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Brand hierarchy can be a complicated discussion

Brand hierarchy can be a complicated discussion.

As if the term ‘brand’ isn’t hard enough to nail down and explain when speaking to an accountant type CEO of a company. Imagine the difficulties in presenting his fairly non-recognized, non-integrated brand hierarchy to this same CEO with the goal of getting approval to alter it so as to create a marketing campaign that has a fighting chance at success.

The current structure is a non-integrated grouping of approx 10 retail products and services. Products that have had hundreds of thousands of dollars thrown at them in un-succesfull branding and marketing campaigns over the past 3 years. In addition, following a couple of interactive presentations with different divisions of the organization it has become clear that no one internally is entirely clear on the brand hierarchy either.

As the saying goes “confusion within means confusion without”.

As a marketer being asked to design/create/build/market an identity for a new product (one that needs to be put into the mix) I am faced with major challenges. Hence a needed brand hierarchy presentation to the CEO (biting nail). I should also mention that it has been said that each time someone in the company has brought up the term “brand” in the past year the CEO has walked away. I guess he doesn’t like the term.

Things that I know for sure about the presentation:

1. Don’t use the word “brand”
2. No handouts until the end of the presentation – distracting
3. Start out with opportunities and company praise as opposed to major challenges
4. Frame the perspective in terms of marketing and bottom lines
5. Build on the notion that nothing major needs to changed just integrated
6. Have statistics to back up claims
7. Be concise – high level
8. Be confident
9. Be entirely prepared for him to see our proposed brand hierarchy differently
10. Suspend judgment about the outcome

By: jenniferarmour|July 31, 2010|Categories: Uncategorized|Tags: brand . brand hierarchy|