Leading A Brand: It Ain't Easy, That's Why We Love It!

Brand leadership ai, yi, yi !   Whether you market Cheerios, Nature Valley, Larabar, Post It Notes, Nike, Apple, 2016 Rio Olympics, Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul or your favorite political candidate; brand leadership is not for the faint of heart.  It starts with a potpourri of ginormous leadership expectations - be visionary, confident, steady, agile, clear, collaborative, creative, strategic, tactical, inclusive with high IQ and EQ.   All while displaying your authenticity in humble and servant oriented ways. While you're at it, hit your numbers (short and long term), see every trend coming your way, keep your environment positive, engaged and sustainable. Oh, remember to develop, mentor and give back.  Do all this while being mindful and focusing on what's really important - your health, family and friends.  For those of us who make this our profession, these are precisely the reasons it's the best job in the world.  It stretches your leadership and your being in every conceivable way.   The exercise is at once daunting and exhilarating.     

Today, brand leaders are living in a web of "leadership complexity."  Most industries, principalities, communities and electorates are in the midst of historical change.   Brexit being our latest example with 71 years of post WWII progress hanging in the balance in a world that understands its history less and less each day.  Each of those changes impacts location, needs, wants and perceptions of 7 billion global consumers.  The business models of yester year are being disrupted daily.  The media landscape is constantly changing. Scale and incumbency fail to promise the inimitable "economic moat."  The generic consumer thesis is "Big" is familiar, slow and increasingly less relevant.  "Small" is sexy, fast, disruptive, and most appealing, as a work experience, to our most influential cohart, those Millennials (What, they go home at 5:00 pm everyday? Wow!).   

Consumers, the people who actually pay our collective bills, don't want to be marketed to.  They trust their friends' point of view more than your marketing.  Your brands, no matter how well defined your "purpose," may represent, at best, a modern articulation of, well, the past.   Channel partners are simultaneously partner and competitor.  The arch of getting from point I (idea) to point M (market) is challenged by two of marketing's counter parties, time and increasingly unknowable risk.   But, boldness is rewarded, as long it works :-).

The nexus of change challenges every brand leader.  Consumers, like some voters, are fed up.  Fed up with products and services that deliver less and less value. Fed up with marketing messages that fail to strike the right balance between efficacy and inspiration.  And generally fed up with the marketing ecosystem that seemingly lacks understanding of what the average consumer is up against everyday (the real median US HH income is $54,462 barely above 1988 levels and wildly disparate across race and geography).   Hence, your well researched, well funded messages land less impactfully each time or miss the mark altogether.

To be clear, this is our brand world.  And what an amazing world it is.  To have the ability to make the familiar relevant again and again, to create new propositions and to be at the precipice of culture is an honor and a privilege. And it ain't (yep ain't) easy.  As our industry makes it's own evolution, I'm offering 4 tidbits to make us better, more relevant, more needed and more impactful:

Tell your story - Every brand has a story.  Our challenge is to find it, understand it and make it authentically relevant to our target(s). Tell it over and over and over.  Most brands were built on a crystal clear premise.  Over time brand leaders can misread their target, over process competition and become less in tune with the signals in the noise that point to change.

Wake Up, We're in a Multicultural World, Today - Really!   Are we still questioning the impact that 111mm consumers will have on every facet of our economic, cultural and consumer world?  Once the domain of the so called "tree huggers" the natural and organic food and beverage space is beginning to understand it's market potential by targeting the most food value driven demographic ever.  DJ Khaled, yes that DJ (the hottest selling DJ, collaborator, Hip Hop anthem artist over the last 10 years) was recently featured on a Silk Soy milk commercial enthusiastically advocating "I do plants !"  Yep, that's for the Millennials and his 7.2mm Twitter followers.

Walk A Mile in Your Consumers shoes - the real truth is many people behind some of the largest brands have, at best, an intellectual understanding of what goes on in real consumers' lives.   This is not a slam, but real insight.  Running a brand of any size is an all encompassing exercise, led by incredibly talented leaders.   Brand leaders are stretched to the ends of their organizations to strategize, align and execute.  Which is why it's fundamental that any one who seeks to build, advance, protect or otherwise move a brand to another level must do so in an unequivocal consumer context.  At General Mills we call it deep consumer empathy.  Everyone from the CEO on down spends significant time in consumers homes observing, asking questions and vetting our own "sampled insight" to ensure we are in "authentic context" for our targets.  Most consumers are up against so much these days while being bombarded by the 24/7 news and marketing cycle.  Knowing, feeling and articulating their needs, hopes and dreams is the key.

Inspire - Maybe it's me, but there is a tremendous inspiration deficit in society.  I'm inspired each day by seeing people from all walks off life defy odds to do the unexpected and the incredible.   Inspiration is the pre-cursor to aspiration.  When you have the privilege to grab consumers' precious attention, you'd better be on point and elicit something worthy of their head and heart.  Something that represents their struggle, but offers them an abiding hope that your brand is with them.

Managing a brand is the best job in the world, but it ain’t easy.  That’s why we love it !