The Integrated Practice

of Brand Value Management

The home of intelligent brands

Introduction
In the decade that has seen a general acceptance of internet-based solutions for key business
management tasks, the phrase Brand Management has passed into the language to denote
a common, if specialist, sub-discipline somewhere in the overlap between Marketing Asset
and Marketing Resource Management systems.
But the brand itself has long been recognised as a valuable contributor to business success.
The certainties enshrined in the venerable tradition of the Brand Book demonstrate that
consistent application from both compliance and customer perspectives lie at the heart
of successful brand activation programs.

At the same time, as markets

and communications have
comprehensively globalised,
the consciously considered
footprint of the brand
has been transformed out
of all recognition.

The mass replication of

image and opinion
redefines brand reputation

After a couple of centuries of sedate progress from cows hindquarters to catchy logo
and tagline, the brand has exploded into the world of digital communication. The mass
replication of image and opinion redefines brand reputation and value from minute to minute
in an open-door laboratory to which every part of any business - if it can get a word
in edgeways - has a mission-critical contribution to make.
So what sensible approaches can organisations take towards managing the risks
and opportunities that this new world of brand-centred possibilities brings with it?
There are two aspects to consider when answering this question:
1. An exploration of the function and reach of the modern brand
2. An assessment of the kind of tools that can offer more effective brand management

2014. Adgistics. All rights reserved.

The home of intelligent brands

The function of the brand

Much more than a logo denoting authorship or provenance, the brand has long been established
as a set of ideas and associations that readily connect to a belief in the value of goods or
services. In turn this has created the opportunity for a price premium over normal operating
margins as a material recognition of that value.
Underlying any belief in value is, of course, trust: that what is on offer is firstly valuable,
and secondly able to be delivered in a way that matches or exceeds expectation.
Capturing the initial inspiration or the promise to earn that trust is the subject of many
billions of dollars spent in consultancy, and we learn that there are many different paths to
arrive at it. What is clear, though, is that there is a tight relationship between a brands
promise, its delivery and the value that accumulates as a result. This idea has been elegantly
expressed in a definition by David Kincaid, CEO of Level5 Strategy Group:
Brand is the value of a promise consistently kept
By rendering that phrase into a more mathematical format we can see how critically each part
depends on the other:

B = v(P) x C
The brand promise (P) is, of course, scaled directly to the ambition behind it. Its resonance
and accuracy in answering or creating a need will produce a more or less compelling call to
action across all stakeholder groups.
For the purposes of this illustration, though, we can see just how sensitive the equation is
to any deficiency in consistency (C), which immediately reduces any value associated with the
promise, and directly diminishes the stature of the brand.
How brand value is measured, although not the subject of this paper, is an increasingly exact
science driven by reporting standards that require, for instance, a brand value to be given
when accounting for mergers and acquisitions in Europe and North America.
Various models exist, using discounted cash flow or debt plus equity measures to arrive at
figures as great as a contribution of 40% of market value.
The lesson here is that brand ideas contribute hugely to the underlying value of any business,
and that value can be measured. It follows too, that with the right tools, brand value can be
effectively managed for optimum performance.
2014. Adgistics. All rights reserved.
The home of intelligent brands

The reach of the brand

Its now largely accepted, in theoretical circles at least, that the brand must address its
stakeholders at all levels and in all places. This extends far beyond the most readily targeted
consumer groups, who express their appreciation in the most immediately accountable way.
With the advent of social media it includes opinion formers more than ever, who may work
for good or ill in the brand cause with no personal economic involvement at all.
In addition, the brands impact on suppliers and partners must not be underestimated.
Moreover, its role amongst the single most important asset of any business its staff is
where the brand transforms most immediately from message to behaviour. And its here that
the promise is exposed and tested on a moment-by-moment basis. Once again, consistent
application of a credible promise is a critical ingredient of success.

The brand fulfills an

essential role in expressing
a shared language

As companies have to deal with ever

more diverse market conditions,
a reasonable response is to structure
and recruit for specialisms that can
exercise their deep knowledge of a
particular field to achieve
a competitive edge.

A potential consequence of this approach is to silo and isolate business functions, and therefore
to reduce common ground for the cultivation of interdisciplinary links and the innovation they
encourage. In these circumstances, the brand fulfills an essential role in expressing a shared
language and culture that aligns widely diverse operational groups. It forms a medium for the
distillation and expression of best practice in all departments and disciplines.
Far wider than the single-minded pursuit of paying customers through marketing channels,
the brand extends its reach into all areas of business practice.
Governance and compliance, product design, business planning, human resources, operations,
supply chain, quality control, IT, training and recruitment form only a partial list of those
functions upon which the brand can have a direct bearing - and vice-versa.
As a container for and concentrator of value, the brand takes on the function of an operating
system for business, the connective tissue that integrates and defines the whole. It follows,
then, that some attention can be usefully given to understanding and managing its extent, with
the aim of optimising its performance and the multiplier effect it can have on business value.

