Today’s Brand Management

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In the past, brand management was usually an organization’s marketing team’s responsibility. Today, with the evolution of the Internet and people’s need for instant information, there’s a greater call for public relations professionals to manage an organization’s brand.

The Brand Defined

The Dictionary of Business and Management defines brand as a name, sign or symbol used to identify items or services of the seller(s) and to differentiate them from goods of competitors. But according to Colin Bates, a brand management specialist from www.buildingbrands.com, brand means much more than that. “More accurately,” he says, “brand is a collection of perceptions in the mind of the consumer.”

Essentially, brand is more than simply a corporate logo. It’s anything people can associate an organization with, whether it is a paid advertisement or an article found in a newspaper.

Brand = Persona

It’s not enough for public relations professionals to simply communicate news to the media. Public relations professionals must communicate the persona of their organization. For example, Google, the company that runs the best-known and most-used search engine on the Web, has a very distinctive brand. Most Internet users could visually identify its logo. However, Google’s branding efforts do not stop there.

The company works hard to combat doubts about the quality of its web search results. Most of the main stream search engines sell advertising in order to make money and many people have accused these companies of skewing search results for money (giving certain web sites a higher ranking in exchange for purchasing paid advertising).

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However, Google is known for the division it places between its search results and its advertising business. The visual separation on Google’s Web site is an example. Search results are prominent and occupy at least 90 percent of a results page, while advertising occupies very little space and is not intrusive.

Google makes this very clear each and every time it speaks to the media. When a spokesperson does an interview, or when the company issues a press release regarding its search engine, it’s quick to point out the division. In fact, it says it is part of its corporate philosophy – hence, it has become part of its brand: technical innovation and quality of search results over money.

Current events can be found in our Brand Management News section.

What about you and your business? What is your brand? What is your persona? If you don’t have a clear-cut answer, develop one and work hard to instill that message into the public.

External Resources:

1. Brand Management: 101 Lessons from Real-World Marketing
2. Harvard Business Review on Brand Management
3. Best Practice Cases in Branding for Strategic Brand Management