How do you get your brand strategy right in today's world of constant change?

Getting your brand strategy right has always been important. But in the wake of Covid and with uncertainty continuing to rock markets and industries, savvy organisations are those that are proactively looking to secure extra revenues and margins. The evidence suggests that effective brand management is a good conduit for getting it right.

A 14-year McKinsey study found that well-managed brands outperformed the world market by 74% as measured by return to shareholders. Meanwhile, data analysts, Kantar, published a report showing that the world’s leading brands managed to actually increase their total brand value by just under 6% in 2020; this amidst a global pandemic with all the attendant financial, economic and social turbulence and fallout.

Effective brand management isn’t just a box to tick and feel good about doing so. Branding is an asset that can translate into actual equity and increased resilience, even in times as unpredictable as the last few years. But it’s not easy. For one thing, competition in the global business landscape is steadily intensifying—digital tools continuously eroding the barriers to entry, as they minimise costs and eliminate intermediaries. Then there is the nature of branding itself, which is changing.

"Branding today is less about show and tell and more about participation with customers"

The way we develop, monitor and measure brands has evolved almost beyond recognition in the last five years. Branding today is less about show and tell and more about participation with customers. The channels, media and techniques that organisations and customers use have become conversational; collaborative experiences that hinge on things like engagement, connection and relationship. Only a few years back, brands expected to focus the bulk of their efforts and spend on telling a good 30-second story on TV or radio. Today that story is co-created with customers on social media. And some are making a better fist of this transition than others.

Microsoft, Amazon and Airbnb are organisations that have become adept at connecting with customers and nurturing the relationships they build. They have fared relatively well in terms of conveying their brand as an identity, as a personality; prioritising the emotional and taking care to position themselves as “friends” to their customers. Airbnb in particular has been strategic in its branding in this way. Instead of building their brand as an alternative to hotels, they have consistently framed what they do (and what they stand for) as helping people find homes away from home. Airbnb has done this so well, down to and including CEO Brian Chesky championing the cause of home-away-from-home and remote working, that the company has bounced right back from the hit it took during Covid, posting record revenues in late 2023.

Of course for every Airbnb, there are a host of branding bunglers whose attempts to connect and retain customers have seen them lose major brand equity. Meta has been revolutionising the way that people connect, communicate and share information online since 2006, but recent revelations about the company’s (mis)use of its customers’ private data as well as a slew of toxic content policies on Facebook and Instagram have dented public goodwill towards the social media behemoth in recent years. A trove of leaded internal documents put Facebook in the spotlight in 2021 when it was revealed the top brass was well aware that its business practices were positively detrimental to its users—young people in particular. Meta companies may well seem too big to fail at this point, but with Facebook hemorrhaging younger users and employees, the future for the social media megaplayer looks less rosy. Earnings there were reportedly down by 28% in Q1 of 2023.

Poor brand management can erode customer trust and consideration for you and your products or services. It can rightly or wrongly convey the idea that you do not care about your customers’ needs, welfare or values. It can cost you customers, revenue, margins and market share—as the likes of Meta have recently discovered.

So how do you get it right?

A good place to start is revisiting some of the fundamental principles of branding—it’s essential DNA—before getting to grips with the ways that digital technology and direct-to-customer models have revolutionised and continue to transform the way we manage brands in the 21^st century.

Questions to ask include: what does my brand stand for? Or: what is my brand’s identity and how does this relate to my customer base? You might want to reconsider how you value and measure your brand; and in the light of your findings, question how much you need the branding fundamentals that have worked to now, and if there might be better ways of doing things. You’re also going to want to review the changing landscape of branding. From technique and tools that harness neuroscience to boundary-pushing advances in things like sonic branding, the world is evolving at breath-taking speed. Figuring what will work for your brand—and more importantly, why— is, admittedly no small feat.

For this reason, LSE has launched a new programme aimed at established brand managers and any decision-maker with a responsibility for managing his or her brand. Brand Strategy will look at everything, from the fundamentals to the radical innovations that are changing the way we create, manage and measure brands. Led by Guido van Garderen and Amitav Chakravarti, acclaimed experts in brand strategy, the new programme launches on 30 October 2023 and seeks to bring participants fully up to speed with the mega-trends as well as the most effective turnkey branding frameworks and tools to implement within their own organisations straight away.

There’s never been a more pressing time to get ahead of brand management. There has likely also never been a more interesting and enjoyable moment to stop and take stock of the changes taking place, as well as the risks and opportunities ahead of companies with stories to tell and customers to engage.