Storytelling & Branding

I just came across an article by John Quelch in Marketing KnowHow from this mornings HBS newsletter. The points John makes are just as relevant to B2C marketing as they are to B2B.

An HBS research team recently conducted a study of top B2B global brands. They shared the following six characteristics:

1. The CEO is a willing brand cheerleader, loves the brand heritage and is a great storyteller. The CMO sees his or her purpose as helping the CEO achieve this role.

2. The CEO understands that building brand reputation reduces commercial risk, insulates the company in a crisis and provides the common purpose that can bond all the company’s stakeholders.

3. Efforts are focused on a single, global corporate brand rather than individual product brands.

4. The payback on marketing expenditures is measured rigorously to the satisfaction of the hard-nosed engineers and finance staff who run the typical B2B enterprise.

5. Coordination of company websites worldwide to present a consistent face to stakeholders is the best way to get control of marketing communications that may have become too decentralized.

May be the CEO involvement is relatively small but by no means any less significant than for a B2B brand.