Brand doesn’t matter anymore (except that it does)
September 16th, 2009 by Hugh Kennedy
The ongoing M&A wrangling over Kraft’s bid for Cadbury is amusing in late 2009, when brand has once more become a dirty word. As marketers we caution ourselves not to refer to it overtly, focusing instead of lead nurturing, fostering a better customer experience with high-value content, and so on. And yet when you peel back one or two layers of this 11-figure deal, what peeks through like an inconvenient truth that is significantly stalling progress on it?
Ask Paul Argenti, professor of corporate communication at Tuck School of Business: “Kraft suggests a sterile corporate image and the heavy hand of a US corporation known best for its macaroni and cheese.”
Or Rita Clifton, the London chairman of Interbrand: “The reasons for M&A tend to be finance and efficiency. Issues such as culture, heritage and management style tend to come second — and yet they are usually the issues that sabotage success.”
Or Jon Moulton of the private equity firm Alchemy: “The value of Cadbury was not a simple concept to its founders….Long-term prosperity is probably best served by preserving and steadily developing a heritage and brand image.”
Whether you’re a $10 million BtoB or a $10 billion BtoEveryone, the power of brand always comes around sooner or later. If you need any evidence, just walk into an Apple Store, where it’s always December 23 at 11 AM. I swung by two weeks ago at 3 PM on a Wednesday and was told by one of their Geniuses that my wait would be 2 1/2 hours unless I had an appointment. Unless products and people have something larger than them to aspire to from 8:30 to 5:30, life can feel pretty sterile.
So in fact, brand hasn’t gone away. It’s just finding new expressions to align with a much less linear world. Yet when two titans clash over dominance, funny how something so intangible is suddenly a billion-dollar proposition.
