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

Leadership, Understanding Machiavelli

A. Is it Better to be Loved of Feared?
(Scott Snook)
At Harvard Business School, Professor Scott Snook uses this classic quote to help students become more effective leaders. Using two of the most successful college basketball coaches in history—coaches with as divergent leadership practices as can be imagined. Asks students to confront their basic assumptions about human nature, motivation, and preferred styles of leading.

Bobby Knight, also known as "The General," is the head coach at Texas Tech University. He's a fiery, in-your-face taskmaster who leads through discipline and intimidation, which some critics say goes too far. Mike Krzyzewski, also known as Coach K, leads the men's basketball program at Duke University. Instead of fear, Krzyzewski relies heavily on positive reinforcement, open and warm communication, and caring support.

The stage is set for student to explore their own fundamental assumptions about leadership and human nature. Are people basically lazy or energetic? What motivates people to do their best? What is the most effective style of leading? Is it better to be loved or feared? Knight or Krzyzewski, whom would you hire?

There two types of human. First, If you believe people are fundamentally good—good meaning that they're trying to do their best, self-motivated, want to perform—then your fundamental leadership style will be one way. It will be empowering them, getting obstacles out of the way, and setting high goals while maintaining standards. Second, If you believe people are fundamentally bad—if you believe people are constantly looking to get over and get by and won't do anything unless they're watched—then you'll tend to lead with a very transactional management style that's built primarily around rewards and punishments. Tight supervision, a controlling type of leadership style characterized by a great deal of social distance between leaders and led.

In a company, some employees work better when structure is imposed on them, Snook observes. "It's the understanding that 'I work better, I will perform better, I'll make more money if somebody gives me a pay-per-perform' " work environment, says Snook, "The ultimate lesson is, what kind of person am I, and then what are the implications of my underlying assumptions for how I lead, and the kind of organizations and the type of situations I'm more effective in? It's not like one's better, one's worse."

Also "There are skills in the workplace that you only get through repetition, drill, habit, and discipline. A lot of times we're not real good at those," Snook continues. "So having an external force, whether it's a leader or a compensation system, forces you to do something you wouldn't ordinarily do, the mundane things that make you a better person, a better leader, or a better basketball player.
There are three ovals. First oval is who you are. Middle oval is how you lead. The third oval is the situation. Leaders who can recognize and call upon all three areas can expand their range of management styles to meet the needs of the situation, Snook says. "That could be an individual subordinate who needs more structure, or less structure, or more love, more challenge, or more support. Increasing your ability to accurately read relevant situational demands, understand more clearly your own assumptions about human nature, and then appropriately adapt 'how you lead,' your style, is a life-long process."

For hiring managers, one lesson is to understand the dominant type of motivation supported by your corporate culture and hire people who thrive in those situation,
There is another interesting intersection of the dramatis personae in this tale of two coaches. In the late 1960s, Coach Knight was the basketball coach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he recruited a young player named Mike Krzyzewski. "Coach K was a young, scrappy kid. He wasn't the best athlete on the team, but he had a lot of leadership potential," Snook says. After Krzyzewski left the Army, he joined Knight as a graduate assistant at Indiana, and the older coach became his mentor."They've been great friends, how could these two people who are so different in their approach to the same game be in each other's corner the whole time?"


B. Niccolo Machiavelli and The Twentieth Century Administrator
(Rihard P Calhoon)
Machiavelli would applaud the widespread application of leadership in today’s organizations and the sophisticated refinements added a consequence of changing culture and increased knowledge. His insightful observations have continued to living for five hundred years is a testimonial to two facts: 1. Tactics that are sound, based on a realistic knowledge of behavior and 2. Ploys that are natural courses of action, undertaken by leader of any period to acquire power, resist aggression and control subordinates. The full extent and ubiquity of Machiavelli’s concepts relevant to present day organizational administrators have largely escaped notice. Emphasis on good practices and principles of management on the one hand have tended obscure the action of leaders that are unsavory but effective. On the other hand, the prevailing connotation of Machiavellian as a conniving, manipulative, cold-blocked means for arriving at selfish ends has completely overshadowed the need for and validity of his concepts. Journals, articles and books on management area are in increasing number, referring strategies used in leadership to pressure tactics and to other aspects of Machiavellianism as a matter of fact.