2014. Adgistics. All rights reserved.

The home of intelligent brands

Tools for Brand Value Management

The arguments that support the replacement of the Brand Book with some kind of internet
platform for the distribution of brand ideas, materials and rules are established and
(with the exception of the justified case for a trophy object) overwhelming.
In the fifteen years or so this has been a viable option, a proliferation of software tools has
arisen, defining the market segments they wish to address at the same time as they are selling
to them. Its unsurprising that there has been a heavy concentration of effort around marketing
and communications, because of their default association with the brand and traditionally
handsome budgets, as well as a particular susceptibility in terms of media formats - pictures,
video and so on - to rapidly improving technology.
This scramble for business has resulted in systems with widely differing ambitions
and scope from simple image libraries to more elaborate production, workflow and
budget management tools.
The range on offer has presented clients with a buying conundrum, where compelling sales
arguments have tended to trump any general understanding of the field and this
notwithstanding the often opaque pronouncements of the consulting companies positioned to
shed light on these matters. The result, as in much of IT, has been the purchase of successive
systems to replace the quickly perceived inadequacies of their predecessors.
It is a feature of human behaviour,
as well as a requirement for
effective differentiation,
that a brand will be as unique
as a fingerprint in its expression
and underlying methods.

The range on offer

presents clients with
a buying conundrum

This can present a problem to the systematic mind of an IT architect who is looking to aggregate
and streamline as many processes as possible into a pre-conceived information design. Systems
that are prescriptive due to simplicity at the low end or detailed design at the high end are,
therefore, most prevalent in the market.
Clearly a degree of architectural flexibility, both in the overall framework of the system and
in the extent to which its necessarily wide-ranging functionality can be custom-configured
(at low cost), is a critical requirement for a tool that will serve in the long term.
To test for these conditions, a useful perspective is to measure the fitness of any system
against elements common to all brand processes, irrespective of the nature of the
brand asset under consideration, be it advertising campaign or HR policy. In this regard
we have established a benchmark for a generalised brand supply process as follows:

analysis

strategy

implementation

production

delivery

measurement

2014. Adgistics. All rights reserved.

The home of intelligent brands

In setting out to select a single system to integrate analysis and strategy with execution and
measurement its clear that market choices are limited, and the chances of failure and cost
of replacement are high.
Purchasing patterns amongst many larger brand organisations suggest that business teams
are sensible to this risk, and buying more tightly focused piecemeal tools and applications
is a frequent response.
However, this in turn creates the potential for leakage in the system, with loss of data
and insight occurring at the joins between different systems.

analysis

strategy

implementation

production

delivery

measurement

System A
System C
?

?
System B

This incomplete account can introduce inaccuracies into the brand delivery process as a whole,
and most detrimentally at the point of analysis and integration into new strategy, which may
not reflect reality and thereby lead to performance loss.
In the delivery of Brand Value Management solutions, the aim is to conceive and build a
toolset that routes around both the risky single solution and lossy multiple solution problems.
This is achieved with the implementation of a Brand Centre, a lightweight and flexible
rules-based storage and delivery framework that maintains its adaptiveness
and flexibility through a single-minded focus on the brand.

2014. Adgistics. All rights reserved.

The home of intelligent brands

The institution of a Brand Centre begins by establishing the key elements of brand value in the
organisation. While the most immediate candidates are often visual, marketing-based assets,
a clear consultancy program is designed to ensure that the correct priorities have been
identified in effect an audit of existing brand strategy and/or its development
or refinement as required.
From a technical perspective, the Brand Centre is then configured to enable input and output
to other systems that perform various functions in the brand process.
The key is not necessarily to drive these processes from within the Brand Centre, but to
provide a single platform where the outputs of specialist activities can be effectively captured,
analysed and shared across the wider business.

analysis

strategy

implementation

production

delivery

measurement

System A
System C
System B

BRAND CENTRE

This intent is reflected in the interface design, tone of voice and navigational strategy of the
Brand Centre, which should as far as possible conform to the existing expression of the brand
within the organisation and require no specific training for use.
Once the basic functionality of the Brand Centre is laid down, providing secure access to
relevant assets and the rules for their activation, a number of additional functions, delivered
as interoperable modules, can be implemented.
These can cover specialist functions within the business for which there is no IT-based process,
or complement existing systems - workflow, approval cycles, collaboration delivery and
research tasks are common examples.

2014. Adgistics. All rights reserved.

The home of intelligent brands

STRATEGISE
IMPLEMENT

Research &
mapping
systems

Planning &
Development
processes

Brand Centre
Measurement
tools

DAM &
Activation Tools

MEASURE

Brand
Consultancy

Delivery
systems

DELIVER
The integrated picture then becomes a cyclical rather than linear process, where findings
can be built into course-correct strategy at any time, and the resultant changes in execution
implemented directly.
By providing common access to the brand in an environment designed to advocate its values,
encouraging multi-disciplinary collaboration and measuring outcomes in a quantifiable and
reportable way, the Brand Centre embodies the operating system which any brand must
become to maximise its contribution to organisational success.
The consequent impact upon more directly commercial matters is then most likely to be the one
associated with famous brands, whose value is a clear expression of their promise, consistently
applied: adding scale to growth and building resilience in adversity.

2014. Adgistics. All rights reserved.

The home of intelligent brands

James Waite is a founder and Executive Chairman of Adgistics Ltd., a business with a 15-year record in the
successful implementation of brand management systems. In recent months he has pioneered a joint venture
with Canadian brand advisers Level5 Strategy Group to design and deliver a brand strategy and measurement
service designed specifically to integrate with the Brand Centre.

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