Working with brands is like working with people.
Good relationships involve
commitment, willingness to change and renew,
preparedness to take risks and enjoyment of each
other’s company.
On this page:
When a brand becomes well known
and trusted, it becomes, in a way, public property.
Messing with such a brand can be dangerous. (i.e.
the Coca Cola example in Malcolm
Gladwell’s book “Blink”)
A brand like this is comparable to a hidden
stakeholder of the organisation and needs
to be considered. Change to a brand is only possible
if the target group that has supported the company
for many years is considered and acknowledged.
Conventionally this is done through consumer research – but
do they really give insight? Questionnaires are
uncertain. What people actually do often
does not match the intent they have previously
indicated. Our view is that brands are
significant elements to be taken into
account in any organisational
system. Existing target groups are
hidden stakeholders.
People react to products and brands emotionally.
Buying decisions are essentially made from the
limbic brain, the brain stem through which all
information must first pass and where the emotional
response originates. Rationalisation, which takes
place in the frontal lobe, only comes after a product
has been effectively ‘bought’ by the
limbic brain. When creating a brand that is what
you as a brand decision maker, marketing manager
or other expert in the field of branding are aiming
for, an emotional response by the public.
Emotional response can be recognised using emotional
intelligence. It can also be anticipated with systemic
awareness (link to heading in systemic organisational
consulting) and tested beforehand with systemic
organisational constellations, thus expanding
your emotional intelligence to systemic
intelligence.
Have you considered there is a relationship between
your product or service and the customer? And that
that relationship can mirror what is happening
inside the originating enterprise? Accordingly,
have you considered that if you improve the relationships
within your company, your product will sell better
too?
Based
on this assumption, a brand can represent the
link between different elements of your company,
and the following relationships need to be considered
carefully:
- Product – your
company
- Product – target
group
- Target group – your
company
- Departments within your company
Other relationships
that are important for creating a successful brand
are between:
- The brand
- The product
- The manufacturer
- The channel
- The customer
| The
systemic approach to branding |
|
The systemic approach looks
at relationships, not just between people, but
also between other, more abstract elements of
your organisation, such as brand element relationships
discussed above.
We have a tool that can create images of,
and possibly influence, these relationships: systemic
organisational constellations. They can be
used to explore and test brands and propositions,
such as to:
Create different scenarios and compare them before
making a decision
Find out where and under what conditions scenarios
improve the relationship between important elements
of your business
Discover factors contributing towards a successful
brand
A systemic branding constellation works
well on a specific design question, where several
alternatives can be tested.
| Reports
on the effect of a branding constellation |
|
Wim Jurg at the Open University of the Netherlands is conducting
research for a PhD thesis on the usefulness of
systemic constellations to identify branding opportunities.
He has published several articles on
this subject.
Most of the informants for this research project
were completely new to the systemic
constellation approach.
The quotes below were written by brand managers
and consultants, some six to twelve months after
having done a constellation and are published in “Fields
of Connection” by Jan
Jacob Stam
Quote is from a marketing manager
of an established national brand:
“The emotional aspect
was very surprising for me. We tend to think
we are rational, but it was clear that emotional
factors are also involved. And, what was made
very clear in the constellation, was that these
emotions were mainly connected to power issues
within the company. The particular benefits
I gained from doing the constellation were
that I began to ask myself very different questions
about the brand. Questions that I would never
otherwise have come up with on my own. It was
as though I was thinking in a completely different
way, like being in a fourth dimension: looking
from the outside at a situation that you are
very personally involved in, and where you
feel directly responsible and where there is
also a very large company involved too.
I see two fields where constellations could be
applied in my particular profession: firstly in
the phase before we take decisions or, for example,
give an advertising agency a particular account
to work on. From the quality research available
through a constellation I can see more clearly
what elements are involved, what outside factors
are playing a role and which of these are fundamental
to the consideration of the whole. It is particularly
relevant that we often see in these constellation
that internal issues within a company are playing
a role in the decision making about a brand.
Secondly I can see constellations being very
useful to use in the whole process of creating
different scenarios. The critical question for
me is to what extent the choice of representatives
and their responses in a constellation can be
influenced by subjectivity.”
Fields of Connection,
p. 131
Quote is from a brand consultant:
“This method is useful in the whole process – from the very first
decision to the last. The one condition, however, for using this approach is
that you must be willing to take a wider
perspective than just the actual project you
are working on itself. Apart from this, it seems
that the constellations are very helpful to me
when you get stuck with something and want to
take a look at what is going on. It also seems
useful for an initial stock-take, when you are
starting to consider a particular question such
as: what is the present situation and what do
we have to take into account?
The method works fast and allows for openness.
In fact, I feel it is necessary that the constellation
is conducted in a positive atmosphere where openness
is permitted.
During a constellation a kind of collective intelligence
is at work to solve complex questions that are
often too complicated to be resolve with the
normal analytical thinking.”
Fields of Connection,
p. 133
We facilitate systemic branding constellations!
Contact us for a preliminary conversation,
or to book into one of our workshops and witness
first hand the revelatory powers of systemic
constellation work
|
