Expand, Grow, Thrive by Pete Canalichio

Author:Pete Canalichio
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781787439757
Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
Published: 2018-01-29T05:00:00+00:00

All of these not-for-profit organizations have been able to expand their brands because they stand for ideas and events that people want to associate themselves with closely.

You don’t need to own every aspect of a brand in order to have an own-able brand. In fact, every brand is owned in a range of ways, by a range of stakeholders. It’s not just proprietary. Consumers also own brands, in the sense that they think of those brands as part of “their” lives. Own-ability is about what your customer feels you own as a brand, why they’re excited by it, and why they choose to ascribe that attribute to you and not one of your competitors.

The people within organizations “take ownership” of the brands they work for in the sense that they think of themselves as part of those brands and their success. Sectors own brands, and brands own sectors, because without brands there would be no sensible or efficient way of recognizing and distinguishing between participants. In essence, any stakeholder can lay claim to some level of ownership in a brand, just as I and millions of others did back in 1985 when Coca-Cola decided to change its century-old secret formula and name it New Coke. And, just as importantly, brand ownership can be about what you are prepared not to own, like if you choose to license or open source in order to give others their own sense of belonging.

All of this is pertinent to how a brand looks to grow because expansion requires those who feel they own the brand to agree, either tacitly or explicitly, to changes in brand ownership. Sadly, too many brand expansions lack nuance. They tack a brand onto another brand or they add another asset to a house of brands without thinking through whether the people who support the business really want “more of the same.” And while every brand professes to be there for its customers, few, if any, consult their customers when they look to change the ownership structure. The general assumption seems to be that the customers will like the change because it involves the brand and/or that they will get used to it.

To reiterate, when a brand chooses to expand beyond its current borders whether geographically, reputationally, or in terms of offering, it must know what aspects of the brand it will carry across to the new sectors, and where it will adapt its core DNA in order to be competitive within that sector. The brand additions must not only feel like they belong to the brand, but the brand itself must seem bigger, deeper, and broader because of the activities that now take place under its name. Simply put, the expanded brand needs to connect its own dots in ways that consumers recognize and enjoy. Successful expansion is about striking the right balance between four elements:

Involvement — the people who see the brand as part of their lives must feel that they are included, and that they have something to gain from the proposed expansion.

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