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Brand Collaboration
by Jamey Aiken, brand coach
Brands don’t develop in isolation; they result from the interaction of thousands of people over a long period of time. Branding requires not only the work of executives and marketing people who manage the brand, but an ever-changing roster of strategy consultants, design firms, advertising agencies, research companies, PR firms, industrial designers, environmental designers, and so on. It also requires the valuable contributions of employees, suppliers, distributors, partners, stockholders, and customers—an entire branding community.
Many of today’s brands are too large and too complex to be managed by one person or one department. They require teams of specialists, sharing ideas and coordinating the efforts across a creative network. Brand managers and communication firms are responding to this new challenge in a number of interesting ways.
Today there are three basic models for managing brand collaboration: 1) outsourcing the brand to a one-stop shop, 2) outsourcing it to a brand agency, and 3) stewarding the brand internally with an integrated branding team. All three models are forward-thinking responses to the problem, because they recognize brand as a network activity.
The advantages of a ONE-STOP SHOP model are the ability to unify a message across media, and ease of management for the client. The drawbacks are that the various disciplines are not usually the best of breed, and, in effect, the company cedes stewardship of the brand to the one-stop shop.
The advantages of a BRAND AGENCY model are the ability to unify a message across media, and the freedom to work with best-of-breed specialists. A drawback is that stewardship of the brand still resides more with the brand agency than with the client company.
The INTEGRATED BRANDING TEAM sees branding as a continuous network activity that needs to be controlled from within the company. In this model, best-of-breed specialist firms are selected to work alongside internal marketing people on a virtual “superteam,” which is then “coached” by the company’s design manager. The advantages of this model are the ability to unify a message across media, the freedom to work with best-of-breed specialists, plus internal stewardship. This last benefit is important, because it means that brand knowledge can accrue to the company, instead of vanishing through a revolving door with the last firm to work on it. A drawback of an integrated marketing team is that it requires a strong internal team to run it.
Of course, while these three types of collaboratives seem tidy in print, they’re messier in practice. Companies are mixing and matching aspects of all three models as they grope their way to a new collaborative paradigm. Get ahead of the curve and use these slides to help plan your brand collaboration so that all stakeholders are working in concert to achieve the same goals and effect change.
