Level 5 Blog

It is a most unromantic of takes on a subject that has enjoyed an articulated lorry load of furiously filigreed romanticism over the past several months. But it needs to be said.

Strictly speaking, the lovely Kate Middleton—bride-to-be of HRH Prince William of Wales, future Queen of the Commonwealth, cause célèbre of impending nuptials predicted to attract as many as two million viewing eyeballs—amounts to naught but a brand extension for the world’s most regal of brands.

Her addition to the royal family marks a change that must be orchestrated inside the very strictest of conditions. Yet given the sheer amount of stuff that’s outside of the central characters’ control, it’s a near impossible task—a plight with which many brands can sympathize.

Case(s) in point. In the last frenzied days leading up to the blessed event, the consumer goods machine went into overdrive, unveiling everything from heart-shaped donuts (Dunkin Donuts) and English-garden-inspired ice cream cakes (Baskin Robbins) to Post-it notes (whose writ-large “May you stick together forever” messages flutter around London) and condoms (Crown Jewels Condoms of Distinction are marketed with the slogan “lie back and think of England”).

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The great chicken-egg debate finds resolution at last with an American firm whose CEO believes fiercely that it all begins with the egg.

A fragile economic recovery, combined with a louder-than-ever call for strategic hiring, continues to pit two hiring philosophies against each other, both with implications for your brand—do you hire for skillset or culture fit?

Alan Lewis, owner of Grand Circle Corporation, a $600-million Boston company that arranges international travel for older Americans, cuts to the yolk of the matter with a strong case for values-based (i.e. cultural) recruitment.

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As a recent Globe article points out, a dozen Canadian mining companies hold $3.3 billion in assets in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a central African state whose government has sanctioned unimaginable acts of brutality on its citizens. Without engaging in a complex debate about the morality of such decisions, at the least it must be recognized that these decisions can have dramatic effects on an organization’s brand and business.

The need for consistency among a brand’s vision, mission and values, and those embraced by a strategic partner, whether corporate or national in nature, is tremendous. Either there’s alignment there that supports the brand and builds value on the balance sheet, or misalignment that degrades both. Full stop.

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“Do campaign failures… signal the end of social media?” asks Jonathan Salem Baskin in a recent AdAge blog that trashes Burger King and Pepsi for social media crusades that, apparently, did precisely nothing to elevate their brands. In it he takes aim at “silly social media” that strays from brand focus and gets giddily tangled in the marvelous frivolity of technology’s expanding offerings.

He points to a couple of apparently successful social media campaigns—by Old Spice and Ford Fiesta—whose good work on this electronic front, he argues, was actually negligible to the cause. “For all we know,” he says, “Old Spice and Ford could have sold more products without them.”

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