Brand management in large companies

When it comes to brand management, large companies take a strategic approach.We all deal with the changing demands on brand management on a daily basis: Capturing and maintaining market share is more difficult than ever, investments are under greater pressure to succeed, and the complexity of channels and messages is continually increasing. How are different companies meeting these challenges? What role does the brand play today? And how will brand management develop in the future? These are some of the key questions of a study by GfM and the international brand and marketing consultancy Prophet, for which a total of around 600 brand managers and marketing decision-makers were surveyed. Among them are large companies such as lpiq, Clariant, Coop, Credit Suisse, Geberit, Holcim and Nestlé.The strategic importance of brands is increasingThe majority of the Swiss companies surveyed state that the importance of the brand for the success of their company has increased further in the past 5 years. For more than 70 percent, brand management has become more important for the company's success in recent years. It has taken on greater weight in strategic decision-making and is more heavily influenced by corporate strategy than ever before. More than 40 percent of companies now use the brand predominantly for strategic corporate decisions.The assessment of the future importance of strategic brand management is similarly clear: Not a single company expects this to decrease; almost three-quarters of respondents expect it to increase or even greatly increase in importance.Employee and area integrationThat marketing in particular is involved in brand management seems only logical. But it is surprising that only some companies integrate their HR, innovation/R&D and sales professionals. Without anchoring in HR systems and in product policy, brands unfold only a fraction of their potential. The high involvement of the finance department suggests that issues such as brand world and impact are increasingly reflected in financial metrics. In addition, the investments in the brand are becoming ever higher and make the involvement of the finance department necessary.On the subject of employee activation and "employer branding", the respondents answered as follows:- Only half of the companies state that employees play any role at all with regard to brand management.- Only just under 56 percent of the companies consider an investment in internal employee activation to be a necessary basis for building a brand.- Only half of the companies state that the brand plays a role in the development of measures for personnel management and recruitment.- In only one in ten companies does brand management coordinate closely with the HR department.DigitalAlmost without exception, companies see digital as the biggest challenge of the future. Four out of five companies see the integration of digital & social media channels with business processes as a future trend, but not yet as a core challenge.Consequently, the dialog between brand management and IT is institutionalized in just under 9 percent of companies.Plan brand investments strategicallyInvestments in the brand are made primarily for strategic reasons. In just under 80 percent of companies, planning is therefore also situation-specific, without fixed internal or external benchmarks. Where benchmarks are used, they are mainly internal benchmarks with little strategic orientation, such as "percentage of sales" or "relative to the previous year's budget". Even in leading companies, we are still a long way from longer-term investment and budget planning. It is possible that the idea of medium-term budget planning with an investment perspective for brand development is simply not (yet) feasible, because brand expenses are treated as pure costs in accounting, not as investments. Download ready