Branding

A. Brands and Breakthroughs: How brands help focus creative decision making
(Nicholas Ind & Cameron Watt)

Early literature on creativity focused on personal idea. In recent years, this work has shifted its focus to developing work environments that inspire and facilitate creativity. It is equally important for organizations to choose and develop the right ideas. Analysis of organizations that are successful innovators suggests the answer to successful judgment lies in what can be conceptualized as an organization’s level of situational intelligence. Adopt a brand-led approach that emphasizes elements associated with intellectual capital. Situational intelligence thus represents a duality of organization self-knowledge about brands, core competences, capabilities, culture and stakeholders and the ability to use that knowledge to focus, resource, motivate and effectively form and implement strategies that fit within and reflect these situational constructs. The difficulty here is that when situational intelligence is poor, organizations seem to default to traditional methodologies that reinforce risk-averse behavior or generate stakeholder barrier that alienate employees from each other as well as external stakeholders, such as:
1. Over reliance on traditional customer research dampens creativity because it is essentially backward looking. It makes the assumption that customers have the ability to envision the future, to know what they will desire in future.
2. Reliance in research is that of abstraction. As soon as companies start seeing numbers, they forget people. Companies start to believe that their new product is a guaranteed success because a certain percentage of people have said they would buy it or like products designed. Companies do not unearth depth or richness of customers’ desires, perceptions and expectations.

The process of being observed affects behavior. Observation encourages more conscious awareness and consideration than is actually given to most everyday decision. When new products are challenging, companies undermine people’s stereotypical views of how thins should be. It is certainly the case that stereotypes are often applied unthinkingly when people are presented with something new. However, when there is time, space, and encouragement people can question their stereotypes and become converts to a new way of thinking.

Most of the organizations interviewed for the present study exhibited a more intuitive way of understanding the future rely on a deep seated understanding of themselves and their customers or end users. It can be argued that this helps foster continuous creativity, effective judgment and successful innovation. At its best, organizational creativity creates tension by challenging stakeholders’ preconceptions of what product or service should do. When people engage with the idea, they begin to review the comparative experience to other products. The greater trend toward personalized service in other organizations, the more people have expectation of its possibility everywhere.

The key question of how organizations can recognize, develop and use brands as part of their situational intelligence portfolio are enhance creative decision making and increase significant innovation and value creation. The brand definition frames the context, provides boundaries, set benchmarks, creates clarity and focuses energy. However, if misunderstood or misused it and become a creative millstone that limits potential and holds companies back from achieving innovative breakthrough. The ideas contained within the brand should be credible to employees and reflect current organizational reality, while also containing elements that stretch the organization towards what it desires to become.

The problems in many organizations are that the brand is under-utility. The may steer marketing communications, but it is not fully embedded into creative thinking and innovation by other employees also customers, this is a major problem in most companies. This leads to a gap between the philosophical-sounding brand values and the everyday, critical decisions in a project.

A well understood brand provides a framework in companies that does not hinder transformational innovation but instead generates clarity, vision and focus for staff. It also provides a constructs formed from a deep and empathetic understanding or the brand and its relationship with customers and so facilitates intuitive decision making. The brand also provides the benchmark against which decisions are evaluated and measured. An understanding of the brand ensures clarity of image and enhances customer experience, increases intrinsic motivation for employees, organizational knowledge and stakeholder engagement, all of which help promote trust and facilitate creative behavior.

Understanding stakeholders’ needs and experiences with a brand should be based on a combination of well considered research and the collected experiences of managers. Team members, employees, supply chain partners and customers. Everyone knows that organizations should be listening to customers, competitors and markets, active listening and reflection describe something else. Active listening and reflecting only really occurs when people have an intrinsic interest in and a belief in or passion for the subject. This signifies two important roles for leaders. First they are definers and champions of a vision that inspires staff, secondly they have the responsibility to encourage both internally and externally the positive questioning and debate that facilitates creative action.

Innovative brands attract and employ quality and they nurture and stimulate then to question. Innovation requires confidence coupled with a willingness to be open to new ideas. Arrogance and blinkered thinking lead to creative failure and are the characteristic of mediocrity.

B. An Investigation into Values Dimensions of Branding : Implications for the Charity Sector.
(Helen Stride)

Brand is a complex multidimensional construct whereby managers augment products and services with values and this facilitates the process by which consumers confidently recognize and appreciate these values. The easiest way for consumer to know if a brand’s value reflects their own values is via a brand personality. The brand is imbued with human values and characteristics which of consumer identify e.g. genuine, energetic, rugged etc. The brand personality construct fulfils a range of different symbolic functions for consumers that relate to the need for social approval or personal expression. Anthropomorphizing inanimate objects is universal and is thought to occur so that human beings may make sense of their relationship with the material world. Before looking at the values dimensions of brand in greater detail, and their applicability in the charity context it is important to consider the role that values play in the charity context and explore how branding is currently applied charitable organizations.

It is argued that the maintenance and development of values is important both to the sector and to the wider society. Charities must be explicit about their values and philosophy, which should then become the bedrock of their work. Charities should form an integral part of the mission and vision statements and underpin the marketing operation. For an organization to work towards a specific charitable purpose of benefit to society, it must have a value system that both underpins and indeed drives the charity’s operations.

Branding is being adopted by some charities as a way of differentiating from other organizations. Brand personalities in the charity sector are often confused, resulting in different stakeholders perceiving brands in different ways. A brand that emerges from the organization and therefore reinforces its values also facilitates the building of trust. Trust is considered to be of particular importance in the charity context playing a central role in determining donor behavior by offering assurance that funds are being used appropriately.

