Today we are part of a hypersensitivity and chaotic environment. Brand learning is no longer an annual review process. The frequency of media and creative initiatives is ever increasing. The life of a campaign is shorter than ever before. There is information overload. And in such situations the brand is under stress and threat from internal and external factors when the teams and CMO change like the PSU companies.
Most new CMO’s brings in a new insightful team with them. Lot of old guards apprehensive of their position move out. The new Brand custodian is in a hurry to provide strategic direction and make a mark.
He carries a post-dated leave by date resignation in his pocket and is short in time. He is seeking to do his best as he scouts for the newer opportunities.
Search of knowledge. Collage by Sanjeev Kotnala
He is thrown into the deep end of marketing chaos after a customary introduction round in office. Lucky ones get a welcome drink in the evening. Most likely he is going to find a digital set of images and campaign as the only link to the last regime. In absence of anything more, he tries to get insights through corridor chats and small one-on-one with the teams. Lucky people get a chance to interact and deep dive with the Chairman or president who with his ever-expanding responsibilities and portfolio has many other things to look into. He is left to make makes his own interpretation and inferences. For the brand this is a risky situation.
Even if there is no change at the ownership level or this is for new inductees at the junior most level or it is for next chairman speech, the Brand must create a well-structured triple redundant digital cloud based knowledge base. Simply said the data and access should be held at more than 2 centres and person and accessible from anywhere.
The knowledge needs to be easily AVAILABLE and ACCESSIBLE to the designated persons. It needs to chronological capture movements and sequence. Additional to chronological memories, it must find space to reconstruct and define temporal memories associated with the brand.
Failure, success and learning’s must be documented in an UNBIASED easy to understand way. It should refuse to be the history written to please the winners or losers.
The language should be low on jargon and high on ease and clarity of thoughts. Researches and learning’s must be fused into a SINGLE UPDATED CAPSULE. This should be synced with the changes and development in social and business environment’ and product development. All this mapped with the brand actions, interactions, involvement and engagement with consumers and trade. This will help in having sound strategic continuity to the brand efforts.
It is imperative that the brand and organisational anecdotes be apart of this repository. These should be preserved in their unadulterated way or crafted to the desired consistent form.
One of the ways in which this can be done is to have a BRAND BOOK, where the brand history and evolution with important tipping points, decisions and strategy gets duly recorded for posterity. It could be a good way to ensure more awareness of brand history before their joining the organisation. Then you only need to capture and shared the most recent last 3-5 year of brand knowledge within the organisation.
In case you seriously wish to get a brand book out for enhanced brand understanding and sharing of brand knowledge, you can connect with me.
