ADOI Blog

Operational Excellence is Key to Brand Building

admin2 on 10 23, 2009

Just about every time I meet with a prospect in the retail sector for the first time, they always talk about raising the profile or increasing awareness of the company or their product. Many retailers, especially those with international brands, believe that buying the license for an international brand, taking retail space in 5 malls in the Klang Valley and then creating awareness of the brand with cool edgy European or US ad campaigns is all they need to do to build a brand.

But whilst creating awareness, especially for a new product may be an important step, it isn’t a goal. It may, if all the planets are aligned in the right place at the right time, generate a sale but making more consumers aware of a product or service and possibly getting some of them to purchase the product or service is not branding.

Branding is so much more than a possible sale based on an awareness campaign. Branding is developed based on the way the organization responds to the consumer and any first sale made. And if that response doesn’t match individual consumer requirements for economic, experiential and emotional value, the brand will not survive.

But operational excellence is not easy. Which is one reason why so many companies prefer to ignore it. Anyone who has worked in a company where data and customers are guarded in the same way as the army may guard a camp in a hostile environment or has been put on hold or bounced from department to department knows that it is both rare and difficult.

The key elements of operational excellence are flexibility, reliability, responsiveness, immediacy and innovation.

No matter how cool or cutting edge your advertising may be, the experiences prospects have with your brand will have far greater influence on those consumers becoming customers than any awareness campaign. And without customers, you cannot build a brand.

Marcus Osborne is a founder of FusionBrand, Asia’s leading data driven brand consultancy. If you like this, you can read more of his often controversial opinions about the industry here: http://brandconsultantasia.wordpress.com/

Send article as PDF to