Taking Brand Initiative

Taking Brand Initiative offers a revolutionary approach to corporate branding that looks beyond the marketing value of brands company-to-customer and the HR significance of brands company-to-employee. It places the management of brands at the senior level of management as it radiates throughout the organization. In this groundbreaking book, international branding thought leaders, Mary Jo Hatch and Make Schultz explain how a company's brand is just as important to ÒoutsidersÓÑpoliticians, suppliers, and analysts as it is to company insiders. They show how only the corporate brand can integrate all the company's staff functions and provide a vision for competition and globalization.

Airlines willing to develop insight from foresight relating to the expected 'step phase changes' will eventually improve their margins. In Flying Ahead of the Airplane, Nawal Taneja analyzes global changes and thought-provoking scenarios to help airline executives adjust and adapt to the chaotic world.

"With a major international presence, in a variety of areas including steel, tea, chemicals, communications and software, Tata now stands 65th in the world brand valuation league. But what is the Tata brand all about? What are its values? How do people perceive it, in India and around the world? In this absorbing and informed book Morgen Witzel digs into the heart of the Tata enterprise, describes its origins, how Tata's reputation and image evolved, and how the group has worked to transform that image into a powerful and valuable brand ..."--Publisher description.

Administrators will find a user-friendly, five-stage planning process with six essential rubrics for developing, implementing, monitoring, and sustaining a successful literacy initiative for Grades 4–12.

This book bridges the gap between strengthening the ‘employee brand’ and the building ‘external brand image’ by synthesizing the two approaches. The result is a blurring of the boundaries and assigning creative powers to both. A customer has a number of interactions with the company, and each of these interactions has an impact on the brand equity account – either positive or negative. Examples of interactions include: the product itself, the purchasing process, the consumption experience, the ‘face’ of the organization, the call center, media etc. The real issue for the company is how to translate the optimized ‘ideal’ customer journey into effective company programmes, how to track their progress and their actual impact on brand equity, customer satisfaction and loyalty. This book takes a holistic view to brand management and distills this complex system into palatable chunks, involving all functions of the company. The book demonstrates the effect of an organization that facilitates and rewards employee brand commitment on ‘external brand equity (eg: customer satisfaction and loyalty) and ‘internal brand equity’ (eg: product improvement and innovation potential resident in the organization). While the more obvious benefits of this approach include the usual suspects such as increased sales and revenues, less obvious benefits include employee stress reduction through the elimination of tensions and incongruity between external and internal value systems. The result is a significant contribution to creativity, brand commitment, overall employee satisfaction and, finally, a company’s ability to attract and retain talent. The above is achieved via a very practical, step-by-step guide, lavishly illustrated with case studies from over 100 fascinating brands (the authors have researched and surveyed companies such as: Aer Lingus, BMW, BP, Deutsche Bank, Ducati, Edun, Google, innocent drinks, Lacoste, Lego, Manner, Maggi, Orange, Old Mutual, Rabobank, Sony, SOS Childrens Villages, Siemens, Thomas Sabo, TED/United, TUI, UBS, Vauxhall, Wal-Mart, Wikimedia, any many more) the authors are able to paint a very real picture of the issues facing business and provide powerful solutions. Refreshingly, this book draws on examples from across the globe, giving the book cultural depth. Each case helps demonstrate the arguments put forward by the authors. After reading this book the audience should be able to answer the following questions: How can I build a strong brand? Where do I start? Which analyses do I have to conduct? Who needs to be involved? How can I make sure every part of the organisation lives the brand? How can I revive the brand ? How can I create a new and relevant connection between the brand and key target audiences? How can I develop and expand the brand? How can future orientation become part of the brand? How can I best structure the brand portfolio? Which role should each of the brands adapt in order to optimise results? How do I best manage the brand? How do I cultivate and empower brand enthusiasts in the organisation? How do I foster and leverage networked collaboration?

Storytelling can be a lifelong and life sustaining habit of mind, a personal inheritance that connects us to our communities. It can also serve as an organizational inheritance—a management tool that helps businesses to develop and thrive. For more than a decade, award-winning author Janis Forman has been helping executives to tell stories in service of their organizational objectives. In Storytelling in Business: The Authentic and Fluent Organization, she teaches readers everywhere how the craft of storytelling can help them to achieve their professional goals. Focusing on the role of storytelling at the enterprise level, this book provides a research-driven framework for engaging in organizational storytelling. Forman presents original cases from Chevron, FedEx, Phillips, and Schering-Plough. Organizations like those featured in the book can make use of storytelling for good purposes, such as making sense of their strategy, communicating it, and developing or strengthening culture and brand. These uses of storytelling generate positive consequences that can have a sustained and significant impact on an organization. While large firms employ teams of digital and communication professionals, there's much that any of us can extrapolate from their experience to create stories to further our own objectives. To show the reach of storytelling, Forman conducted 140 interviews with professionals ranging from CEOs in small and thriving firms, to corporate communication and digital media experts, to filmmakers—arguably the world experts in visual storytelling. She draws out specific lessons learned, and shows how to employ the road-tested strategies demonstrated by these leaders. Although this book focuses on storytelling in the context of business, Forman takes inspiration from narratives in literature and film, philosophical and social thought, and relevant concepts from a variety of other disciplines to instruct the reader on how to develop truly authentic and meaningful tales to drive success. A final chapter brings readers back to square one: the development of their own "signature story." This book is a pioneering work that guides us beyond the pressure and noise of daily organizational life to influence people in a sustained, powerful way. It teaches us to be fluent storytellers who succeed by mastering this vital skill.

Employer branding is a complex process that involves internal and external customers, marketing and human resource professionals. The Employer Brand puts the whole topic into context, explores some of the shortcomings of employer branding initiatives to date and provides a practical guide to the kind of strategy and technique organisations need to embrace to make the most of their employer brand. At the heart of the book is the concept of the strategic employee lifecycle and ways in which an organisation should engage with potential, current and past employees.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- 1. Introduction -- Foundations -- 2. Building brands: meaning, value, creation and clothing -- Understanding brand value -- Defining the brand -- Brand constituents -- Being the brand -- Clothing the brand -- 3. Developing the brand: focus, consistency and alignment -- Focus -- Consistency and the delivered promise -- Organizational consistency -- The frontline -- Organizing talent for brand consistency -- Frames for alignment: the VCI model -- 4. Marketing the brand: image extension and cross-border development -- Brand marketing -- Brand extensions: leverage and synergy -- Auditing the brand: the KUBE diagnostic -- Horizontal extensions -- Vertical brand extensions -- Unintended extensions -- Brand architecture -- Branding across borders -- International market entry -- International marketing adaptation -- 5. Understanding Asia: from the inside and out -- Asian hardware -- Asian software -- Asian socio-cultural norms: from the 'outside-in' -- Asian culture from the inside-out -- Corruption: elephants in the living room -- Illustrations -- 6. Brand expressions I: consumer products -- Building and competing -- Frontlining -- Marketing the brand -- CSR, ethics and (re-)gaining trust -- 7. Brand expressions II: services -- The hotel -- The hospital -- The airline -- IFM (integrated facilities management) -- AOS (any other service) -- 8. Postscript: destination Asia -- Revealing -- Building -- Communication -- Delivery -- References -- Index.