While in exile, he completed his most famous and infamous book, The Prince. Machiavelli called his book The Prince and not something like The Art of Government because he saw success and failure for states as stemming directly from the qualities of the leader.

The reasons for the continuing vitality of all these contributions and especially of his insights into leadership can be seen more clearly in the following:
1. His scientific point of view.
2. The laboratory in which he made his analyses was unique in history.
3. The period of exile provided time for reflection, for building on his considerable experience and knowledge.
4. Machiavelli’s observational method of studying leadership enabled him to cover a range of leadership actions of amazing breadth.
5. Historical analogy the principal method used by Machiavelli to prove his concepts of leadership is a valuable tool for analysis when properly used.

What concepts had written by Machiavelli in past similar with what happen at present. A corporation is not something different from a state with some interesting similarities; it is a state with few unimportant differences. The point is the corporations and states both have leaders and although culture, society, circumstances and organizational structure modify behavior, interactions and tactics have marked similarities within the leadership task regardless of the specific setting, but there is little alteration in the basics of human behavior despite social culture shifts.

The problems of motivating people existed in Machiavelli’s era and they are present, today’s employees however are much more sophisticated than was the populace in Machiavelli’s time education. Both the tasks and the interaction of people within organizations at various levels presented much the same dilemmas. The difference between administrative behavior in Machiavelli’s time and today is largely one of degree in rules of the game. But feelings needs for power and actions to control the behavior of others follow remarkably similar paths, as detailed examination of Machiavelli’s writings relative to current leadership actions will reveal.

A number of forces are responsible for Machiavellian actions on the part of leaders today:

1. Ambition – consequent impatience
2. Organizational Constraints – on actions or incentives
3. The Failure of Less Directive Methods – setting examples or giving cues
4. Operational – feasibility as observed and as a consequence of trial and error.
5. Ignorance – aggressiveness, etc; the only ways to known to obtain results.
6. Personality of the Individual

For some examples of the many more prevalent Machiavellianism that are justified or necessary for the good of the organization or for protecting oneself in the face of resistive, low motivated or unprincipled personnel using deviousness when power is limited and some action is required, inducing a non delegating superior to expand one’s duties, activating the man who is secure in his job, who knows that he is and who will not do what he should, counteracting the moves of someone who is out to get one’s job, to make one look bad or to make himself look good in comparison with one. At this point there are some thoughts about Machiavellianism today to provide balance. Awareness aggressive sort of leadership can be helpful if the net result is increased understanding of administrative behavior without provoking an inordinate amount of paranoia.





CONCLUSION
One interesting point when learn about leadership in Organization Management is about leadership. A leader of an organization is like a composer who will make or bring the organization to achieve the organization’s vision and mission. Until now, one of the topic that never stopping is debating about Machiavelli’s leadership.

Even Professor Snook at Harvard Business School uses Machiavelli’s leadership theory to understanding about human nature, motivation and preferred styles of leading.
After learning the journal about Niccolo Machiavelli, it’s describe about the brilliant things about how Machiavelli observed something real in reality about human styles of leadership. The point that Machiavelli describes is the leader dilemmas when face two different things which are organization vision with human nature, which one will be chosen.

Prof Snook implicitly said, when a leader knows about human nature, sometimes the leader can use something hard to push the staffs. As example, in modern world, Machiavelli’s theory is using in stick and carrot theory.

A leader must understand his/her own, the situation and the people who is lead, that means the type of leadership must adapt in the situation without sacrifice organization’s purposes.

The good thing learning about Machiavelli is he described all the bad things about human nature, ignored about kindness, religiousness and ethics. It is not about the styles of Machiavelli leadership. He described, in reality there a lot of people trying get his/her own goal by hook or by crook.

Understanding the Machiavelli’s theory will give a leader how to manage staff that has his/her own goal that different with organization’s purposes. That theory also described how to change bad habits in human nature as stated about ambition, organizational constraints, operationally, ignorance, personality of the individual.