Nicholas Ind

A company's workforce is its most valuable asset. It is the employees who translate an organziation's strategy into reality, interact with consumers and determine the corporate brand. In this fully updated second edition, Nicholas Ind demonstrates how a participatory approach can enhance employee commitment, improve service standards and focus effort to deliver business goals. This can be achieved by building meaning, purpose and values into the organization to foster a culture of enthusiastic employee participation. This practical and inspirational book is about how organizations can empower and enthuse their employees to create 'brand champions'. The themes of Living the Brand are: employees flourish in organizations where they identify with the brand; organizations flourish when the brand has relevance and creates meaning; purpose and values are not created - they exist; the issue is how well they are articulated and embedded; brand clarity creates freedom; brands come to life when the boundaries between the internal and external blur; stories and myths are important for sustaining brands; living the brand requires imagination. With the use of original international case studies, Nicholas Ind discusses the insights and problems of articulating and then delivering brands through people. The book examines the nature of branding and why people have become such important definers of the brand. The conclusion being that both organizations and people need values - it is essential to their well-being and sense of worth.

How to Transform Every Member of Your Organization Into a Brand Champion

Living the Brand

Majken Schultz

Oriol Iglesias

This companion is a prestige reference work that offers students and researchers a comprehensive overview of the emerging co-created, multi-stakeholder, and sustainable approach to corporate brand management, representing a paradigm shift in the literature. The volume contains 30 chapters, organised into 6 thematic sections. The first section is an introductory one, which underscores the evolution of brand management thinking over time, presenting the corporate brand management field, introducing the current debates in the literature, and discussing the key dimensions of the emerging corporate brand management paradigm. The next five sections focus in turn on one of the key dimensions that characterize the emerging approach to corporate brand management: co-creation, sustainability, polysemic corporate narratives, transformation (history and future) and corporate culture. Every chapter provides a deep reflection on current knowledge, highlighting the most relevant debates and tensions, and offers a roadmap for future research avenues. The final chapter of each section is a commentary on the section, written by a senior leading scholar in the corporate brand management field. This wide-ranging reference work is primarily for students, scholars, and researchers in management, marketing, and brand management, offering a single repository on the current state of knowledge, current debates, and relevant literature. Written by an international selection of leading authors from the USA, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia, it provides a balanced, authoritative overview of the field and convenient access to an emerging perspective on corporate brand management.

The Routledge Companion to Corporate Branding

Holger J. Schmidt

Rather than lead, manage and control, contemporary managers have taken on the new tasks of listening, connecting and participating with consumers in brand development. The focus of brand management has shifted to the intersection between the organisation and its stakeholders. Co-Creating Brands is an accessible exploration of how co-created brands produce value and how the success of this approach can be measured and assured.

Brand Management from A Co-creative Perspective

Co-creating Brands

A company's workforce is its most valuable asset. It is the employees who translate an organization's strategy into reality, interact with consumers, and determine the corporate brand. This updated edition of Living the Brand demonstrates how a participatory approach can enhance employee commitment, improve service standards, and focus effort to deliver business goals. This practical and inspirational book is about how organizations can empower their employees and create "brand champions." Using international examples, Nicholas Ind shows that employees flourish in organizations where they identify with the brand, and organizations flourish when the brand creates meaning for the employee. Living the Brand shows how to make this happen.

Desire is big business. If companies can create true desirability for their brands, customers will not only express preference and loyalty, they also show a willingness to act as brand champions, participate in online communities, co-create innovative ideas, and show the sort of commitment that is normally associated with fervent employees. However, desire doesn't just happen. Brands need to nurture it by offering both security and surprise. This isn't just about marketing, but rather a reflection of an organization-wide culture and perspective. Using international case studies, Brand Desire explains how companies can engage customers emotionally and create value for them. Managers can successfully build and maintain brand desire through specific strategies and tools, such as: · promoting a principles-driven organization that is grounded in its heritage and distinctive competences; · creating a supportive culture that encourages the active participation of people in brand development; · providing an opportunity for people to communicate more with each other and to encourage socialization through communities and events; and · offering outstanding experiences: being consistent in delivery, from first communications through to after-sales service and support. In a crowded sales environment, brand desire can elevate any product or service so that it stands out from the crowd – and stays there. Brand Desire demonstrates how desirable brands are about desirable experiences, and shows what companies can do to maximize those experiences for their customers.

