Living the brand.

Corporate branding success and failure stories abound--indeed, that's one reason the topic has appeal. That and the simple fact that brands are things with which we are, for the most part, happily familiar--Starbucks, Nordstrom, Amazon.com, Lexus, Hallmark, Disney, and so on. That we're not so familiar with association brands is a :ad ironic, but I'll return to that later.

One concise way to describe a branding mind-set is offered by he authors of "What High-Tech Managers Need to Know About Brands" (Harvard Business Review, July-August 1999): "a sea change in managerial attitudes from a product-centric to a promise-centric business model." An association example reflecting that sea change appears to be offered by the American Academy of Dermatology, Schaumburg, Illinois, whose message to the public during the past few years has shifted from disease prevention and treatment to making your life better, making you look better.

Branding is a sign of our times. And it's as much about identity, leadership, and having an impact on society as it is about marketing. By sharing insights from three individuals who know a lot about this topic-Duane E. Knapp, president of BrandStrategy, Inc., Seattle, Washington, and author of The BrandMindset (McGraw-Hill, copyright 2000); David A. Shore, associate dean, executive director, and PricewarerhouseCoopers director at the Center for Continuing Professional Education, Harvard University School of Public Health, Boston; and Laurence D. Ackerman, senior vice president of Siegel & Gale, New York City, and author of Identity Is Destiny: Leadership and the Roots of Value Creation (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, copyright 2000), I hope to convince you that branding, brand management, and identity management are useful tools, critical to your association's success, especially now.

What is a brand?

According to the experts, a brand name does not a brand make. A brand "must be distinguished or characterized by a distinctive perception," says Knapp. He explains it with examples of numerous brand names in the insurance industry, where despite recognized names, these companies don't offer a distinctive position in most consumers' minds. Another example of high name recognition but low brand identity, suggests Shore, can be found in the big four mattress manufacturers; failing to distinguish among products, these manufacturers fail to inform the purchase decision. Contrast these two examples with, for instance, Lexus, which came upon the luxury car scene and stole some of the show by providing a service experience along with an emotional and functional experience totally differentiated from any other car company in the luxury market.

At ASAE's annual meeting last August, W. R. Max Carey, Jr., chairman and CEO of Atlanta-based Corporate Resource Development, Inc., spoke about "The Brand Trilogy: Creating, Selling, and Living Your Brand," and similarly distinguished between brand name and brand identity: Brand name encompasses name, tagline, and logo, whereas brand identity refers to "that which is connoted in the hearts and minds of your clients [members] and prospects when they hear your name. It is the business your prospects and clients [members] think that you are in." A genuine brand, as Knapp refers to it, makes a promise and delivers on the promise in a distinctive way.

Shore's brand definition goes like this: "the visual, emotional, and cultural image that surrounds your association or organization and its products and services." Shore--who teaches the graduate course on branding at Haryard--adds, "It's what makes you want to put Nike on your feet, Disney in your vacation, and Haagen Daaz in your refrigerator."

Selling trust. That associations talk to their members and prospects almost exclusively about products and services, rather than about the image and positioning of the association, is an indication that they don't quite get branding, suggests Shore. Associations don't understand yet, he argues, that what they're really selling is trust, because when push comes to shove, most products aren't all that distinguishable from other products. If you stripped your last educational seminar brochure of all identifying labels, could you honestly say your members would know it was your offering and not your competitors'?

Herein lies some irony, at least from my perspective. I think it's fair to say that most of us would be hard-pressed to name a dozen strong association brands, yet some of the tenets associated with what makes for successful branding are integral to associations. Not many for-profits can boast the commonality of purpose among their customers or at the core of their existence that associations have always thrived on. Likewise, so many associations do garner the trust of their members because of that commonality of purpose. In some sense, it seems associations are their own best-kept secret, and maybe branding can help let the secret out of the bag.

