Reputation. Brand. Marketing.
Reputation is “what other people say about you when you’ve left the room” – Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.
A brand is a perception (or collection of perceptions) in the mind(s) of an audience(s). Reputation is about perceptions too. And so is marketing. So whether real or imaginary, what we’re talking about is what other people think about you (the corporate and personal ‘you’), how they respond and what you can do to influence those thoughts and actions.
Reputation lies within PR dept
So whilst the importance of reputation is undisputed, the controls over it are hugely variable. Reputation is easily recognised as the domain of the Press Office – and has been for years. The public relations department is the one that issues the statements in support or defence of the topics of the day. They deal with the analysts, the journalists the shareholders the prospective investors and indeed Joe Public. They spin and they weave and they produce a fabric, sometimes even of ‘truth’.
And that’s fine. But it doesn’t reflect the importance of the brand holistically, nor the lip service paid to that importance by the board. But needless to say, it is still, and will doubtless continue to be, a double-edged sword.
We all have different interests in what’s best for brands
Marketers interest in the brand is usually creative led. We want to inspire and motivate and differentiate and challenge thinking and, and, and…
But creativity for creative’s sake holds little value. Instead, the battles are fought under business rules. The boardroom discussions are of shareholder or stakeholder value. Return on investment always trumps creativity. Measurement and response always outweighs design aesthetics and creative copy.
And that’s ok. Because as we build the bridges between marketing and the boardroom it will take time to prove the point. No one likes change. We like routine. Everyone likes routine. But the routine approach to brand communications will only deliver routine returns.
Extraordinary brands
For extraordinary performance, you need an extraordinary brand. And to build one of those you’ll need to look beyond products and processes and into the world of imagination – not yours, but that of your audiences.
And that’s the crossroads in business where you decide whether to creatively enhance your brand reputation by doing things differently… or sue the pants off a gardener and postman for distributing a handful of leaflets outside one of your burger joints.