Welcome to our newsletter for June - July 2005.

This issue looks at a successful brand strategy, the need for marketers to address credibility issues within their organisations and the case for re-naming the discipline of marketing.

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info@davismarketing.com.au.

Dianne Davis
Principal and Managing Director

www.davismarketing.com.au

In 2004, financial services group, UBS, joined Business Week's ranking of the world's most valuable brands for the first time. This accolade came just one year after UBS consolidated its array of brands under a single corporate brand aligned with its business strategy.

Offering important learnings on brand strategy, we summarise below, key take-aways from an interview with UBS's Global Head of Brand Management, Beni Eggli.

(The interview appears in full on the website of brand
consultancy, Prophet (www.prophet.com.au).

Key business reasons for moving to a corporate brand strategy:

• Industry analyses suggested that financial products were becoming commoditised, making the role of the brand more important.
• Competitive reviews confirmed an increasing number of financial services companies were moving towards a simpler brand architecture.
• Customer research revealed that the functional and emotional benefits clients expected from their preferred financial services provider were not really different, either from a segment or a geographical perspective.
• Internal reviews showed a brand architecture unaligned with the business model and strategy, and that neither clients nor employees understood what the UBS brand stood for.

Critical challenges:

• Getting senior management buy-in.
• Dealing with the brand strategy in a thorough, methodical, fact-and-figures-based manner closely aligned with the business strategy. The discussion had to move from logo, colours, advertising and sponsorship to a "holistic interpretation that treated brand as an important contributor to..business success".

The whole organisation needed to deliver on the brand promise to provide a unique client experience.

Benefits for UBS and measuring success:

• Significant cultural change.
• A "one firm" approach became a reality, with the benefit of closer collaboration between business groups producing additional revenues.
• External brand-building activities resonated well in the market, with a corresponding increase in brand awareness.
• Every 6 months, the key brand elements for UBS (awareness, familiarity, consideration etc) are measured, with the findings used to adjust activities accordingly.

Key learnings:

1. Wait for the right moment to bring the topic of brand to the table and secure top management buy-in.
2. Have a clear game plan that is based on a thorough methodology and is research-driven.
3. The brand needs to be attractive and relevant to the customer - thus, the voice of the customer needs to be heard and should be decisive.
4. Inform and involve senior management at every major step of the process to avoid surprises.
5. Don't forget structure - the organisational structure shouldn't define the brand architecture, but it should be adjusted to the chosen brand strategy (especially those areas that are key for future brand-building activities).

Over the past 5 years, the human resources profession has sought to recast and re-position itself.

Today, HR is increasingly known as "People & Performance", "People & Culture", People, Performance & Culture", "People Services"(and variations thereof).

The HR profession saw the term "Human Resources" as limiting, no longer reflective of what it did (or aspired to do) - and no longer adequately explaining and encapsulating the "people as strategic asset / human capital" positioning it believed it should occupy.

By and large, the re-branding of HR is still in transition, but certainly gaining traction.

Does Marketing face the same challenge?

Is the term "Marketing" not sufficiently reflective of what marketers do (or indeed should do), full of too many misconceptions and widely seen as being an interchangeable term for "advertising".

Does Marketing need to re-brand itself and change its name? Or is it a case of better articulating the role and value of marketing - more a brand re-positioning exercise?

We would argue that both a re-naming and re-positioning exercise is required and overdue.

A few organisations have already made the move - with the marketing function known variously as: Customer Experience, Brand Experience and Customer Engagement.

We certainly believe it is time to better position the marketing profession and function by moving beyond restrictive (and redundant) terminology developed essentially in the 1960s, and adopting new terminology more relevant to today's business environment.

And with the increased focus on accountability/metrics, the key "assets" widely acknowledged as being under the stewardship of marketing (i.e. customers & brand) provide guidance on new naming options.

Accordingly, we suggest "Customer & Brand Experience" as alternative nomenclature for the role and responsibilities now encompassed by marketers and the marketing function.

Research conducted by McKinsey (see McKinsey Quarterly, 2005, Number 2) amongst 30 European CEOs and Chief Marketing Officers in 2004, found that:

"Marketers have a credibility problem because the creativity that is their lifeblood often runs counter to the discipline required to excel in other parts of the organisation".

Marketers, must therefore:

"Tailor and integrate their strategies with a more complex set of approaches to product development, supply chains..and sales"

And this will mean:

"..investing more resources in training and support infrastructure, and encouraging marketing employees from the front lines to the senior marketing team, to break out of traditional silos that impede the..organisation's progress".

Specific research findings include:

• More than 50% of the participating CEOs were unimpressed by marketer's analytical skills and business acumen
• Nearly all the CEOs interviewed believe marketers "don't think like businesspeople"
• The majority of CEOs were frustrated by requests for marketing funding, which - in most cases - were not backed-up by a solid business rationale.
• The most common attributes associated with marketers (both positive & negative) cited by all research participants were:

Key lessons

According to the McKinsey study, countering negative perceptions about marketers amongst senior management, requires that CMOs take two concurrent courses of action:

1. Establish (and enhance) metrics and processes to track the impact of marketing initiatives, in order to report tangible results
2. Work with line managers to identify and improve a select number (say no more than 2/3) of marketing-related skills, whose improvement will most benefit the organisation's commercial performance (e.g. branding, pricing, analytical skills to quantify the linkage between marketing goals & results).

To realise 1 & 2 above, will require a mix of training, trialing via pilots, small-scale rollouts and the involvement of multi-functional teams.

Visit www.reveries.com for the absolute in an online marketing bazaar. The website covers a broad array of industry sectors and includes such items as: roundtable discussions, white papers, updates on marketing software & tools, expert panels, interviews, essays and surveys, marketing contacts and latest news.

We are proud to be sponsoring a team in the Oxfam TRAILWALKER Sydney 2005.

Oxfam TRAILWALKER is a fundraising team endurance event organised by Oxfam Australia and runs from 26-28 August; 400 teams of four have 48 hours to complete a 100km trail in Sydney from Hunters Hill to Frenchs Forest.

Funds raised go to Oxfam Australia.

Our sponsored team is "Only Run When Chased".

We encourage our clients, contacts and colleagues to make a donation (which is tax-deductible), by clicking on the Oxfam TRAILWALKER logo on our home page and following the links.

Dianne Davis was quoted in Lawyers Weekly (8 April, 2004) on law firm branding.