Influencing is a Critical Brand Management Skill

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States of America

Brand management is an enterprise-wide endeavor. But most brand managers do not have enterprise-wide authority, even if they are highly placed in the organization. This is why influencing skills are critical to the success of that role. I always took Harry S. Truman's quote seriously. I figured out who I needed to influence and what I needed them to know, believe or conceive and then carefully "seeded the field" with those ideas. I would casually mention these things in the hallway, over lunch, at a dinner party or at a ball game. I was most successful if each person thought the idea was his or her own, not mine. Then I would watch what I wanted to occur unfold naturally throughout the organization with all of the right people championing the things that needed to happen on behalf of the brand.

You can be so brilliant at subtly influencing others that people may begin to think that they don't need you because the right things seem to be falling in place and getting done without your driving force. However, as long as you let your boss know what you are up to, completely support these brand-positive efforts and compliment your peers on "their" brilliant ideas, things will go smoothly for you. Plus, if you are influencing people on the right things, you should achieve or exceed your objectives. 

People don't like to be told what to do, especially by someone outside their chain of command or at a lower level in the organization. This is why it is critical to get them to believe that what you want them to do was their own idea. 

I was a master at this and it helped me immensely in my stint as Hallmark's chief brand advocate. You too may find that influencing others is a skill that helps you in your role as a brand manager.

Brand Manager Competencies and Responsibilities

Brand Manager Competencies

• Strong ability to influence behaviors and perceptions without
• formal authority
• Respected throughout the organization
• Strong written and verbal persuasion skills
• Adequate analytical skills
• Customer research experience
• Strong intuition about human behavior and motivation
• Good project management skills

Brand Manager Responsibilities

• Identify, refine, the brand’s “unique value proposition.”
• Monitor, measure, and manage brand equity/strength.
• Increase brand awareness, relevant differentiation, value,
• accessibility, and emotional connection.
• Develop brand plan.
• Monitor progress against brand plan.
• Be responsible for results against brand plan.
• Drive brand understanding and support organization-wide.
• Champion/drive initiatives that support delivery of the brand
• promise.
• Brand messaging—elevator speech, tagline, campaign themes,
• proof points, etc.

Brand Identity Manager Competencies

• Strong ability to influence behaviors and perceptions
• without
• formal authority
• Respected throughout the organization
• Likable
• Assertive
• Ability to say “no” in a nice way
• Some understanding of brand identity standards and systems

Brand Identity Manager Responsibilities

• Manage the brand architecture.
• Establish brand architecture and naming decision rules.
• Establish brand identity standards including co-branding standards.
• Maintain brand identity consistency.
• Chair the brand identity council/team/board.
• Help manage brand identity transitions resulting from mergers
• and acquisitions.
• Help determine identities for new brands/subbrands.
• Anticipate and accommodate new brand identity needs

© 2015 Brad VanAuken

Excerpted from Brand Aid, second edition, available for sale here.

Brand Management & Marketing Competency Assessment

Over the past decade, I have helped hundreds of organizations refine their brand management and marketing efforts. In so doing, I have gotten pretty good at making a fairly quick assessment of an organization’s or individual’s marketing capabilities. Here are some of the signs that the organization or individual knows what it/he/she is doing regarding brand management and marketing:

• An insightful and nuanced (and often elaborate) description of the target customer groups and segments
• Backed up by qualitative and quantitative marketing research
• Including brand positioning maps for the brand in question and its competitors
• Knows the difference between attributes, benefits and values
• The brand strategy is based on benefits and values (especially emotional benefits and values)
• The brand’s promise is unique, compelling and believable (with an emphasis on compelling)
• The brand’s tagline reinforces the brand’s promise
• Familiarity with self-expressive brand benefits
• Understands the importance of category description and competitive “frame of reference”
• Familiar with the concept of “category of one” brands
• Understands (and has used) the following qualitative research techniques: projective, laddering and guided imagery
• The brand’s media plan is highly targeted and efficient based on the target customer definition
• Is familiar with the concept of customer touch point design
• The CEO is involved in the brand strategy process
• Good understanding of customer purchase and usage behaviors
• Customer-centric, common sense approach to all marketing decisions

Test yourself and your organization against the previous bulleted items. How well do you stack up?