Level 5 Blog

After announcing deep funding cuts to all federal departments—including the DND—the PM has recently decided to paste a new sticker on the outside of the Canadian military. He’s injected the word “royal” into the title of the Canadian Forces’ air, land and maritime divisions, and imagined a miraculous transformation will result.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        While one side argues that the retitling of Canada’s military confers a sense of dignified history upon the corps (“At little cost, a huge impact on morale and pride will be felt in all the Forces,” one retired serviceman blogged on The Ottawa Citizen‘s site), and the other maintains it’s a step back into a stiff convention that no longer applies (“I think this is appalling…. It’s abject colonialism,” military historian Jack Granatstein told the National Post), the haggling is immaterial.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           This resuscitated moniker, after all, doesn’t come with the fixed-wing search-and-rescue aircraft that’s been in the offing since Harper took command. Nor does it deliver the joint supply ships whose purchase he’s also long put off. And it does little to revive an antiquated Canadian infrastructure that, upon close examination, is revealed to be genuinely ill equipped.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                A new name alone as a catalyst for meaningful change is an empty gesture from any organization unless it’s imbued with the kind of troop-level support and processes that come from making meaningful renovations to the operation itself. Whether it’s the Canadian Air Force or the Royal Canadian Air Force, it don’t make a speck of difference if the government still treats vets and troops poorly and keeps them meagerly provided for. Without real operational change, the battle is lost before it’s even begun.

A McKinsey article, “We’re all marketers now”, caught our eye recently, but not so much for the abuse of corporate structure it laments as for the abuse of corporate language it perpetrates.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             We are, indeed, all marketers now—but that’s only one skinny strand of our redefined job description. That this article, hell bent on convincing organizations of the need to update their internal systems in order to better cultivate customer engagement, idly employs the word “marketing” when it should be using “brand,” is much of the problem. We let vocabulary create confusion in the marketplace to everyone’s ultimate peril.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              “At the end of the day,” the piece grandly expounds, “customers no longer separate marketing from the product—it is the product. They don’t separate marketing from their in-store or online experience—it is the experience. In the era of engagement, marketing is the company.”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Um, not quite. Marketing is not the company. Brand is, at least to us.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Regrettably, the fields of marketing and brand management are muddied by the reckless abandon with which terms like “brand,” “marketing” and even “business system” are used.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              At LEVEL 5, we define “brand” as a promise made to customers and, accordingly, brand management involves everything required to design, develop, build, communicate, deliver and support that promise. The unifying concept around which an entire organization aligns, brand guides behaviour, the nomination of corporate priorities and every last decision undertaken in its name.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                            “Marketing,” by contrast, is the external expression of that brand. We conduct marketing through such above-the-waterline activities as advertising, public relations, promotion, corporate logos, signage, Web presence and so on. But its activities do not permeate every last of a company’s cells, do not course through its arteries as a constant. Brand does.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              That a clutch of industry players—insiders, mind you, not someone external to the game hurling sideline commentary—would make such a fundamental mistake as to confuse “marketing” with “brand” (wildly undermining its point in the process, to say nothing of the damage it does to our painfully evolving communal understanding of the subject), is as revealing as it is alarming.

They share an executive bathroom and a high-level regard for the company. But in light of one more study decrying the sorry state of the relationship between two C-suite roommates, it appears those may be the only areas in which CMOs and CEOs find common ground.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            The research, conducted by international marketing firm Fournaise, declares that CMOs lack credibility with CEOs, citing CMOs’ general absence of finesse when it comes to defending their business piece. Some 73% of CEOs, says the research, diminish the consequence of the work of their executive marketing peers for their failure to demonstrate that it generates growth for the company—and this in spite of a scene characterized by greater focus on ROI, marketing automation tools and enhanced results tracking.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            The problem could be that CMOs are too caught up with the business of marketing, and not enough with the business of brand. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              By focusing on marketing alone, CMOs limit their view to such practicalities as advertising, logos and campaigns—all things that are important yet tricky to tie directly back to sales and that don’t, by and large, relate to many other areas of the organization like HR or operations. As long as this omission persists, CEOs will stay skeptical of the value CMOs bring.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             But when a CMO considers brand—and therefore the entire business system — his primary domain, the scene takes on more dimension, and his role swells to include the quarterbacking of its presence into every last cranny of the organization and the growth of its value on the balance sheet. This immersion of brand helps drive revenue and value from areas that traditionally wouldn’t have been in a CMO’s purview, and therefore increases the value of his role in the eyes of the CEO.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Through understanding and expanding the part brand plays within the company, and taking ownership for the value brand has on the balance sheet, CMOs will expand the simpatico they enjoy with their CEO colleagues beyond executive privileges at the urinal.

When you’re inside the restaurant, gnawing gleefully on chicken bones and swiping honey glaze from your mug, it’s easy to forget how gaddawful the place looks from the street. But if you’re a potential diner wondering whether to give the place a try, the way the restaurant looks plays a big role.  So what if it’s home to the city’s tastiest fare and most disarming ambiance—if its exterior resembles a scenery remnant from the set of Deliverance, well, your bird is cooked.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  A recent Globe and Mail article briefly discussing how Ikea has mastered the concept of “flow” through its stores acts as a reminder that it’s perilously easy for businesses to become disconnected from the very experience they’re selling—in other words, their brand experience.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               In the Ikea example, the company’s spot-on exploitation of its retail strategy to create in-store flow demonstrates an intricate understanding of the client’s point of view.  This ability to take an outside-in perspective is critical as it enables an authentic awareness of the emotional and rational needs of the market, not just an internal interpretation of those needs. Only with that genuine knowledge and appreciation can a brand achieve strong engagement.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Every business, no matter its corporate preoccupations, can benefit from applying the same contemplation to its activities. The value of an organization stepping back and regarding the entire client experience as it relates to the all-consuming brand cannot be underestimated.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                A brand, after all, must insinuate itself into each and every aspect of a company’s corporate existence. Maintain an insular stance that forever directs your gaze inward, and pay the price with reputation and sales. Adopt an outside-in approach to thinking about the brand and understand, at last, your customer’s reality.