The Marketing Book 5th Edition

Future

environment

Values Purpose

Brand’s

vision

384 The Marketing Book

management team work through the model,
so the emphasis moves from strategy to tactics
to implementation. Once a brand has been
developed (or an existing brand fine-tuned),
instigating a performance monitor ensures
that feedback is provided, from which further
enhancements can be planned. Each of the
blocks in the model will be considered in
more detail.

Brand vision

A powerful brand vision indicates the long-
term, stretching intent for the brand which must
excite staff, encourage their commitment and
enable them to interpret how they can contrib-
ute to success. Kotter (1996) argues that there are
three ways of managing. The first approach is to
manage by authoritarian decree, but this gives
rise to a fear culture and inhibits staff proposing
innovations. The second approach is micro-
management, specifying to staff exactly how
they should work. This necessitates a notable
investment in supervisory staff. The third way is
visionary management, which gains staff com-
mitment through everyone believing in the
future the firm wants to bring about and people
being motivated to find more creative ways of
solving problems. This model is based on
visionary management.
Developing a brand vision can engender
more committed employees if they have been
involved in some of the brand visioning work-
shops. Brand visioning is typically a team-
based activity, then involves a process of
amending drafts through a combination of
analytical thinking and dreaming. It should
result in a statement that is simple to under-
stand and can be easily communicated. One of
the challenges the senior team have to face
when involving staff is that they are raising
expectations that staff’s views will be incorpor-
ated in the final decision. For some cultures,
particularly those that are bureaucratic or auto-
cratic, engaging staff in the process may cause
senior managers to feel uncomfortable, since
they are not used to having their ideas ques-

tioned. Some relaxation of control could help

these types of organizations to capitalize on

staff participation. In an era of greater brand

similarity, having a company-wide approach to

brand visioning may provide a stronger com-

petitive advantage from staff who are com-

mitted to delivering the brand.

There are three components of a brand

vision, as Figure 15.9 indicates. The first com-

ponent, the envisioned future, encourages man-

agers to think about the future environment

they would like to bring about 10 years ahead.

By saying ‘10 years ahead’, this discourages

incremental projections and encourages a more

challenging, lateral view about the future. To be

appreciated, a brand should bring about wel-

comedchange and, by thinking a long way into

the future, managers should not consider them-

selves to be shackled by the current constraints

under which they operate. Specifying a long-

term horizon encourages managers to think

about discontinuities that will result in step

changes in the market.

By employing a Delphi technique among

the brand’s team, different assumptions can be

Figure 15.9 The three components of a brand’s

vision