Selling trust means focusing on building "a relationship that really resonates with people," emphasizes America Online Chairman and CEO Steve Case in the February 2000 issue of ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT. Ackerman's description of Maytag Corporation fits this phenomenon. Rather than simply being an appliance manufacturer (the prevailing view), Maytag was in fact a home management enterprise--driven by the need to "improve the quality of home life." Ackerman points out that for customers, "experiencing the identity of an organization is far more important than their ability to articulate it," and is the basis for building a long-term relationship.

Brand models. Is the association the brand? That depends on the brand model you choose, says Shore. "Organization as brand" is a model that General Electric uses. GE is the parent brand for all that it does (e.g., GE Aircraft, GE Electrical, GE Medical Services) because GE believes that's where the greatest equity is. Another model puts some distance between the parent and its offspring--perhaps, reasons Shore, because the organization is entering new markets or the parent organization has some baggage that needs to be lost. The "holding company model" that Shore describes can offer flexibility while insulating the parent organization. General Motors uses this type of model, whereby you think of Chevrolet, Cadillac, and Saturn brands rather than General Motors. With this model, if there's a problem in one product line, it doesn't hurt the sales of the others. Shore has identified six "major brand architectures" and says choice of model depends on "for whom the association exists and who its market is."

Organizational identity. Ackerman's approach is to probe beneath the expression of a brand to understand what makes organizations unique and enables them to create value, and there he finds organizational identity. Looking for identity stirs you to ask, What makes us tick? What are the distinctive characteristics of our organization? How do we make a difference to the people with whom we do business and the world in which we live? (See sidebar, "The Force Behind Branding.")

Why branding now?

Why has Shore, for example, given more branding presentations to association executives during the past 18 months than he had in the past eight years? Though the context of the discussion may be new, the reasons are beginning to sound awfully familiar. I like how Knapp describes it. "People have begun to think about how they can cut through the clutter, a way to simplify the process. Brands in their truest sense serve as an edit--they're a shortcut, like the icons on your computer." And we need shortcuts because of the inundation of information and proliferation of communication.

Shore sees the emergence of branding in a landscape of increasing competition from unfamiliar places, made possible courtesy of the Web and mergers and acquisitions, along with an increase in consumerism. (See sidebar, "Branding in a New Environment.") With direct access to data that help drive their decision making, Shore explains, consumers are becoming more sophisticated, and "as they become more brand savvy, they become brand demanders." Thanks to technology, associations and all providers of services and products are finding it increasingly difficult to differentiate their offerings. "When they can't differentiate based on the service or product, then the brand really is the only thing that allows people to make a selection," notes Shore.

Where does brand management start?

You need to "appreciate the totality of [your] brand's image--that is, all the different perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors customers associate with [your] brand," according to Kevin Lane Keller in "The Brand Report Card" (Harvard Business Review, January-- February 2000). Knapp would agree that understanding how you're perceived--and how you're perceived against your competitors--is a key starting point. He strongly recommends using an unbiased third party to extract this information from your members, prospects, and all other stakeholders, because he has found that members don't tell the asking organization the whole truth as readily as they will tell an independent entity.

First you investigate, in an absolute sense, whether your members and others like you, and why or why not. Then you ask, in a relative sense, how your organization compares to competitors. And finally, you ask how you compare to the best demonstrated practice not only in the industry or profession but in the world at large. As Knapp points out, if Amazon.com can deliver a book in a day or two, and do it in a manner that makes you have a good experience, then people begin to expect that same level of service from all organizations.

Shore calls this investigative process, or one similar to it, an awareness study, checking out your members' and your market's familiarity with your brand. "First you make them aware, and then you make them care--offer them something worthy of their consideration," advises Shore. He also warns that the typical association member market survey is one dimensional, in that it asks only about desirability ("Would you like this new seminar?") without getting to the feasibility dimension ("Would you be able to attend?").

Another weakness of typical association surveys spotted by Shore concerns competitor analysis. Unlike most of the forprofit community, associations aren't doing due diligence in this area, warns Shore. And this despite the relatively easy access to other associations' data. Shore speculates that part of why associations have been remiss is that they've had somewhat of a monopoly in the past and hence an "if you build it, they will come" mentality. That won't cut it anymore.