The metaphor of mirror is used to demonstrate how the values with which consumers identify or to which they aspire are mirrored back to them via the brand image. Crucial to the success of branding is that the self can also be extended symbolically if an object or branding is perceived to have values, qualities or characteristics to which the consumers aspire. The values to which consumers aspire and which are reflected back to them via the brand image, are a manifestation of irrational needs rather than rational choice. The brand personality construct would appear to have a fundamentally different role to play in charities if it is so help facilitate the process of creating identities as values based organizations.

The metaphor of brand as lamp is used to illustrate how a brand’s own unique values are shone like a light externally and internally in an attempt to influence the values of its target audience and those of the host organizations. As lamp, brands are imbued with distorted individual and social values, the sole aim of which is to influence purchasing behavior. Also brand as a lamp is to approach focuses on employee involvement in brand relationship building. The brand performance is enhanced if instead of the brand reflecting the values of the organization, the values of organization are aligned with those of the brand with staff demonstrating their commitment to the delivery of these values. Whilst the normative nature of charitable activity means that it is not the role of charities to create needs and desires that will result in greater consumption, many have been criticized for using advertising to manipulate audiences by eliciting feelings of anger.

The metaphor of lens brand projects with clarity and precision the values upon which the organization is based. The focus then moves away from brand image that is continually changing to organizations reputations that are more constant. Projecting the non negotiable values that underpin a charity’s mission and that emanate from the organization’s culture that branding is most applicable and effective in the charity context. It is only by developing a brand identity around values that are shared by the organization’s key stakeholders that a charity can claim that its values system underpins its activities and is indeed its very reason for existing. As lens, branding provides a tool whereby charities can benefit from differentiation while also developing their identity as values-led organizations. Having identified its core values, a charity must either seek out supporters and donors whose values reflect its own or aim to create a vision that is so powerful that it inspires people to share both its vision and values.

C. Behind the Brand: is business socially responsible?
(Rebecca Collings)

Another preference to the shifting balance of power between producers and consumers is to describe the rise of CSR as the move from a shareholder to a stakeholder economy. Behind the rise of CSR is a growing body of evidence to suggest that consumer demand for sustainable goods and services is on the increase. If companies really do want to be CSR compliant, how can their business process inform the development of ethical products and services that have a viable level of demand? The response of business is further complicated by consumers’ apparently bipolar attitude to socially and environmentally sound products and services.

A responsible organization does the right thing in the eyes of all of its stakeholders. To know each of its stakeholder groups regards as the right thing involves a dialogue with each of these groups and requires modifying the organization’s behavior accordingly. To track that change in behavior, sector benchmarks and key performance indicators must be established and the organization’s progress towards them continuously measure.


Form table 3, the conclusion can get is CSR initiatives work much better when they are linked to an organization’s core business and the way in which it impacts on stakeholders. Cheque book charity does not create the dividend growth of a response to stakeholder issues that leverages a business market or operational opportunities. Mapping a business’ operational activity to the sustainability agenda at the heart of CSR produces many interesting possibilities. One high strees mortgage lender was promoting CSR activity based on time off for staff to work in the community. Worthwhile, but does not leverage the company’s core business or its ability to influence consumer choices.

The strengths and opportunities offered by a CSR framework are exactly what it takes to sustain and expand a business, but only once the weakness and threats have been identified in order to manage risk and cost.
As consumer glamour for more ethically and socially responsible products and services has increased, so CSR programs in the corporate sector have grown. CSR programs should initially focus on weakness and threats, inefficiencies and risks. After all, if CSR programs do not offer business benefits or at least counter potential risks, they are never likely to get off the ground.

CONCLUSION

The benefit of learning marketing for me at this moment is how strategy in branding which is only a simple word can give big impact in human behavior. More important, strategy marketing in branding can use in social activities like charities organization that helping human being and all living kinds in this world. Recently, new strategy in marketing involves how companies can get consumers by sharing the benefit to the social activities. The misunderstanding in using branding in companies and even charities organization can lead them fail to get their missions. For me, branding is a genius thing in the world, to learning branding not only need experiences but also creativity how to see market, consumers perceptions and companies visions with all the staff.

Some important points about branding are :
1. Adopt a brand-led approach that emphasizes elements associated with intellectual capital.
2. The key question of how organizations can recognize, develop and use brands as part of their situational intelligence portfolio are enhance creative decision making and increase significant innovation and value creation.
3. The ideas contained within the brand should be credible to employees and reflect current organizational reality, while also containing elements that stretch the organization towards what it desires to become.
4. An understanding of the brand ensures clarity of image and enhances customer experience, increases intrinsic motivation for employees, organizational knowledge and stakeholder engagement, all of which help promote trust and facilitate creative behavior.
5. The easiest way for consumer to know if a brand’s value reflects their own values is via a brand personality. The brand is imbued with human values and characteristics which of consumer identify e.g. genuine, energetic, rugged etc. The brand personality construct fulfils a range of different symbolic functions for consumers that relate to the need for social approval or personal expression.
6. The metaphor of mirror is used to demonstrate how the values with which consumers identify or to which they aspire are mirrored back to them via the brand image. The metaphor of brand as lamp is used to illustrate how a brand’s own unique values are shone like a light externally and internally in an attempt to influence the values of its target audience and those of the host organizations. The metaphor of lens brand projects with clarity and precision the values upon which the organization is based.
7. Having identified its core values, a charity must either seek out supporters and donors whose values reflect its own or aim to create a vision that is so powerful that it inspires people to share both its vision and values.
8. To track that change in behavior, sector benchmarks and key performance indicators must be established and the organization’s progress towards them continuously measure.
9. As consumer glamour for more ethically and socially responsible products and services has increased, so CSR programs in the corporate sector have grown. CSR programs should initially focus on weakness and threats, inefficiencies and risks