Branding ‘ignored’
Many organizations are ignorant of what branding entails, which consequently impacts negatively on their overall performance, the chairman of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) said in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday.
Speaking at the IABC-Tanzania public forum, Mr Mark Schumann (pictured) said branding is wrongly defined by most organizations. To them, he said, it means just creating an ‘eye-catching logo’ or a ‘clever phrase’ as a marketing exercise, which is not the case.
“This is just a small fraction of what branding is all about,” Mr Schumann told the gathering.
The American said branding is a wide term that seeks to tell the public why a particular organization exists.
“It is a management tool used by human resources, senior management, communications and marketing departments in order to support their organisation’s strategic plan,” he asserted.
According to him, branding is required to first occur on �the inside� part of an organisation. This entails the action of communicating the values of the organisation by top managers to employees.
Branding connects employees to the organization’s mission and mobilizes them to actively participate in implementing the organization’s strategic plan.
“It is branding therefore that makes an employee to choose to work for a particular organization and not otherwise�in the same way, it is branding that makes clients choose to go for the organization’s products,” he explained shortly before speaking to a gathering made up of practitioners in marketing, communications, human resources and other senior management positions.
The expert said it is a mistake to think that branding is for a profit-making entity rather, it is a necessity even for public organizations and other non-profit organizations.
“For example, the government can choose to educate people regarding the dangers of speeding their vehicles in city roads�it (the government) can come up with just a few words and systematically plan them to indicate the dangers of high speeds…when the words live in people’s minds and people stop speeding their vehicles, then we regard that as successful branding,” he said.
He however cautioned that when branding, an organization is required to live by what it says.
“There are ethics in branding�it requires an organization to have commitment to truth, it should authenticate what it believes in and be committed to the values that make its brand unique,” he said.
Source – The Citizen