Building brand equity

Member and stakeholder assessments clue you in on your customers' expectations and enable you to begin to build your brand from there. Those assessments shed light on the question, What can we do for our members to be totally distinctive and provide the best service? As Knapp quips, "No one can name a genuine brand that is rude or vociferous." Amazon.com has nothing to do with technology; it's all about service and making you feel good. Federal Express thinks of its brand as immediate gratification, not delivery. "Whatever is required to deliver the promise is part of the brand," says Knapp.

With the results of your member assessment in hand, Knapp continues, you consider what you want the association's promise to be. That promise has to be distinctive and valuable to the customer--with functional and emotional benefits. Associations have some distinct advantages when it comes to achieving what the branding discipline calls brand equity--"the net worth of a brand resulting from an analysis of its positive and negative attributes," as Shore puts it. Knapp defines brand equity as "the totality of the valuation of a brand--in loyalty, customer satisfaction, quality of the products and services--everything both financial and nonfinancial."

One asset associations have is their memberships. Another is data about the marketplace that is their members. Both can give associations a competitive advantage. Associations also have missions and visions that can be translated into distinctive benefits for members and customers. Knapp stops on the difference: "Visions and missions are about what we [the association] want to do, and a brand promise is about what we're going to do for our members."

Obstacles to brand building

But managing a brand can be especially difficult for associations, too. The consensus-building process that so many associations model can seriously delay an association's entry into the market with a new product or service. "In the world of branding," says Shore, "that early entry and awareness is an extraordinary competitive advantage." Knapp refers to this as "being held hostage by process. In other words, the process--instead of the brand promise--drives the business." I'd say we've all experienced this when we call an organization whose phone system makes it practically impossible to speak to a live human being or when, visit after visit to the same doctor, we fill out the same information forms. Process can get in the way of experiencing satisfaction with the brand.

Another complication for associations that Shore identifies is the transitory nature of volunteer leadership, in that new leaders every year often want to make a mark by creating new programs and messages that may or may not be well aligned with your brand promise. And, notes Shore, so many associations try to be all things to all people but, as he says, "if you highlight everything, you highlight nothing." Shore points to the American Medical Association, Chicago, as a classic example of the ineffectiveness of the "all things to all people" paradigm. It's contrary, says Shore, to what the marketplace wants; the marketplace wants niches. The AMA had its market share eroded substantially, Shore observes, to specialty societies. Well-thought-out brand strategy--that is, delivering distinctive value to your association's market niches--has the potential to prevent such splintering.

What's the payoff?

Brands have the competitive edge. They are enduring--brand preference sticks, and consumers are apt to be forgiving of a brand of their choice that takes an occasional wrong turn. And brands build loyalty, which means repeat business and member retention. As Shore sees it, "associations live or die on repeat business. The profitability to the association comes when I renew my membership."

Using the language of loyalty, Shore describes brands as moving consumers from mind share to heart share. The stronger your brand, contends Shore, the more likely your members and customers will trust what you do and say. A story, for example, that runs in The Wall Street Journal is interpreted differently than the same story running in the New York Daily News. The same phenomenon holds true for associations when they release a public policy statement or new advocacy plans: Your brand equity carries the day both legislatively and with the public.

"If your brand has equity," explains Shore, "then whatever comes out from the brand will be received more positively among members. Your statements are more likely to have an impact among end users. More lives are touched." With a strong brand, your association's product and services achieve what Shore refers to as "top of mind" awareness. His example of a "power brand" is the American College of Cardiology (Bethesda, Maryland), because when a resident is looking to take a board review course, even though numerous providers of such courses are vying for your business, the ACC is always in the "consideration set."

Communicating the brand

Planning how to broadcast your brand is all part of your business plan. And, as noted by Scott Ward, Larry Light, and Jonathan Goldstine in "What High-Tech Managers Need to Know About Brands" (Harvard Business Review, July-August 1999), what makes the plan work is "the attitudes of the people throughout the organization--not just in the marketing department--in their understanding of what it means to shift from selling products or services to selling a promise of value." The brand mind-set, the authors observe, is a "powerful and unifying force throughout the company.

