Brand Culture vs Brand Strategy
By Abimbola Mohammed
Companies that succeed at creating a brand culture display certain common characteristics and are more likely to outperform the competition over time. A strong brand culture helps companies generate higher margins, drive customer advocacy, attract the right talent and forge key alliances. This creates a cycle of growth that results in higher shareholder value.
When more and more organisations understand the importance of brand culture, they grow and the economies in which they operate grow along with them. For companies who do not adopt brand culture, it may be a longer and bumpier road fraught with inefficiencies and more years where meeting monthly payroll is a challenge. Companies where the founder(s) have the meaning, attitude and promise clearly communicated, both within the company and to the outside world, create strong brands without ever uttering the word. They create a strong and compelling end-to-end customer experience, even without having a marketing department.
Strategy on the other hand, is a long-term plan for the development of a successful brand in order to achieve specific goals. A well-defined and executed brand strategy affects all aspects of a business and is directly connected to consumer needs, emotions, and competitive environments. Your brand strategy defines what you stand for, a promise you make, and the personality you convey. And while it includes your logo, colour palette and slogan, those are only creative elements that convey your brand. Instead, your brand lives in every day-to-day interaction you have with your market.
While these two are not mutually exclusive, experts place more emphasis on brand culture because of its more pervasive nature. Hence, the import of what Peter Drucker, the late marketing guru, said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.
MARKETING EDGE examined the importance of these two concepts in brand building in the Nigerian marketing space by speaking with some players in the IMC industry.
The Managing Director, Momentum Media, Akeem Aweroro, agreed that brand culture has an edge over brand strategy. He also explained the two concepts thus: “Brand Culture is invariably the essence or values that define the brand. It is like the sum of customer experiences with the brand. Brand strategy is the defined ways and means of achieving the brand objectives.”
For him, culture generally refers to an aggregation and pattern of attributes identifiable with a particular entity and to build a good brand culture requires time and consistent efforts on the part of brand owners/managers. It is important to ensure that brand a promise or expectation is delivered at every customer touch point.
Aweroro opined that brand culture is more important as brand strategy must be necessarily aligned with the soul of the brand in order to achieve the desired result.
Speaking with the Executive Secretary of MIPAN, Eki Adzufeh on whether brand culture is more important than brand strategy, he responded that brand culture is an attribute given to a person or a particular brand which is enduring.
His words: “Brand culture is the nature, attributes or the person of the brand and it is more enduring. It is built over time with consistency of branding.”
Adzufeh said brand strategy is the plan to present that personality or the values or the offerings to the target audiences at any particular point in time. This is done within a specific time period.
Also speaking on the topic is a marketing expert and public speaker, Dr. Tamuno Kiri. He described brand strategy as what defines a company’s corporate objective. How a brand enters the market with a well-defined, patterned and calculated approach is called brand strategy. “Some brands come to disrupt the market i.e. when there is a market leader already existing in a market segment, they think of how to break into such a market when they come in. They don’t do regular things like adverts, promotions and all you start seeing them in the market. A similar example is when Jumia came into the market to create an online presence. It demonstrated how a brand enters into the market, breaks it, seizes it, owns it and has its way.
He said a brand culture comes after a brand must have planned its strategic moves before entering the market. His words: “A brand culture comes after the brand strategy because it’s a deliberate and calculated plan to ensure that those who work with the brand exemplify the brand’s philosophy before consumers.
“Every brand has its own in-house culture that emboldens, prepares and exemplifies those who work for the brands in the presence of its consumers. It means what a brand says in its communication is the behaviour you see them prostrate. When there is no balance between the communication and behaviour then there is no culture there. Brands form uniformity between communication and behaviour.”
When asked which is important between brand culture and brand strategy, he said they are both important but one precedes another. “As for me, brand strategy precedes brand culture. To improve on a brand culture, brands need to build a deliberate and conscious effort to ensure that the brand essence is what you bring in the brand culture.
It is important for a brand to have its culture and strategy aligned to be able to achieve its mission – a strong brand culture coupled with an intelligent approach to brand strategy, gives fillip and significantly improves the chances of success.
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