The Hindu Business Line : ‘Brand councils can integrate business, brand strategy’

Mumbai, Nov. 19 The best formula to integrate business strategy with brand strategy is to constitute a senior-level executive brand council which would typically bring together the heads of business units and functional areas to act as a team to tackle tough brand building issues that arise, such as acquisition of brands, launching a new product category and brand licensing agreements.

Delivering the keynote address at Brand Finance’s forum on ‘Making brands and intangible assets count’ here on Wednesday, Mr Nabankur Gupta, who is on the board of directors of Raymond, said building a brand-based business strategy requires several key changes in organisations. “First of all the CEO must embrace brands as strategic assets that need to be nurtured and built over time and other members of the senior management team must support that message,” said Mr Gupta.

Giving the example of Kodak, Mr Gupta said the brand council in the company comprised the CEO, the COO, the CFO, the CMO, business unit presidents and consultants. “The annual operating plan reflects specific strategies that the brand council has approved. If the company is interested in changing policies tied to a brand, or wants fresh investments to support a brand, these requests must go through the council for approval. Consequently, strategic business plans and brand strategy are mutually related and enjoy the ownership of all concerned in the corporation,” explained Mr Gupta.

A second change, he said, lies in realising that brand building is a holistic effort. Companies must understand every way in which their brand touches the various stakeholders, and how to manage it most effectively and efficiently across each touch point. “This is how great brands are built,” he added.

Mr Gupta said tangible assets of an organisation, such as plants and machinery, stocks and debtors, even technology and design, are quite simple to value and audit. Hence, these assets have remained over the decades the fundamentals of books of accounts and valuations of corporations. New global accounting standards are now demanding incorporation of brand values in companies’ balance sheets. Brand values today play a significant part in determining valuations of corporations in the capital market and in deals of mergers and acquisitions. As a consequence, top management today needs to get serious about evaluating brand performance and auditing it, he emphasised.

Mr David Haigh, CEO, Brand Finance Plc, talking about the CEO’s role in brand value governance, said a corporate needs to define a coherent business strategy around customer needs, market dynamics, competitive position, financial resources and also devise a consistent brand strategy around these same parameters. Mr Haigh said there are four key challenges for the CEO for visionary brand leadership: understanding the brand, innovating, aligning the brand and being accountable for the brand’s performance.

Mr Satish Pradhan, Group HR Head, Tata Sons Ltd, said the Tata group creates a culture which “permeates a group three lakh-strong, which makes the effort to take the brand forward. We may be short on efficiency at times, but the experience of people trying hard to make customers very delighted has permeated this brand for 50 years,” he said.