Knapp agrees: Effectively communicating the brand involves "changing the culture to understand that 'serving the customer' is what it's all about." He goes on to explain that your brand is being determined with every interaction, so absolutely everyone in the organization must be sensitive to the fact that "they are the brand whenever they relate to another person."

To this Shore would add that a branding campaign should be aspirational (e.g., "VISA. It's everywhere you want to be."). That is, move from what you know your brand currently to be to how you want it to be perceived. And whatever you do, deliver a consistent message across the organization. Don't let your education and membership departments send different messages about the organization. "Repetition," says Shore, "is necessary for retention. If you keep hearing the same thing time after time, you begin to believe it." His example brings home the point: General Electric doesn't say one year, "We'll bring good things to life," and next year something entirely different.

Knapp delivers a similar message when he describes wasted advertising dollars--that is, ads that don't connect to the brand promise. Or as he puts it, "advertising that is not communicating a distinctive promise, but is merely communicating." Knapp also points out that Starbucks spends more on staff training than on advertising because it believes that enabling employees to deliver a Starbucks experience is more important than telling you about it in an ad campaign.

Knapp also warns against putting the cart before the horse: "Don't print business cards before you've settled on the brand promise." He believes that the way to optimize your brand's communication is to start by capitalizing on what you want people to say about you when they describe the experience--that is, what do you want that word-of-mouth communication to be? He adds that you build the traditional elements of a communication campaign in a way that has all the components reflecting the concept of the brand promise.

Measuring brand impact

Branding may fool you in the sense that it seems like a "soft science" compared to, say, budgeting or publishing. But the experts contend that there are concrete ways in which the positive influence of a strong brand can be assessed. For starters, Knapp says that your conversion rate (i.e., converting prospects to members) will go up, as will your customer satisfaction. He recommends that you audit customer satisfaction regularly, perhaps monthly, and you can be in touch with as few as 50 or 100 of your stakeholders a month. A few tips from Knapp: Remember to poll your associate members, or vendors and suppliers, at least every six months. And when you do your audits, don't forget to ask how you stack up against other associations and competitors. Ask them, too, Who is delivering in your life today on their promise, or who really does a great job serving you and how?

Shore offers a perspective on the branding enterprise that's useful: "Branding is about being strategic, so I don't think it's about spending a lot of money. It's about understanding what brand is and thinking about how to leverage it from a strategic perspective."

Knapp would add, "If you provide a distinctive promise, and it's what your members and customers want, it will reflect itself in the bottom line. I've never yet heard of the best possible organization providing great service going out of business."

Ann I. Mahoney, CAE, is editor in chief of ASSOCIATION MANAGEMENT.

The force behind branding

My exploration of branding led me to Laurence D. Ackerman, author of Identity Is Destiny: Leadership and the Roots of Value Creation (Berrett--Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, copyright 2000). Ackerman introduced me to what be calls organizational identity, a concept that, for me, brings the issues of brand, individual and organizational purpose, and leadership full circle. From Ackerman's perspective, brand derives from identity, and its job is to express the organization's identity in distinctive ways. In other words, organizational identity is what gives branding its power.

When Ackerman talks about organizational identity, he's not referring to such outward manifestations as a logo or name, but rather to the unique characteristics that define the organization, just as they do the individual. He believes that organizations are living organisms and that "companies have identities as rich and important as any human being. 'Identity management' says, know who the organization is; be able to articulate it in credible, insightful terms; and organize entirely around it."

Ackerman offers up a quick example. About a year ago he worked with an information technology company whose focus was on helping companies get safe passage through Y2K. The company saw itself in the business of offering fairly mundane but important skills, such as code simplification. After talking with customers and others, the company realized its true capacity--its value-creating skill--lay in making business evolution efficient, that is, helping large companies evolve in efficient ways across time. This insight lit a fire under staff because they understood they were no longer just selling Y2K services, but actually contributing to society through their relationships with their customers. (By the way, Ackerman's book is rich with examples of uncovering organizations' identities-or as he calls it, cracking the code of identity.)

