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Ted Matthews is a
zealot. In a realm where a kind of cool distance is the default demeanor,
Mr. Matthews is a true believer, working to imbue clients with his fervor.
After 28 years in marketing communications, his business card describes him
as a branding coach, but he’s more like a missionary.
“I’m on a mission
to wrestle the brand away from the marketing department and give it back to
the CEO, where it belongs,” he said. “A brand has to be consistent to mean
anything. But the whole marketing industry has been concocted to come up
with something new every day — something that’s never been seen before.
Great brands have been built by companies that stay consistent.”
During the 1980s,
the average CEO’s tenure at the top was about 10 years. Before that, a CEO
usually ran a company for his or her entire working life. Today, a CEO’s
term in charge of a company is about three years. And each new CEO wants to
make a mark. That means changing personnel and just about everything else on
arriving. Too often, that includes the brand and the equity it carries.
“If the number one
thing about a brand is consistency, then that is being lost with the change
of people who believe they have to make their mark,” Mr. Matthews said.
He said he finds
few companies truly understand what “brand” means. They think it’s the logo
or the marketing message articulated in the company’s advertising. Only the
marketing department considers the brand, usually when ordered to redefine
it to conform with a new CEO’s vision. The only unwavering goal marketers
are left with is winning awards. The ads they make wow their peers, but
often do nothing for the brand.
That’s why the
religious metaphor makes sense. Mr. Matthews says a brand should be a set of
principles and beliefs articulated through everything the company does. The
articles of faith that define any religion don’t change. Adherents express
those beliefs by applying them in the way they live. Brands should work the
same way. Strong brands — Mr. Matthews cited Sleeman Breweries and the
Maytag Company as examples — are instantly understood by consumers as
“meaning” a particular thing; Sleeman means pre-industrial care and quality;
Maytag means dependability. Advertising should reinforce a brand’s meaning.
If there’s no brand, the advertising and marketing people have to come up
with one. Too often, that can mean coming up with a hastily concocted brand
that will match the advertising. Wrong, Mr. Matthews said.
“Take Air Canada
rolling out Tango and Jazz; there’s nothing there to make them brands. That
only confuses my picture of what Air Canada is, and tells me that Air Canada
is too expensive. Compare that with WestJet, where flying cheap is their
core competency: low price, no frills, as-good-as-you-need-it airline.”
He aims to convert
the CEO of any company that hires him — outfits like Oxford Properties. “I
work to turn the CEO into a chief branding officer. That’s the only way it
can work: the person at the top has to believe in the idea and be able to
articulate the brand throughout the company.” And that company-wide
understanding and expression is a key element of the all-important
consistency brands need to thrive.
Bev Tudhope
co-chief executive of Interbrand Tudhope, which helps companies understand
and practise branding, agrees. “No brand strategy will succeed without the
support of the CEO. He has to be firmly behind it and seen to be a champion
both internally and externally.”
David Moore,
managing partner at advertising agency Leo Burnett Canada, shares Mr.
Matthews’ understanding of the importance of branding. “Our whole approach
is now based on something called the Brand Belief System, where we talk
about the strength of brand. The company really doesn’t own the brand.
Consumers own the brand; brand equity is the collective belief by consumers
of what that brand stands for.” The strongest brands embody the
personalities of their entrepreneurial originators, like Virgin’s Richard
Branson, Starbucks’ Howard Schultz, and Nike’s Phil Knight.
Mr. Moore said
branding has never been more important, since it’s increasingly all a
company’s got. “Today you’re seeing stronger brands than you have ever seen
in history. Thirty years ago, Procter and Gamble could say, ‘Tide now has
enzymes.’ They could live on that for five, 10, 15 years. Now, any product
differentiation disappears in months. The concept of what your brand stands
for becomes far more important.”
While relatively
few firms truly understand and practice branding, more are coming into the
fold. “I’m getting a lot of head slapping,” Mr. Matthews said of the
response from clients. “‘Of course. I get it; I see it.’ It’s a fundamental
change in the way business is being done.” |
