The
resurgence
of the
corporate brand
Why the parent brand is increasingly
becoming your most important investment
Introduction
A
fter two decades of watching marketers devote the
majority of their energies, creativity, and dollars
to product-level brands, we are now seeing
a rapidly growing focus on parent branding.
Previously relegated to the sphere of investor relations and
corporate social responsibility, across industries there is now
a new mandate to tell a story at the corporate level. Major
companies, whether in B2B or B2C, are all stepping up their
corporate brand building, reinventing this 1970s-era strategy,
but for new reasons evolving from today’s new imperatives.
A rapidly growing focus
on parent branding
This trend has been clearly evident in consumer goods.
Long content to let its corporate brand exist in the
handful of its powerhouse portfolio of brands like Tide
and Pampers, Procter & Gamble has been the most recent
champion of crafting and telling the parent story, beginning
with their 2010 Olympics campaign “Proud Sponsor of
Moms.” Credited with generating over $100 million in
incremental sales, this effort was expanded for the 2012
games. Positioning thirty-four of its brands under P&G’s
corporate umbrella was a first for the company. Not only
was it the company’s biggest corporate campaign ever, it
was also the first to run on a global basis. Beyond P&G, a
series of CPG players such as Unilever and SC Johnson have
stepped up visibility for their corporate logos, taglines, and
messages. Even product marketing leader Coke has been
emphasizing its brand parent story, with a new corporatewide engagement website that talks about the impact of all
its brands, focusing on the values and mission of the entity
that binds them together.
However, the shift to messaging the parent company
is bigger than consumer goods, and applies across
multiple industries. Multiple corporate or parent brands –
ExxonMobil, Dow, Google, and IBM to name a few – have
all upped the messaging on their unifying corporate story.
In fact, Kantar Media data shows that corporate advertising
dollars grew to 17% in 2012 versus just 3% percent for
total ad spending.
This is a growing trend regardless of a company’s brand
architecture. Whether the corporate structure is a “parent”
brand like P&G or General Motors; an “asymmetrical”
structure like Johnson & Johnson or Bank of America,
where the parent shares identity with one of the business
units; or a “masterbrand” structure like GE or IBM, each
typology has seen increased focus. Google, an asymmetrical
structure, has increased emphasis on messaging the total
story as well as increasing the usage of the parent name
to better unite its diverse services, for example, changing
Froogle to Google Shopping. Microsoft’s new brand identity
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was crafted to better visually connect its distinct offerings
such as Surface, Windows, Bing, and others, uniting them
as part of a more coherent parent. Masterbrand leaders,
too, such as IBM and GE, are also continuing to invest in
a single corporate-level story.
All of these brands are looking to tell the bigger story – the
story of who they are and what they believe, not just what
they sell. McDonald’s, for example, has recently shifted
their emphasis toward their values and business intent,
rather than the price of their food. Their corporate message
tells stories about the farmers who grow the product
and decisions to put apples into the Happy Meal – stories
of who the company is and intends to be. It matters
increasingly to signal where you are going, what you will
provide in the future, and how you will behave.
“
We think there’s some advantage
to making P&G as a company
more like a brand. If you look at
investors, they buy our company.
You look at the various lists out
there — Most Admired, Most
Respected companies — they’re
about the company, not about
the brands.
–Bob McDonald, CEO P&G
Source: Associated Press
”
Why the new focus?
People matter as much as products
The longer-term drivers of this trend
are many, and they will only become
more pronounced over time. Smart
companies understand that investing
in the parent brand delivers returns
against a diverse set of audiences:
First, for your customers, the purpose
of the company can often matter
as much as the performance of the
product it sells.
In today’s radically transparent business environment,
understanding a company’s integrity, values, and, most
importantly, its intentions, matters more than ever to
customer decisions. However, this is not just indicative
of a trend toward values in decision-making. A strong
corporate brand signals where you will invest in the future.
3M’s powerful story of an intensely collaborative and
innovative culture is a promise that tomorrow’s relationship
will hold the same meaningful breakthroughs as yesterday’s,
whether it be in office supplies, nanotechnology, or health
care. Ford’s quality message signals a set of actions that
apply to all their brands. A publicly visible promise of who
the company is, backed by real proof points, raises the
stakes – and those courageous enough to make one, under
today’s media spotlight, send a powerful signal about what
they intend to deliver in the product.
Second, for employees, a new kind
of talent market requires a new kind
of employer brand.
Talent markets have changed irrevocably – not only are
employees less loyal than they were a decade ago, but the
information a job hunter can discover about a company
has multiplied exponentially. With hundreds of millions
of people using LinkedIn, and putting their employer
name right next to their picture on Facebook, people are
“badged” with their employer’s brand like never before.
