Organizing For Brand-Building

Viewpoint by Andrew Pierce, Senior Partner

The success of any brand strategy is fundamentally dependent on the alignment between the brand strategy and the organization that brings it to life. This does not imply that you must always organize around a brand strategy, but organizational structure does need to support effective decision-making and implementation. Think about the structure of your company. Is it organized around products or services, geographies, brands, or market spaces or functions? Or around customer segments? By organizing around customer segments, companies adopt a truly customer-centric way of doing business and can be better positioned for effective brand building and capturing customer value.

Many companies have struggled with organizing to become more customer-centric. Some best practice marketers have created hybrid or matrix organizations with product- or geographic-based leaders who are also responsible for a customer segment. This structure is successful in product- or service-driven companies because it enables individuals to be directly accountable for share of sales and innovate around the needs of a specific customer segment. But beware — some leaders will inevitably only look at the intersection of their two domains, leaving the rest of the organization to fend for itself. Creating strong performance metrics (personal, brand, and financial) can help mitigate this tension.

Organizing around the brand can create better alignment between Corporate and Division Marketing — especially in master brand organizations. Well-coordinated decision-making, brand management guidelines, and rules of engagement must be established. Questions such as, "Who really has ownership of the brand?" and "How should decision-making around the brand be facilitated?" should be addressed to achieve optimal results.