Paradox of change. In today's fast-changing climate, leaders and managers often think that their charter is to change an organization dramatically, and so it "goes against the grain to think that there might be something inherent within an organization [its identity] that is basically not changeable or should not be changed." Yet, argues Ackerman, your capacity for constructive change is directly proportional to your ability to maintain and reinterpret the essential identity of an institution. A similar concept is expressed by Kevin Lane Keller in his article "The Brand Report Card" (Harvard Business Review, January-February 2000) when he says, "Maintaining a strong brand means striking the right balance between continuity and change." As Ackerman notes in his book, the challenge, then, is to "find outside forces--economic, competitive, technological, societal--as stimuli to spark new ways of interpreting identity."

The ability to concurrently change corporate culture is best accomplished, Ackerman advises, by saying to employees, "We know who you are, and we know what this institution stands for, and that is not changing. At the same time, here's what does need to change in order to refresh our identity." This is a very different message, contends Ackerman, than saying or implying that everything is going to change.

Chief identity officer. The job of the CEO, top management, and volunteer leaders is to be stewards of identity. Once you've uncovered the organization's identity (i.e., what is this organization all about?), then the role of its leaders is to help staff understand that they are in effect the body and mind and heart of the entity--the physical, mental, and emotional fabric of identity and the organization's "ambassadors." Ackerman explores it this way: Has the identity of this organization been fully institutionalized so that it can maximize its ability to create value? Ackerman also points out that "the chief identity officer can be nobody but the chief executive. It's almost a sacred obligation."

Creating value. At the heart of identity-based management, professes Ackerman, is value, that is, the "proprietary contribution [an organization] is capable of making in the marketplace," and leadership is about "enabling the organization to achieve self-actualization, to reach its potential through relentless value creation." From identity you establish certain values that your staff has to live by in order to bring that identity to life, and in small employee focus groups you can ask, What does this mean to you in concrete terms? How would your job change today if in fact this organization were living by these principles? This line of questioning, says Ackerman, reveals behaviors that can literally get into your operational systems through training, communication, performance management, compensation, employee recognition, and recruitment. His is a reminder that employees have enormous knowledge and energy that often doesn't get vented.

A societal connection. Tapping the organization's capacity to create value is a role of great leaders, says Ackerman. "Shareholder happiness is almost invariably a by-product of exceptional value creation." Ackerman takes that thinking an important further step: "Every organization's strongest franchise is always rooted in its ability to contribute to the depth and stability of society." In his book he articulates it this way: "The responsibility for leadership belongs to the entire organization.[ldots] The first aim [ldots] is to lead the market on the strength of the company's unique value-creating potential. A second aim [ldots] is societal leadership--the ability of a company to bring about positive, permanent social change as a result of managing through its identity."

In speaking specifically of associations, Ackerman believes that they need to "be preparing the soil, if you will, for their members in a way that allows their members to connect with the broader society." When Ackerman speaks of leadership, he is talking about organizations leading industries, leading markets, and in effect leading society--binding the welfare of the organization to society.

Ackerman explains: "Most leaders don't look far enough out to see the connection between what their companies do and the impact they have on society. Rather, they stop at the relationship between the company and its customers. If you can articulate how what you do for your customers has, ultimately, a second- or third-order effect on society, you can establish a franchise with society that is far more powerful than simply your franchise with your direct customer."

Back to brand. I asked Ackerman how one identifies the need to develop or enhance an organization's brand, and he turned the question around to say, there is never not a need to develop or enhance the brand. "I think that is the essence of great management. Every day an organization should be asking itself, How can I do something today to further enrich and deliver on this brand promise?" And he adds, while brand is the expression of sustainable competitive advantage, identity is the source of that advantage.

linking and identity and leadership

Laurence D. Ackerman spends an entire book (Identity Is Destiny: Leadership and the Roots of Value Creation, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, 2000) delving into organizational identity, but not without showing some important parallels to one's personal quest for self-understanding. It's an easy comparison for Ackerman to make because he sees organizations as having identities as rich as any human being. Coming to that understanding, Ackerman proposes, provides "a center of gravity, in fact, a level of wholeness and integrity often wanting in business today."