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Visible in our professional and social spheres as it has never
been, what our company stands for can be as important
a public signal of who we are as the car in our driveway
or the watch on our wrist.
The need for a corporate brand that connects with
employees has been accentuated by declining loyalties
in recent years. A greater number of people feel less
connection today – either influenced by downsizing,
working in industries such as financial services and health
care that have experienced a decline in public esteem,
or impacted by a merger wave where their brand affinities
are fractured. More so than ever, the corporate brand
meaning to employees and recruits now needs to be
managed with the same care and professionalism as its
product brands.
IBM, for example, has leaned on its employees themselves
in ads that tell the Smarter Planet story, closing with
the words “I am an IBMer.” GE’s recent campaign also
puts the employees at the center, showing them realizing
the impact of the life saving medical devices on cancer
patients, or witnessing the flight of their jet engines. Both
What our company stands
for can be as important a
public signal of who we are
as the car in our driveway
or the watch on our wrist.
of these companies explicitly connect the everyday purpose
of their employees to the products they make. Nurturing
the corporate brand belongs in the toolkit of the HR
executive as much as the benefits program and the
performance system.
Third, for the general population, the
court of public opinion matters more
than it ever did.
In the Internet age where information is always at our
fingertips, divisions or brands of companies, who in the
past could be siloed or shielded, can no longer enjoy this
autonomy. If something happens to a division or brand,
it is immediately connected back to the corporate parent
and the parent is held responsible. Now more than ever,
corporations need to build a reservoir of image goodwill
that can serve as a buffer if a crisis arises. Few companies
would have survived the Tylenol crisis had they not had the
hugely positive reputation that Johnson & Johnson did.
Corporations are in the public dialogue more than
they have ever been. Increased media scrutiny has put
companies much more on the defensive than ever before.
If you examine Gallup’s data, you see a precipitous decline
in the trust of companies over the last three decades,
almost halving from 34% to less than 20% since the
mid-70s. This is even truer for the under-35 “digerati,”
a generation significantly less likely to trust companies,
and significantly more likely to drive the conversation.
CNBC runs shows on corporate greed. Politicians talk about
corporate excess with more intensity than in any other
election cycle. The speed and breadth of media means
that any bad news – the oil spill, the customer service
Now more than ever,
corporations need to build
a reservoir of image goodwill
that can serve as a buffer
if a crisis arises.
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mishap, the security breach – will stay “in the news” for
significantly longer than it would when media distribution
was controlled by the front pages of a handful of printed
dailies. Today, the tens of millions of commenters, bloggers,
and citizen journalists can post, comment, upload, and
feed the conversation as long as they can command an
audience. The consequence: public relations and social
responsibility simply can no longer be viewed as a distinct
effort; they must emanate from the same corporate
positioning that drives the business. For example, the
Goldman Sachs “10,000 Women” initiative to foster female
entrepreneurship and its advertising message about its role
as a catalyst of progress play as important a role in helping
source the best talent to create public goodwill.
Finally, to the investor community,
corporate branding matters more
than ever before.
In the age of Jim Cramer and CNBC, a powerful parent
brand can send clear signals to an investor base that is
increasingly diverse, and only ever one click away from a
$4 trade. Indeed, for institutional investors who now search
an increasingly broad global playing field for the best
investment story, a clear corporate brand direction and set
of guideposts is an important signifier.
So today, each of these audiences wants to know more
about the parent company’s brand than they ever did.
Despite this trend, many executives still view the corporate
brand as just a corporate communications/IR issue,
seeing it as another discretionary expense with uncertain
return. However, it should be viewed as one of your best
investments with tangible advantages.
How to build the corporate brand?
The rules have changed
While the advantages of corporate
branding are growing, the last time
it was in vogue, the rules were very
different.In the past the focus was
largely on leveraging increased
advertising dollars to get the story
out, religiously applying a consistent
identity and visual approach to unite
brand presentation across businesses.
Today, the rise of connected media
has created new imperatives for
building a strong corporate brand:
1. M
ust be owned from the top.
Today’s corporate brands are best viewed as a strategic
management tool, as opposed to just a corporate
communications effort. The best articulation of the
brand is in the daily words of its leaders. IBM’s “Smarter
Planet” was not just a marketing initiative; it was
spawned from the words that the CEO used to describe
the strategy. Walmart’s “Saving Money So You Can
Live Better” directly echoed the words of the founder
as well as current leaders. The brand should be crafted
from the very top, as a way to powerfully communicate
the CEO’s vision and values. It should directly and
simply connect with, or replace, other leadership and
communications frameworks, such as vision, mission,
values, and strategy.
2. Must be rooted in not just your
brand’s unique story, but also the
experience you create.
