Associations Through Branding

Understand how major corporation are dealing with corporate communication associating their brand with important icons. More videos @ http://www.oxlearn.com

Many brands choose to communicate through association. This concept is not new. But I like this particular one because Accenture have chosen to associates themselves with the master of golf and I’m not sure whether you can see that if you can that there is a dimension associated with this picture of him striding down the fairway. Attitude 50%, Aptitude 50%—core values, they want to associate it Accenture. This is what this guy does, and this is what Accenture does. We see it again here, relentless consistency, why all organizations mush be consistent and obviously in the services sector, Accenture can deliver their services in a very, very consistent way. But they also show a willingness to change. A willingness to be flexible, I think the symbolic arc of his particular swing that represent the fullness of the services they provide. So very interesting symbolism going on with the use of this particular individual and if you want to know more about that, go to the Accenture’s site and you will see lots of information, cuts from the television ad that featured Tiger Woods, and you will start to see how they’ve started to use or have been using Tiger Woods in a very strong way to build brand values in association. Behavior now, we’ve talked about behavior today on several occasions, I just want to look at some areas where behavior should be understood. The behavior of the sales team is of course is absolutely vital isn’t it and they are the content point. Sales team, operational staff, those who go out and perform a service on behalf of the company either internally or even—externally or internally, it’s really important their behavior is in line with admission of values of the organization. We’ve mentioned and see the advantages. But what about call centers? Issues about call centers has been in the news is a great deal in recent years. Issues that deal with Northwest perhaps and their policy on bring all that call centers back into the UK allied with another means of differentiations or positioning which was about the reinstatement or the importance of their branch banking facilities when everybody else was going more online and closing branches down. Support staff and retailers. The was in which a retailer will support your brand because they are at the distance from you, the manufacturer or the owner of the brand that they are representing you the point of purchase. So what values are they saying or they exulting about your particular brand? So, as a means of identity, I mention Northwest, Virgin Atlantic—I talked in another session about Virgin Atlantic’s recent advertising campaign as a means of identification, a strong identity cur. British Gas, if you look at the history of their ads, go to their web site and look at what they’ve been doing over the recent years in order to establish who they are and the values that are important to them. And their organization has the experienced a fine deal of controversy and the way in which they are trying to manage their reputation again is very interesting. And being cued, I think organizations, we can learn something from being cued about the way in which the staff helped to adopt the values of the organization and the means by which they identify with customers. Now the pre-opening training session and group bonding session are legendary of being cued. I was being cued yesterday morning and I'm not making this up, I was in there, I was wondering around and looking for whatever it was I was looking for, it’s actually a toilet seat and lady, being cue member staff was just doing some stacking and she was just so nice and so polite and just said good morning to me and it was about a quarter passed eight in the morning and it was so refreshing and so nice. You just could not help it smile, you know, just a reflection of that particular brand. How many of us either individually or as organizations have got into trouble, got into difficulties, wondered what the solution was that minimized damage to other parties, other stakeholders and ourselves and I love this particular picture, I pretend to play golf and I’ve been this stuff many times and here we have Tiger Woods looking at his ball, wondering how it’s going to get out. I have to say for many time, it is a setback for me, it’s a test for him. It’s again a reflection of the values of how an organization can develop and deal with difficulties because the corporate communication needs to address—not just the good times but also address and recognize issues as they occur.