Jens Lundgaard

Five lessons in corporate brand building from the big boys

There’s been some talk in the last weeks about FMCG companies investing in and building their corporate brands.

Research by media monitoring company Precise, published in March 2013 says that consumers are more likely to view FMCG companies favourably if they develop a recognisable corporate brand.

Now comes the news that Johnson & Johnson have unveiled a new corporate slogan, prompting Mark Ritson to write in Marketing Week last week in less than complimentary terms about various attempts at corporate brand building.

What all this proves is that the audience for corporate brands has extended beyond the traditional confines of city, press and internal staff to include consumers, and the principles of brand management are being applied.

In fact, both Reckitt Benckiser and Unilever place so much importance on their corporate brands that they use digital asset management systems to manage them.

by Jens Lundgaard 17 May 2013 09:30am 2 comments

How to encourage all your employees to use your brand/marketing portal

According to Gartner, marketers are becoming increasingly responsible for buying marketing related technology and services. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2017 the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO.

Here at Brandworkz, we are seeing a growing trend for marketers to implement online brand management or digital asset management systems.

In line with this trend, marketing and brand teams in global companies are becoming used to using their brand management portal or digital asset management system widely and frequently and probably take its working resources pretty much for granted.

But we believe your brand portal can be a much greater an asset to your business if everyone in the organization makes use of it.

It’s true that people working in other departments don’t always see themselves as directly responsible for the brand. And yet, if your HR team, sales people and IT department can also be converted to brand evangelism, the outcome can be hugely positive in terms of building your business.

Here are five ways in which you can help make that happen...

by Jens Lundgaard 22 March 2013 11:48am 0 comments

The brand new year: key trends

Marketing automation on the rise, social media going ballistic, location-based marketing ramping up. We certainly saw some major changes in the brand management landscape in 2012.

But what do we predict as the key trends in branding and marketing as 2013 gets under way? Let’s have a look.

by Jens Lundgaard 22 January 2013 15:01pm 0 comments

Four principles of great country branding

He’s been saving the world from assorted villains these past 50 years – and now James Bond is backing Britain. Currently being aired in 21 countries, VisitBritain’s new promotional campaign has put 007 on the case.

VisitBritain’s ‘GREAT Britain’ campaign also draws together major events, sporting achievements and commercial partners to promote the UK as a great country in which to live, study, invest and do business – as well as to visit.

In my book, the GREAT Britain campaign is a real winner. So what can it teach those of us in branding and brand management about the principles of country branding?

by Jens Lundgaard 25 October 2012 09:12am 2 comments

Four ways to maximise your marketing budget

The last IPA Bellwether report indicated that UK marketing spending had fallen due to deteriorating business confidence and cost-cutting measures.

Marketing budgets were hit by weaker than expected sales and concerns about the strength of the economy in Europe.

In the face of reduced budgets, the challenge for marketers is to find ways to become more efficient.

We need to think smarter about how to get more out of our marketing budgets and to make sure that we invest the resources we have in the channels that demonstrate the best returns.

by Jens Lundgaard 27 September 2012 09:46am 0 comments

Three parallels between Olympic athletes and brand management

No-one can fail to have been inspired by the 2012 Olympics we have just witnessed. Sports men and women competing at the top of their game to win the highest prize possible in sport.

They invest years preparing for the moment they go for gold. It is humbling and also motivating to witness that determination to be the best.

While reflecting on the efforts of the Olympic athletes, I believe there are some parallels with brands. Here are three of them...

by Jens Lundgaard 22 August 2012 08:54am 1 comment

Three tips for building a stronger brand

Businesses with strong, consistent, well managed brands have higher market valuations than their competitors, but building brand value involves much more than developing a great looking visual identity.

Brand building is all about managing the customer experience whether that is through your products, packaging, price, advertising communications, website, email marketing or even your sales personnel.

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.

Here are three tips for building a stronger brand...

by Jens Lundgaard 04 July 2012 10:08am 4 comments

How to choose a format for your brand guidelines

Your brand guidelines and brand manual are the most important documents your company will ever produce.

A bold statement, but the truth is that these documents are your brand ‘bible’. They communicate why you exist, tell your brand stories, and communicate how it should be expressed.

Everyone tasked with communicating your brand should be consulting these instruction manuals whenever they are creating branded materials.

In many businesses the reality is somewhat different. Time and effort are spent creating brand guidelines, only for them to be left on someone’s hard drive or copies printed, distributed and ‘filed’ in the bottom of the marketing team’s drawers.

Brand consistency suffers as people may not thoroughly understand the brand.

by Jens Lundgaard 31 May 2012 12:41pm 2 comments

Brand management and consistency: is everyone singing the same song?

Controlling brand consistency is a struggle that many if not all brand and marketing managers face over the course of their working lives.

Keeping track of a global brand across a myriad of communication channels is key to maintaining its strength, which translates into customer acceptance and ultimately sales.

Brand consistency is vital to a business because it builds recognition which consumers use to evaluate their purchase decisions. Consistency also brings clarity which consumers trust.

When consumers trust your brand they become loyal. And what everyone wants is loyal customers.

But what do you do when you start to lose a grip of your brand? You take a hit when the levels and complexity of marketing activity exceeds the amount of control the business has over brand management.

There will be less coherence in the way your brand appears which leads to loss of clarity in the minds of your consumers about what you stand for, leading to lower sales and less return-on-investment in your brand communications.

So what can you do to improve brand management and therefore brand consistency?

by Jens Lundgaard 02 May 2012 12:58pm 6 comments