Traditionally, business-to-business organizations have highly product-focused, with less focus on brand identity. In such organizations, marketing activity is often spread across a wide, disparate line of products and services, with little forethought given to creating a unifying or enduring identity in the minds of customers. As was mentioned earlier, in recent years a number of leading business-to-business marketers has begun to reconsider the importance of branding in commercial and industrial markets.
At the same time, they have recognized the critical link that must be maintained between the firms’s branding strategy and its overall business strategies. Frequently this has led to redefining the relationship among corporate, divisional, and product level brands (brand architecture). Such changes have important implications for the roles and responsibilities of those who are tasked with brand identity management. Additionally, brand architecture policies and standards must be developed in a way that fosters the firm’s future growth, its entry into e-commerce, and its ability to adapt rapidly to changing market conditions and organizational forms.
The report explores three key findings related to issues of brand architecture.
- Effective business-to-business branding establishes a strong corporate or competency platform that supports multiple products and audiences and links to the organization’s business strategies.
- Business-to-business brands need high-level champions.
- Brand architecture provides a solid but flexible framework for future growth, easing the introduction of new offerings and the absorption of acquisitions.
Co-branding
Business-to-business marketers increasingly are joining with other organizations to leverage the value of their brands. This might be done through joint marketing alliances, market development partnerships, or co-branding relationships. This section examines practices in the latter category by focusing on four primary types of co-branding relationships – licensing, ingredient branding, composite branding, and sponsorships.
Best-practice organizations have pursued co branding relationships of all types more aggressively and successfully than have the sponsor firms.
Two key findings related to co branding programs are-
- Strong business-to-business brands leverage their strength through co branding relationships.
- Co branding relationships must be carefully developed and managed to ensure consistent and appropriate portrayal of the brand.
Development of Brand-Value Proposition or Brand Promise – In the 1998 study Brand Building & Communication – Power Strategies for the 21st Century, one of the most important characteristics that differentiated best-practice organizations from sponsors was the extent to which the partners had articulated a clear, concise, and compelling statement of the brand’s essential value proposition or promise. The goal of the current study is to examine how business-to-business organizations successfully create industrial, commercial, or technology brands. What processes are used? What research is conducted? Who is involved? And what outside resources provide guidance or assistance? Partner organizations invest significant resources in understanding the brand from the standpoint of its many customer segments, as well as from the perspective of employees, channel customers, and even the financial community.
Two major key findings are used as the basis for understanding0020how organizations determine and express the heart of the brand.
- The brand promise is not a catchy slogan or tag line. It must be grounded in customer needs and linked to value delivery.
- Powerful brands create an enduring and compelling aura of leadership, authority, and uniqueness.