Ackerman's take on organizational identity includes the principles that "leadership means find yourself, be yourself, show yourself [ldots] coming to terms with one's special capacities [ldots] and then living accordingly."

Another book that speaks powerfully to understanding the "truths and values at the heart of [your] own identity" is a tiny one called Let Your Life Speak, by Parker J. Palmer (Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers, San Francisco, copyright 2000). Palmer shares his personal journey of self-discovery--Who am I? What is my nature?--and describes how coming to an understanding of one's inner life is what authentic leaders are made of. The result means living with "a creative tension between our limits and our potentials" and recognizing that "we help make [the] world by projecting our spirit on it."

It feels like a circle to me. Whether you're talking about organizations in tune with their identities or individuals in touch with theirs, Palmers' hope rings true: "Every journey, honestly undertaken, stands a chance of taking us toward the place where our deep gladness meets the world's deep need." I think Ackerman would agree that this rich sentiment applies to organizations as well.

Branding resources available from ASAE 

* Millennium Membership: How to Attract and Keep Members in the New Market place, by Mark Levin, CAE (2000, ASAE), includes a chapter on branding the organization. Levin looks at how branding has been accomplished successfully in the private sector and how membership organizations can--and must--emulate this technique. Product AMR216812; $28.50 for members and $35 for nonmembers.

* Harvard Business Review on Brand Management (1999, Harvard Business School Press) provides the latest strategies for maximizing the value of your brands and products. Essays include "Building Brands Without Mass Media" and "Your Brand's Best Strategy." Product AMR250280; $19.95 for members and nonmembers.

* Image Marketing: Using Public Perceptions to Attain Business Objectives by Joe Marconi (1996, NTC Business Books) explains what should and should not be done to define and nurture an image. Includes discussions of setting budgets for image marketing, handling crisis, and shaping perceptions in marketing. Product AMR250346; $39.95 for members and nonmembers.

branding in a new environment

How do the rules of branding change, given new marketplaces and new competitors on the Web? It's a question beyond the scope of this article, but one that needs exploration.

Here are two startling findings from a survey of 2,000 consumers by Cyber Dialogue Inc., as reported in "Study: Online Information Changes Consumer's Buying Habits," by Kenneth Hein (iMarketing News, January 31, 2000):

* Seventy-six percent of online shoppers said they have purchased a different brand, from one they would have otherwise purchased, because of information they viewed at a manufacturer's Web site.

* More than 40 percent of online shoppers said their impression of a brand changed as a result of the information they found online.

try something new: ASAE's brand science clinic

The new Brand Science Clinic is an innovative educational offering that fully explores marketing's hot topic of the day: branding. Featuring Duane Knapp, president of BrandStrategy, Inc. and author of The BrandMindset, this clinic prepares CEOs and senior marketing managers for the challenge of creating brand strategies for their association's products and services.

You will discover the detailed steps of creating a brand concept for your organization and review success stories from other marketing specialists like yourself. Find out how to create and implement brand strategies within your own association and how to achieve buy-in from your organization's staff and members. Discussion topics include

* "thinking" like a genuine brand;

* developing a BrandPromise;

* creating an appropriate brand blueprint (logo, advertising, etc.);

* establishing an e-commerce branding strategy; and

* achieving realistic goals, time lines, and costs.

Knapp advises leading brands worldwide and lectures frequently at universities and graduate schools. Don't miss this focused clinic, designed specifically for the association advanced marketing specialist.

Date: Monday, June 5, 2000

Location: Hyatt Regency Bethesda, Maryland

Time: 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

Fee: $395 for ASAE members; $495 for nonmembers