achieve growth through brand & culture the mcglown group

Achieve Growth //Brand & Culture

By Lawrence McGlown and Michael Manross

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©2012 The McGlown Group

All Rights Reserved

The McGlown Group is a brand alignment

consultancy. We are retained to develop

and express business strategy in a

manner that creates shared beliefs

among employees and their customers.

To contact The McGlown Group,

email [email protected]

or call {317} 800-8319.

•Itrequiresinternalandexternalinvestment.

•Theprocessandpayofftakestime.

•Formany,thebenefitistoointangible.

Decision makers maintaining these perspectives of brand will instead choose to chase sales – quarterly, monthly or in worse cases, weekly. These short-term practices are bad for culture, and contribute to a less than favorable reputation.

Conversely, brand-driven organizations have healthy cultures and equally favorable reputations. To achieve growth that also stimulates a healthy culture, apply these five steps:

1. KNOW WHAT PEOPLE BELIEVE.

A brand grows when employees can deliver the experience promised to customers. Delivery encompasses everything a company does to ensure customers can comprehend, personalize and share the enabled user experience with ease. This is the ideal state that all brands pursue.

Employees and their customers will have a range of beliefs about the brand experience. Identify these beliefs – good and bad. Get as

much context as the owners are willing to share. Once discovered and contrasted, the resulting insight can

be used to orient the workplace around the user experience beliefs that truly matter.

Execute this step if…•Consensus across functions is difficult

to achieve•Silos are an accepted part of the culture•Hierarchal rank drives decisions

2. DISTILL THE SHARED BELIEFS INTO A BOUNDLESS IDEAL.

Independent of size, every organization has an Ideal. Rooted in shared beliefs (employee/

customer), the Ideal is a memorable pledge employee’s will honor when

they serve customers.

The Ideal is not to be confused with a vision/mission/goal/objective combination, which few employees can recall. When crafted accurately, the Ideal will serve as a beacon to attract and motivate employees, while driving innovation toward high-order benefits. Furthermore, the Ideal will provide an anchor by which positioning, architecture, and communications are crafted. When verbal, written and executed actions tie back to an Ideal, no competitor can duplicate the promises executed by your organization.

Execute this step if…•Communications lack cohesion•Innovation lacks relevance•Customer expectations are delivered

inconsistently

Achieving brand-driven growth is challenging.

The McGlown Group { 3 }

Beliefs / Thoughts Distill / Filter Translate / Posiition

Maze / Shop Portfolio 3 Dimensions



4. MAKE IT EASY TO EXPLAIN AND SHOP YOUR PORTFOLIO.

Whether singular or broad, both employees and their customers must be able to navigate the details of your portfolio offering. This is where Architecture comes into play. The task is to expand the brand story (Positioning) with a streamlined expression of the products/services you can sell.

Architecture is not an overview or summary of an organization’s business functions, nor how these functions are structured. Many brand stories communicate in this manner and leave it up to the customer to figure out “What’s in it for me?”

If done well, Architecture will clarify the relationship within and across a portfolio, and do so in a way that makes it easy for people to shop and explain the offering.

Execute this step if…•Customers are reluctant to try

new offerings•Prospects struggle to comprehend

the total value prop•New business rarely comes in

unprompted

3. TRANSLATE YOUR IDEAL INTO A POSITIONING STRATEGY.

The Ideal is an internal alignment tool for driving a set of intentions consistently. Positioning is the external expression of these intents. Armed with the knowledge of how and why people make purchase decisions, the goal is to strategically design your business so that it is believed to be the right choice.

Positioning is not a tagline, jingle or way to claim that your brand is better than others. The “better” approach does not work. For example, SUVs are not better than minivans; they’re just more relevant to certain occasions. The purpose of Positioning is to succinctly define your category role through a bold claim of distinguishable category benefits. Upon completion, your Positioning strategy should serve as the basis for communications, and subsequent employee actions once a customer says, “I’ll buy.”

Execute this step if…•Your category is loosely defined•The occasions where your brand

is relevant is unclear•Price is a primary choice driver

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5. ASSESS ROI ALONG THREE DIMENSIONS.

Once the brand strategy is executed, the organization needs to comprehend its business impact. Nothing provides clarity like ROI. We recommend measuring and monitoring three dimensions:

Financial

Financial ROI speaks to everyone, regardless of function. The task is to measure and monitor the Blue Box – the remaining company value once cash flow and book value are subtracted from market cap (for privately held companies, this would be the total assessed company value, including goodwill).

Organizational

Organizational ROI may not resonate with everyone, but in time, the value will be acknowledged. Stephen Covey, The 8th Habit, states “Only 37% of employees feel they clearly understand what their organization is trying to achieve, and why.” Once the Ideal, Positioning and Architecture are defined and put into practice, the percentage of informed brand builders will increase – rapidly.

Brand

Brand ROI will provide the bottom-line affect on mind-share, as this is a mental war game we play. The task is to determine the mind-share owned by the category players – monitoring degree of Distinction (Uniqueness + Relevance). The process will provide an index for all players, enabling trend monitoring – of your brand’s health and its position relative to competition.

A key point to stress is the on-going nature of this work. The world is in constant change, driven by actions and reactions. By putting the outlined processes into practice, your organization can maintain relevance and outpace alternative brands on the quest for distinction – in the minds of employees and their customers. Once achieved, brand and the culture that shapes it will become limitless growth drivers that are appreciated by every participant.

The McGlown Group { 5 }



Lawrence is Managing Director of The McGlown Group, a brand alignment consultancy that helps organizations delight customers genuinely. Lawrence operates under

a core belief that societal transparency mandates authentic business practices. This core belief is evident across categories, where leading brands exhibit a common thread of alignment between their words and actions. To achieve alignment, the voice of a company must represent the beliefs that drive employee behaviors, and affirm the magic inherent in the outcomes enjoyed by customers.

Lawrence’s approach, shaping brands with beliefs shared by employees and customers, has driven growth across categories including Education, Entertainment, Food & Beverage, Healthcare, Medical Devices, Oil & Gas, Spirits, Supply Chain, and Technology.

Lawrence earned an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University, and an MBA in Marketing and Organizational Behavior from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.

Michael is a Brand Architect who bridges strategy with visual techniques to make brands easy to understand and use. By analyzing the internal culture and customer experiences created by an

organization, Michael is able to simplify and express complex concepts to clarify the complete value the brand(s) can offer. After applying these techniques in agency and corporate leadership positions, Michael founded Junction, a consultancy that helps Fortune 1000 sales and service-oriented organizations make their brands tangible for the people that use them.

Since 2009, Michael has collaborated with The McGlown Group to advise clients such as Norton Healthcare, Papa John’s and British Petroleum.

Michael earned an undergraduate degree in Industrial Design from Virginia Tech and an MBA in Marketing and Strategy from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.

LawrenceMcGlownMANAGING DIRECTOR

MichaelManrossBRAND ARCHITECT

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

To contact The McGlown Group, email [email protected] or call {317} 800-8319.

achieve growth through brand & culture the mcglown group

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