How to Create Consumer Involvement and Inspiration

Brand Desire

Brand management and development has traditionally been regarded as the responsibility of the organization – they design, produce and sell the brand, before delivering it to customers. Yet this approach can be needlessly restrictive, as the connective power of the internet and the desire of consumers to focus on experiences has reshaped branding. In this digital age, development occurs beyond the limits of the organisation so that, in many ways, brands are effectively co-created by consumers. Rather than lead, manage and control, contemporary managers have taken on the new tasks of listening, connecting and participating in brand development. The focus of brand management has shifted to the intersection between the organisation and its stakeholders. This changing environment must lead to a new paradigm of brand management: the 'co-creation perspective'. Co-Creating Brands is an accessible exploration of how co-created brands produce value and how the success of this approach can be measured and assured. The authors draw upon a wide array of international case studies and strategic models, which clearly demonstrate how to both effectively deliver this method and how to deal with the situational challenges and obstacles that can occur. If organisational leaders are willing to let go complete control of their brand and recognise the supportive culture of employees, customers and stake-holders, their brand can become an unstoppable marketing force.

Build a successful brand and create value through the commitment of employees and external stakeholders. A mixture of theory and practice on achieving the active involvement of your organization's people.

Internal Branding in Theory and Practice

Branding Inside Out

Clare Fuller

Charles Trevail

Any business that wants to continue growing has to consider new ways of developing and engaging with customers and clients. Innovation and co-creation have emerged as the key topics in the post-recession business environment. Brand Together will show you how to involve all stakeholders in the process of creativity - providing inspiration on how to revitalize brands and enable them to succeed in the new world of customer engagement and participation. It will show you how to truly intertwine innovation with brand strategy, whilst providing guidance on how to co-create with customers from a brand perspective. Drawing on case studies including Barclays, Mozilla, [yellow tail], Kraft Foods, Virgin Media and Danone. Brand Together will provide valuable insights for marketing and branding professionals and for anyone who wants to grow their business and their brand.

How Co-Creation Generates Innovation and Re-energizes Brands

Brand Together

Sandra Horlings

The definitive expert guide to ethical brand practice from the prestigious Medinge Group, Brands with a Conscience dissects the philosophies underpinning sustainable brands to arrive at a set of eight clear guiding attributes which can be used as the foundation of a strategy for responsible growth. These attributes span the public persona of an organization, the actions to take when things go wrong, the effort invested in developing relationships, the promotion of core values and balancing measures of success across economic, human, social and environmental factors. They are then used as the criteria to assess twelve carefully selected case studies, which include Dilmah Tea, H&M, Dr. Hauschka, Merci and the John Lewis Partnership, amongst other leading international brands. Because the potential to have bad practice unmasked or to have successes amplified online is greater than ever, it pays to adopt a strategy that builds customer loyalty and trust. Brands with a Conscience inspires via examples of brands which not only exhibit a genuine desire to operate ethically, but also have seen impressive success in terms of engagement with consumers, reputation, and return on investment. The book includes a range of practical tools to bring together the main concepts in an easy-to-adopt framework for building a brand strategy based upon real world experience. If you are a brand manager or marketing professional seeking a conscientious approach to consumer engagement, then Brands with a Conscience will support you every step of the way.

How to Build a Successful and Responsible Brand

Brands with a Conscience

Internal branding is the cultural shift that occurs within an organization when employees become more customer-focused. By getting employees to truly commit to a brand's ideology internally, companies will find that their brand messages are conveyed externally much more effectively. Branding Inside Out is a multi-contributor text containing chapters from an array of senior professionals and academics, edited by the renowned branding expert and prolific author Nicholas Ind. Branding Inside Out contains both new thinking and new practice on internal branding. The new thinking chapters in the book feature original research on the principles that underpin effective internal branding programmes, while the new practice chapters provide examples of how such companies as Patagonia, NN Group and Adidas both attract new employees and build employee engagement. Taken together, these contributions and case studies form a vital book to help any marketer understand and implement successful internal branding programmes, and win the active involvement of their people. Online resources include supporting PowerPoint slides and case studies for each chapter.

In response to the growing 'anti-globalization' movement and the popular perception that brands are manipulative and demeaning, this text argues that branding is neither inherently good nor evil and aims to show that branding can in fact benefit employees, customers and investors.

How the New Values of Transparency and Integrity are Changing the World of Brands

Beyond Branding

Regardless of the service or products it provides, a company's corporate brand is responsible for its image and reputation in the minds of its products' consumers. And yet companies rarely focus on what leads to a successful corporate brand, concentrating their energy instead on their individual brand name products. In The Corporate Brand, Nicholas Ind argues strongly for a new focus on corporate brand development. Ind argues that organizations must use all forms of communication, including performance of specific products, employees' services, and advertising, to build effective interactive relationships with their customers. The Corporate Brand elucidates the methods used by successful corporate brands to build and maintain both "corporate identity" and reputation.

Nicholas Ind

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