The Brands Lectures

Past Lectures

• 

  The 15th Brands Lecture

  Brands & CEOs

  Patrick Barwise, London Business School

  In his lecture, Paddy defines a few terms like ‘brand equity’ and the ‘marketing concept’ before moving on to discuss how brands and marketing relate to the three dimensions of the CEO’s world: strategy and execution, finance and organisation.

  • strategy and execution – what matters most to individuals is not differentiated products but those that will meet their needs better or more conveniently than the competition;
  • finance – brand valuation is a helpful discipline but not a good measure of marketing performance. Marketers must understand basic...

  In his lecture, Paddy defines a few terms like ‘brand equity’ and the ‘marketing concept’ before moving on to discuss how brands and marketing relate to the three dimensions of the CEO’s world: strategy and execution, finance and organisation.

  • strategy and execution – what matters most to individuals is not differentiated products but those that will meet their needs better or more conveniently than the competition;
  • finance – brand valuation is a helpful discipline but not a good measure of marketing performance. Marketers must understand basic finance, develop metrics for brand equity and work closely with finance colleagues;
  • organisation – a simple framework is proposed: develop a relevant customer promise, deliver it reliably to build trust, keep continually improving it and, from time-to-time, innovate beyond the familiar.

  Paddy closed by echoing Marshall Goldsmith, urging marketers to concentrate on what they can change, which is more than they think.

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• 

  The 14th Brands Lecture

  Consumers, brands and trust: happy bedfellows or a new pyramid of conflict?

  Peter Vicary-Smith, Group Chief Executive of Which?

  Over the last few years, the relationship between consumers and brands has undergone a tectonic shift. The debate that has grown around trust, and trust in businesses specifically, is a symptom of that change, as people increasingly look to brands to improve their lives not just meet their product needs. In his lecture, Peter explores two specific themes:

  • that the successful delivery of a brand promise is not static but a continuous process of incremental innovation;
  • that consumers increasingly look to brands to do something greater in their lives...

  Over the last few years, the relationship between consumers and brands has undergone a tectonic shift. The debate that has grown around trust, and trust in businesses specifically, is a symptom of that change, as people increasingly look to brands to improve their lives not just meet their product needs. In his lecture, Peter explores two specific themes:

  • that the successful delivery of a brand promise is not static but a continuous process of incremental innovation;
  • that consumers increasingly look to brands to do something greater in their lives than simply deliver functional performance.

  Drawing on his experience working on brands and in-depth research on the role for brands in a modern world, Peter explores the tension that exists between consumers and brands, what that means for trust and the challenge facing brands today as they seek to be meaningful in people’s lives. He highlights the companies that are getting it right as well as the companies and sectors that have work to do.

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• 

  The 13th Brands Lecture

  Brands, capital and crises

  Rita Clifton CBE, Chairman, BrandCap and former Chairman, Interbrand

  There have been plenty of crises in recent years, in the financial, food and automobile sectors to name a few. How have branded companies fared and what lessons can be learnt with the benefit of hindsight?

  Rita looks at a few of these crises and concludes that the brand element is often overlooked until it is too late. People on the inside may well know that things are going off the rails well before the outside world but do those in the boardroom have the right tools to spot problems early on? By the time the problem shows up in the financial figures it is...

  There have been plenty of crises in recent years, in the financial, food and automobile sectors to name a few. How have branded companies fared and what lessons can be learnt with the benefit of hindsight?

  Rita looks at a few of these crises and concludes that the brand element is often overlooked until it is too late. People on the inside may well know that things are going off the rails well before the outside world but do those in the boardroom have the right tools to spot problems early on? By the time the problem shows up in the financial figures it is too late.

  Good risk management is good brand management, and vice versa, but few at board level yet see it that way. The very best brand management is about building something that will generate not only sustainable value but also sustainable influence and support. The security of demand and of customer relationships that result help the proactive management of risk.

  The very best companies are now seeing branding as the organising idea for the whole business, penetrating everything the company does. Brands are the most sustainable assets of any organisation, worth somewhere between 20% and 30% of the global economy, so it makes sense for them to be the organising idea for all the other assets, making sure they work better and deliver competitive advantage.

  The lecture concludes by drawing out some common characteristics from amongst the world’s most valuable brands and passing a critical eye of the UK’s performance as a place to build brands.

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