Today, a unique experience – one that can be echoed
in consumer-generated media – is as important in
building the corporate image as the story you convey.
Positioning the company brand is about conveying the
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mission and demonstrating it credibly and consistently
in actions that are shared across the businesses and
products the parent brand represents.
A great example is Unilever, who in 2004 crafted
its corporate brand story around the concept of
“Vitality” – the positive impact its products have on
lives and the environment. At Unilever, this is more than
campaign; it is a pledge to inject a new environmental
and socially responsible approach in every brand in the
portfolio, a commitment to halve their environmental
footprint while doubling the size of the company, and
a measurement approach to do so. This approach,
anchored in purpose and backed by real proof points
and plans, is more deep-seated and enduring than
the Sunday morning TV media spend. Similarly,
3M’s repositioning around their unique approach to
innovation across thousands of disparate technologies
and products is as much celebration of the experience
as the message. Their brand is reflected in the singularly
unique way that engineers collaborate with customers
in their Innovation Center, regardless of business,
product, and geography. It is an experience that is
uniquely 3M, just as the customer insight process that
delights moms is uniquely P&G.
3. M
ust celebrate the parent
company’s personality.
The prior generation of the parent branding focused
on the rules of “presentation consistency”: the
logo, identity, how the stationery and business cards
looked, how names and messages were presented.
While important, this is no longer enough. A great
“corporate” brand today is not an institutional brand;
it needs an approachable, vital, and human voice. The
brand is in more places and more situations: events,
shows, webinars, twitter feeds, blog responses. Brand
presentation today is about creative and dynamic
devices to tell the story, in more touch points and
environments than ever before. IBM’s smarter planet
icons and graphics tell a versatile story that works in
a flexible way across distinct businesses. And beyond
visual presentation, the corporate brand also now
needs a real and dynamic voice in actual dialogue:
a branded way to handle comments and conversation
on Twitter and Facebook, for example. A parent
company interacting 24/7 needs to show its unique
and humanizing personality – the trustworthy precision
of a Bloomberg, the friendly irreverence of a Virgin,
the innovative collaboration of a 3M – a personality
that works regardless of the products housed under
the parent.
4. M
ust unite your employee base
across businesses in a common
purpose.
with powerful internal tools and approaches to capture
employee hearts and minds to really motivate them to
know and deliver the total company brand story. They
help customize a single story to diverse businesses,
driving consistent language and ideas but working
to version them across cultures and businesses. 3M,
for example, engages and trains its employees in one
purpose and set of brand pillars, across 70 countries
and 35 business units. The story must be built with the
internal audience in mind: it needs to be inspirational
enough to drive connection to the company’s mission,
but also tangible enough that it can guide daily action
in delivering.
Finally, today’s focus needs to be as much internal as
external. Corporate marketing leaders team with their
internal HR communications and business partners
within distinct lines of businesses, and provide them
Questions to ask yourself
The trend of corporate-level brand building is here to stay.
Companies are now forced to act more like groups of
people and less like faceless institutions. They must open
up about their goals and intentions to engage more directly
across constituencies in real dialogue and to tell their
stories. Products no longer are enough; consumers want
to know about the people behind them.
In this new world, the following questions merit real
consideration:
• How strong is your parent brand today? Is it perceived as
real, authentic, and trustworthy? Does it lend strength to
the products and services it sells and vice versa?
• How recently have you proactively thought about
investing in it?
• Does your parent brand have the right story for the next
chapter of your growth? Can it serve to unite diverse
businesses under a common umbrella, and explain how
the whole is greater than the sum of the parts?
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• Does your company’s story truly capture the hearts
and minds of your team? Are your employees able to
articulate and understand the actions they need to make
to deliver? Are they proud to say they work for the
company?
• What strategy should you take to better use your parent
brand as a competitive weapon? Should you stop at
telling the story, go further as an endorser, or even rethink
the architecture and naming structure?
• The answers to these questions will vary by company.
But the imperative is clear: it’s time, again, to proactively
manage your corporate brand, or run the risk of others
doing it for you.
AUTHORS
John Marshall
Senior Partner,
Global Director of Strategy
Richard Wilke
Senior Partner,
Global Director of
Business Development
Rick Wise
Chief Executive Officer
ExxonMobil
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Hyatt
Hyatt Place
Infiniti
ITT Exelis
Johnson Controls
McDonald’s
Meredith
Nissan
SABIC
Samsung
SK
Stanley Black & Decker
Starbucks
Telus
The Hershey Company
United Airlines
United Technologies
Vale
Walmart
Western Union
SOME OF OUR CLIENTS
3M
Actavis
American Express
British Gas
Citizens Bank
Coca-Cola
Delta Air Lines
Doosan Group
eBay
Egon Zehnder
Enbridge
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