world's biggest brands like Nike, Coca-Cola and Redbull achieve consistent growth and outstanding success? And how could you follow the same steps and add 20% to your company value?

Coca-Cola charges a 112% premium over own-brand equivalents. This premium is possible based on the emotional response Coke generates in the consumer's mind, created through the company's marketing and branding activity. In fact, almost 50% or $73billion of Coca-Cola's overall company value is currently attributed to their brand equity.

Over the past 25 years there has been a massive shift towards company value being generated from intangibles. In the early eighties the tangible assets (buildings, machinery, stock, etc.) of the top 500 US companies accounted for over 75% of total company value. Today they account for only 20%, meaning 80% of the value of the Fortune500 is now made up of intangibles!

As Brand Value is a key intangible, this is a crucial insight - from both an investment and operational perspective:

• For brand owners, the focus on creating and sustaining brand messaging and marketing becomes a much smarter investment.
• For agencies comes the opportunity to showcase to clients how important it is to get the right partner that can focus on the quality and communication of the brand.

Walmart, for example, has over 600 different shampoos available. In fact, there is a chronic over-supply of goods in the western world. Let's take a look at the key differentiators that a product and company can use to differentiate and generate profitable sales, such as pricing, quality, customer service, product / R&D and branding, including brand management.

1. Pricing: Only one brand in each category can really differentiate itself by being the cheapest. Hopefully not yours or your clients' brands. Profit margins are low and competition is around the corner waiting to undercut you. Conversely, differentiating yourself through a high priced, luxury product, will only be successful when combined with large doses of branding/marketing.
2. Quality: In most industries, the leading participants have achieved equivalent quality - how much better are those Nike trainers really? Quality is no longer a winning point. It's a ticket to get on the field.
3. Customer service: Great customer service will always be important, but rarely does it impact acquisition of new clients; they will only experience the customer service after they've signed up. Naturally a company must strive to achieve both a high rate of repeat business as well as gain new customers.
4. Product & Innovation: In many sectors, this is and will always remain one of the key drivers for success. If you don't have a great, consistent product which stays highly relevant to your target market, you will not get repeat sales and you will get a negative word-of-mouth/social effect to boot because of disappointed customers. Without product and innovation your long-term viability will be close to zero.
5. Branding: Branding and brand management now remains as one of the key drivers of sustainable differentiation and sales. Without good branding, potential customers are less aware of any advantage you have in the other differentiators listed above. Without good brand management and control, your global message and clear communication may get lost in local or third party execution.

Investment in building and sustaining yours or your clients' brands is crucial to business success and one of the only factors that remains fully within your control.

Brand building is all about managing the customer experience. Whether through products, packaging, price, advertising communications, website, email marketing, sales personnel, etc. Each time a customer interacts with your brand, that experience defines who you are, how you operate, and how you're different from your competitors.

Nike's customers understand what it stands for and buy into it because brand management is one of Nike's many strengths and has resulted in it becoming one of the world's most successful and highly valued companies. Why? Because the brand is the same every time its customers interact with it, wherever that is. Messaging, imagery, identity, brand values - they are consistent wherever and whenever you see the brand; nothing is left to chance. Everything is controlled by Nike's brand management team and their brand agency partners.

When you manage your brand well, you build brand value.

An online brand management system makes the brand, its assets, and everything associated with communicating it's meaning available to those responsible for building that brand. It is equally important for communications & marketing departments to understand how to express a brand and its messages as it is for every employee, supplier and external agency employed. A brand management system offers simple yet powerful tools to help brands communicate seamlessly, whoever is doing it.

Internally, a new manager can make decisions quicker if she is taught and experiences the fundamental (brand) values and what they strive to achieve.

Externally, a marketing agency is empowered to produce better campaigns which truly further the product and company in the right way when it's crystal clear what the main differentiators are and the agency has easy access to all the right visual assets such as strategic positioning information, guidelines, logos, images and artworks.

A brand management system enables all the right parties to access the right brand materials at the right time and produce marketing communications consistent with the brand to maximize impact in the marketplace. Red Bull's success is partly owed to their tightly managed brand and image, something that would be very hard to do without an online brand management system. Having a strong brand attracts investment and consumer interest, which in turn translates into sales and increased company valuation.

A good online brand management toolkit should enable you to:

- Explain and justify your 'Reason for Being'

In a brand management system your positioning documents, strategic communications documents, explanation of your 'Big Idea' are all available at the touch of a button to those who are making strategic business decisions or producing communications materials. The notion of a company having a Big Idea - a story behind why it exists and how this matters - is becoming increasingly important. Consumers don't just want products. They want to connect on an emotional and ethical level. People always look for ways to belong, and brands are increasingly important in playing this role.

- Ensure assets and messaging is communicated clearly and correctly

A brand management system makes your visual guidelines and tools accessible online; including key messaging points used in all the various output produced every day by sales, marketing, PR, corporate communications and other departments. This also includes logos, images, videos, templates, etc. - typically referred to as DAM - Digital Asset Management. A good brand toolkit will ensure that brand assets can be automatically delivered in all the formats relevant to the need of the marketer.

When everyone is using the same system and material all communication reinforces the same core points.

- Create on-brand material at no or low cost - every time!

Recently, innovative technologies like Dynamic Templating and Web-to-print functionality allows employees, affiliates and licensees to customize and localize on-brand marketing collateral easily and effectively. These tools, supported by automated tutorials, best practices and approval workflow functionality, empowers you or your clients to save thousands of man-hours and can reduce on-brand asset creation up to 80% overnight.

A Brand Management system is a key factor in building successful and high-value brands. By achieving brand consistency and creating and maintaining a brand-driven company, you generate significant additional company value. While doubling your company value through branding and marketing like Coca Cola may take a few years; putting a solid foundation and brand management system in place will help you towards the first 20% in months, not decades.