1 Recommendations
1.Define Brand Stewardship work procedures, provide coaching and training to gain support in the middle/lower management. Create an O&M-brand, use BrandPrint for O&M itself.
2.Align the organizational structures of the company by establishing profit centers. Focus the ERP system on worldwide CRM. Adjust the compensation system to reward brand thinking and brand management.
3.Recraft and connect the vision to O&Ms core values, create a visible BHAG and specify tangible objectives. Establish symbols like the colour red and a brand hall of fame.
4.Create and man a global brand stewardship coordination officer position to support Beers and enable her to focus on selling the vision to the clients.
5.Resegmentize customers by focussing on building brands for large, globally operating Fortune 500 companies.
2 Rationales
2.1 Internal Propagation of the Vision
Propagation has top priority because of unbalanced internal and external situation.
To ensure a high quality of customer service, it is necessary to make sure that all parts of the service marketing triangle are equally prepared and committed to the new brand-oriented vision. Currently, the management has already attracted a number of clients with the concept of Brand Stewardship, but has fallen behind in communicating its ideas and implications to the middle and lower management and to the front-line employees. This is hazardous, because it has built up a service promise to the customers which the company cannot fully keep and deliver at the moment. This will directly lead to significant customer dissatisfaction, hence it must be the top priority to propagate the vision internally.
Missionaries, training and communication are most effective for a top-down approach.
In order to find the most effective measures, it is essential to keep in mind that Beers has brought the vision to the company as an outsider and has installed it from the top. Therefore it is vital to broaden the community that carries this vision. The O&Ms employees, who developed a certain inertia during the successful eighties, must gain intrinsic motivation to adapt to the vision by understanding what is in it for them and what the way is to realize these benefits. This also includes that strong resisters who cannot identify themselves at all are to be convinced that it is best for them to leave the company. The Doral Arrowwood group should be appointed as “missionnaries” to spread and anchor the idea of Brand Stewardship in all O&M departments. Besides the vision idea, brand-oriented work procedures and concepts like the brand audit and BrandPrint must be formally defined and introduced by coaching and training sessions as well as by communicating them through channels like the corporate intranet, employee brochures and letters and company speeches and forums. The early visible successes of the new approach like the Jaguar BrandPrint and the American Express recapture should be used to illustrate its potential.
Shaping O&M as an own brand by using BrandPrint is important for credibility.
O&M as an advertising agency sells the development of brands as their primary service. This puts it in the somewhat delicate situation that in order to not lose credibility, it has to prove its abilities by developing the name O&M itself into a brand standing for strong brands. I recommend using the concepts of BrandPrint and brand audits for the twofold benefit that it yields valuable information about the change progress towards Brand Stewardship and gives the employees a deeper insight in how to apply these concepts appropriately.
2.2 Alignment of Organizational Structures
Changes in the external industry conditions call for organizational changes.
The advertising industry has changed dramatically over the last few years. Globalization had its impact, advertisement spending has been cut, the importance of mass media has decreased in favour of direct marketing and simple independent campaigns have become offered as a commodity. O&Ms organizational structure has not been adapted to these changes and is therefore not adequate to meet the requirements for a successful implementation of the new vision. The communication breakdown between local offices and international management reflects this as well as the prevailing disagreements about financial allocations.
Turn offices and WCS into profit centers and put the ERP focus on CRM.
A method to solve the problems about how to distribute the revenues and