There are no Brand Managers in B2B Marketing

I’m sure there are plenty of excellent brand practitioners in b2b organisations, and there are excellent b2b brands, but the sad fact remains that for too many organisations brand remains an ethereal and sometimes peripheral discipline.

Having listened to Peter Kirby, Think Smart’s new consumer marketing expert, describe the depth of involvement of brand management throughout the business in creating value, I can only wonder that many b2b brands survive at all. The biggest difference between b2b and b2c companies appears to be in their respective attitudes towards the role of marketing in creating value. No more than 4 years ago I sat in a presentation from the new consulting partners in a multi-national IT services firm being told in no uncertain terms that 'consultants create value, marketing communicates the value'. I suspect that in b2c organisations on the other hand marketing is seen as a key value creator.

Most CxOs will probably acknowledge that brand is important, but fewer will actually become brand champions. Andy Grove at Intel was initially sceptical of the "Intel Inside" branding campaign but he took a leap of faith and the early results of the programme have turned him into the staunchest brand supporter at Intel. The Bamfords at JCB are great brand advocates and that is an excellent example of how an attention to brand throughout an organisation has helped maintain both market position and margin in the face of larger, lower cost foreign producers. How many companies have a product whose brand name has become the de-facto generic term for the product?

Part of the challenge is to get the rest of the b2b organisation, below the directors, to understand what is involved in building and maintaining a brand and to see how that is interwoven into nearly everything they do. Customer experience initiatives, the building of core business values and attributes and mission statements are just as much a part of brand building as are the more visible brand guidelines so beloved of corporate communications departments. Similarly, while many product managers and sales executives might bemoan a company’s lack of brand awareness or image their lack of ability to create real differentiation and resist the temptation to cut price at the first sign of buyer resistance is hardly conducive to brand building.

There is no simple 'one size fits all' answer to building a brand. According to Marty Brandt and Grant Johnson in their book ’Power Branding’, which was aimed specifically at b2b technology companies, there are some simple guidelines that can help companies systematically align their businesses to build and support the brand. This is characterised as the ‘Six Cs’;

• Customer focus, right from the start of planning

• Champions of the brand, with responsibility and authority

• Capability, in terms of organisation and resources

• Common practices and policies

• Consciousness of brand issues guiding everyday activities

• Consistency of messages, processes, methods and experiences with the brand.

For a good example of this in action you could do worse than study the brand building and repositioning exercise undertaken at Accenture in the wake of the scandals at Arthur Andersen and the need to rename their consulting arm Andersen Consulting. One key point to note was their appointment of 200 brand champions to lead internal communications of the new brand and its values through meetings, emails, training and videos. It worked. Not only did the name get accepted internally and externally very quickly, but many of the brand values that Accenture sought to communicate about its position as a business architect, builder and market maker were rapidly accepted too.

Brand loyalty and advocacy is an extremely personal thing. As a customer you recognise and buy into brands at a personal level (for whatever reason) be it your football club, the car you want or the supermarket you visit. In b2c markets digital marketing in all its forms has enabled a level of personalisation that the 'Mad Men' of mid 20th Century folklore couldn’t even dream of. In b2b there has often been the view that rational needs fulfilment outweighs the want and the desire caricatured in consumer marketing. The reality is more complex.

From 'nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM' to the self-esteem of having Mercedes white vans business buyers have all the emotional drivers of a consumer. These bubble to the surface when the needs have been covered and there are still a multitude of similar products and services to choose from. Sales people in b2b markets have always known this and instinctively understand personalisation. It seems that digital marketing is giving their b2b marketing colleagues the tools to deliver and at the same time blur the distinctions with the b2c world.

If you haven’t understood how digital marketing and social networking is changing the way marketing works come and find out more at Think Smart Marketing. The reality is that in today’s world of instant global communication we are all brand managers now.

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