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From: Chris Macrae CM1 In companies where the brand is the biggest asset, can stewardship of the brand be disconnected with stewardship of other intangibles be these service process, core competences, systems for knowledge sharing, propietary intellectual capital...? CM2 If stewardship of brand can't be disconnected from other intangibles, are marketers the best people for playing a core role in stewardship? ...who is? From: Judie Lannon, Editor Market Leader,UK Chris, Your questions fill me with horror not because they are wrong but because they get to the heart of what's going so badly wrong. But I do think this centripetal drift has to be halted. Marketing really has to move up the status ladder in companies rather than be allowed to drift downward. If for no other reason than I can't think of how another function could take over the integrating function. It's ironic that just as marketing is (or could be) moving out of the old ghetto of 'sales and marketing' , it's being diminished again, not by any single thing but by a whole complex of activities which you touch on. Marketing gets pushed back by default. What's happened to organisational systems or people to keep on degrading marketing in this way? Judie From: Melissa Richardson ,Galileo, Australia Some questions that interest me: MR1. In the case of company brand is the accountability of brand stewardship ultimately with the Board or CEO? (Since the brand promise is so inseparable from the company's vision and mission)? MR2. What skills are required for brand stewardship and how do they differ from the skills currently possessed by most marketing practitioners? (I am deliberately distinguishing skill sets from knowledge - I suspect that the kind of people that are attracted to marketing today may not be ideally suited to stewardship activities. Human Resources people might in fact be better placed). MR3. Can Brand Stewardship be done by one person? or must it be done by a group? From: Dave Allen, UK, Enterprise IG Interesting. No way can marketing be responsible for this. Why? The argument goes something like this. I am working closely with one of the big five Accountancy practices. One thing that is becoming clearer is that they have now accepted at the most senior levels that the route to wealth creation in the future is no longer just book value. They increasingly believe the fact that the market value of many branded companies way exceeds the book value has established the direction for wealth creation for most or all companies in the future. It is no longer a puzzling trend it is a reality! This obviously has massive ramifications for the way accountancy firms work and value businesses. Which they are seriously looking at. It also means that management have to re-orientate themselves. No longer can general management focus on creating wealth through the value of the assets they build. They now have to create wealth by managing and leveraging the intangibles - know-how, processes, how they get things done and Brand. So do we need to ask not only questions about brand stewardship but how we design new frames for leaders to build and sustain value-adding organisations? From Nicholas Ind , UK Thinking about Chris's questions, isn't it the case that the stewardship of the brand is not only connected to other intangibles, but that brand stewardship is the management of these intangibles? The most effective way of managing the process is by inclusion - ensuring that the managers of the intangibles are actively positioned as brand stewards. From Richard Varey , University of Salford, UK Do you agree with my view: the emerging trend is towards a Corporate Communication function taking under its umbrella the traditional departments of marketing, public relations, public affairs, human resources, organisation development, and strategic management (in whatever form that is organised)? (The aim is a truly 'corporate' coherent and co-ordinated (co-oriented) Voice that encourages the many voices of the corporate stakeholder community to participate in collective construction of identity, meanings, and knowledge - a kind of corporate democracy or open system - has also been referred to as an epistemic community (Thayer) or corporate community (Halal)) From: Leslie DeChernatony Birmingham University, UK LC1 One of the questions that concerns me is how can we get firms to take brand stewardship seriously. There has been so much written about the importance of brands and the need to ensure brand alignment, yet I do not sense a move out there to enact this. I'm reminded of Kevin Lane Keller's comment that branding isnt rocket science, yet even with the advantage we have of a domain that is not difficult to understand, there is not a lot of serious commercial acceptance. They have got used to the old models and are resistant to change. From: Catherine Tilley, UK CT1 Successful managers (who might be suitable people to be accountable for valuable assets such as brands) are often people who are great at managing change and making changes happen. One of the key responsibilities of brand stewards may be managing continuity: ensuring that the brand stays true to itself despite the need to refresh the way in which it is executed. How can people learn to reconcile these two? And how can they learn the wisdom to know what to change and what not to change?
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