“Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind”
Walter Landor (Landauer)
Associate Professor, California College of Arts and Crafts & CEO, Landor Associates
Get real!
Measure and track brand performance to achieve high-quality brand management
The leanBrands Project offers the leanBrands Brand Value Questionnaires (BVQ Basic/ BVQ Advanced) and the leanBrands Sustainable Development Goal Impact Questionnaires (SDG IQ-A and SDG IQ-B and SDG IQ Practices) to analysts, specialists and managers to measure and track corporate brand value and sustainability performance.
Lean Brand Management
Lean management emphasizes the elimination of waste in all forms, whether it’s time, resources, or processes. When applied to brand management, this approach helps streamline operations, ensuring that marketing activities are more focused and efficient. It reduces unnecessary steps in brand-related processes, like content creation, distribution, and customer engagement.
By focusing on what adds value, lean brand management enables faster decision-making processes in brand management. This agility is crucial in a rapidly changing market environment where brands need to adapt quickly to stay competitive.
Lean brand management helps in optimizing the use of resources contributes directly to brand value. This leads to more effective budgeting and higher returns on marketing investments. By focusing only on activities that add value to the brand, lean management helps in eliminating tasks that do not contribute to brand equity or customer satisfaction, thus reducing overall costs.
Lean brand management principles encourage a long-term perspective, emphasizing sustainable growth over short-term gains. For brand management, this means building a brand that not only meets immediate market demands but also remains strong and relevant over time. The focus on continuous improvement inherent in lean management ensures that brand management processes are constantly evolving and improving, leading to sustained brand success.
Lean principles help ensure that brand messaging is consistent across all touchpoints, which is crucial for maintaining a strong brand identity. In lean brand management, this means that all efforts are aligned with delivering maximum value to the customer, leading to stronger brand loyalty and satisfaction.
Benefits of the leanBrands Project
Lean management emphasizes agility and the ability to make quick decisions based on current data. Continuous tracking of brand equity provides real-time insights into how the brand is perceived, allowing brand managers to make immediate adjustments to their strategies. This agility helps in staying ahead of competitors and responding swiftly to changes in the market or consumer behavior.
Brand equity reflects the value that customers associate with a brand. By continuously tracking this metric, brand managers can identify which aspects of the brand are driving value and which are not. This aligns with lean principles, which focus on maximizing customer value by continuously refining and improving processes.
Lean management aims to eliminate waste, and in the context of brand management, this means cutting out activities that do not contribute to brand equity. Continuous tracking helps identify marketing efforts or brand initiatives that are not yielding the desired impact, enabling the reallocation of resources to more effective strategies.
Continuous tracking allows brand managers to detect early signs of declining brand equity, such as a drop in customer loyalty or brand perception. By identifying these issues early, corrective actions can be taken before they become more significant problems, ensuring the long-term health and sustainability of the brand.
The market and consumer preferences are constantly evolving. Continuous tracking of brand equity ensures that the brand remains aligned with these changes. Lean brand management benefits from this by being able to pivot or adapt brand strategies to maintain relevance and competitiveness in the market.
Lean management values decisions based on data rather than assumptions. Continuous tracking of brand equity provides a steady stream of data that can be analyzed to make informed, evidence-based decisions about brand management. This reduces the risk of relying on outdated or inaccurate information when planning brand strategies.
Periodical tracking of brand equity supports lean brand management by enabling iterative enhancement and proactive positioning. It allows for ongoing refinement of brand strategies, ensuring they are consistently optimized for maximum effectiveness and efficiency, in line with lean principles of continuous improvement. Additionally, this proactive monitoring helps brands maintain a competitive edge by allowing them to respond swiftly to changes in consumer perception and market dynamics, ensuring a consistently strong and positive brand experience.
An opportunity offered by the leanBrands Project to branding professionals
- Join the Community Panel
(It’s free) - Take the yearly survey to set your benchmark in brand value measures
- Track measures every year
- Analyze effectiveness of firm practices with the brand performance measures