Effective brand management not negotiable in IMC, says ADSTARAT boss

Principal Consultant of ADSTRAT Brand Consultants, Mr. Charles O’Tudor has decried the inabilities of most practitioners in the Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) industry to effectively manage their brands, stressing that the importance of brand management was not negotiable in driving the brand.

O’Tudor affirmed that every brand has a life circle and the tendency to die if such brand was not adequately protected and nurtured the right way.

While delivery a paper titled: ”Branding and Reputation Management”, during the NIPR workshop in Lagos, O’Tudor stressed that many IMC practitioners and companies were failing because they could not effectively sell their brands because such brands did not reflect the cultures and lifestyles of the people.

He added that in brand and reputation management, the key concept was the inner attributes of the brands which is like the DNA in humans.

“The core of branding and reputation management is the brand’s DNA. If you don’t get your DNA, everything else will fail. The brand that you are wearing, do they have a DNA. Is there a synergy between the brand’s DNA and reality?, if there is no synergy, consumers loyalty will decline,” O’Tudor said.

According to the renowned Adman, issues that were responsible for the death of most brands stemmed from their reputation flaws which include: families values, desire to belong, desire to be the best among others, adding that many brands fail because they could not control their inner desires.

Enumerating the ten ‘sins’ of a brand as, uncontrolled temper, procrastination, inconsistency, pessimism, and so on, O’Tudor stressed that it was important that brands went back in getting it right by creating that synergy between their innate values and reality as that was the only way that their clients or customers could trust and be loyal to them.

I think that the practitioners should reposition themselves and their services. How many brand consulting companies advertise their services? You can’t buy what you don’t know, or what you don’t see,” O’Tudor said.