WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ORG AND BRAND STRATEGY?
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To effectively tackle this question, we must first break it down and address the two distinct concepts referenced.
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What is a Strategy
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Organization vs Brand
What is a Strategy?
The most wholistic description of a Strategy comes from Johnson and Scholes.
”…the direction and scope of an organization over the long-term: which achieves advantage for the organization through its configuration of resources within a challenging environment to meet the needs of markets and to fulfill stakeholder expectations”.
A complete strategy ultimately satisfies the characteristics outlined in this definition.
Organization vs Brand
An organization is a group of people organized with a particular purpose. Typical examples are for-profit & not-for-profit businesses, government agencies, associations, etc.
The purpose for organizing will vary from one organization to another.
A brand, on the other hand, is an instrument created by the organization.
Brands are described as:
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Something unique that can be purchased by a customer
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A distinguishing name/ or symbol (logo, packaging design, trademark)
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A Promise (consistency of experience across multiple human senses)
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Meaning and feelings of association with a service, organization, product
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Emotional, physical and intangible attributes associated with an organization or product/service
What brought the concept of a brand to life for me was a passage I read about 16 yrs ago in the book “The 22 Immutable Laws to Branding” by Al Ries and Laura Ries (excellent introduction book to the world of branding).
The book tells a story something along the lines of a person walks into a department store to buy a detergent box when they see many boxes arranged on a shelf with different packaging designs.
They select a particular box over another because they know what value would be delivered by acquiring that box.
The consumer is not buying the box or the continence of the box. They don’t know what is inside the box. They have an idea and expectation of an experience to be delivered. And they believe that one brand of the box will deliver on that idea and expectation of experience over another one.
In the end, a Brand is an IDEA in the mind of a consumer.
It is an association between their value expectations to be delivered and said product/service/organization.
- BMW – Performance
- Lexus – Luxury
- Mercedes – Prestige
- Google – that guy knows everything!
The individual and collective actions of all members of any given organization contribute to the creation, maintenance, or degradation of said idea/expectation in the consumer’s mind.
Painting the relationship between a brand and an organization makes the answer to the question more apparent. Brand Strategies exist to achieve positive outcomes for a brand, and a brand exists as part of a strategy to achieve the organization’s results.
As demonstrated below, you will see that both the organization and brand strategy are comprised of the same strategy hierarchy elements.
Organizational Strategy Hierarchy: vision, mission, objective, values, and promise
Brand Strategy Hierarchy: vision, mission, objective, values, and promise
Four Key Takeaways:
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Strategy covers four dimensions (scope and direction, manipulation of resources, creating an advantage, to meet needs of market and stakeholders)
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Organizations own brands, one or many
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Brands are ideas/expectations in the mind of the market
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Brands and brand strategies are subservient to that of the organization.
That’s what I got… please comment below and follow.
I look forward to exchanging ideas with all of you!