I just found Dr. Rod King’s Blue Ocean dashboard and process tools from SlideShare today and thought about how necessary it is to understand the whole value creation process in order to manage brand effectively. The number one branding responsible inside the company is actually the CEO, as he is often the only person in a company responsible for the total experience.

Brand identity is a reflection of the company, it has to be real and true. False promises and wrong kind of identity only generate dissatisfaction and distrust. You are what you are and you can improve, but you can’t stretch too far. Marketing is often responsible for the identity design, business managers are responsible for the experience. This approach doesn’t work anymore – The brand from the customer’s perspective is one single entity and the experience and perception must be a solid combination.

Mr. Graham Hill, well-known and great CRM and customer experience expert whom I respect very much just published an article: How Stupidity, Short-termism and Immorality Ruined Marketing in Customer Think -blog. Here’s a quote:

“If you take a step back you will see that the ethos of marketing has changed over the past 50 or so years. It used to be the driver of a three-step process of 1. understanding what customers want, 2. organising to give it to them profitably and 3. telling them all about it.

Today, this has been changed so that marketing is now the driver of a much more intrumental three-step process of 1. create more stuff that we already make or that competitors make, 2. tell customers about it over and over again, and 3. manage away the customer queries, complaints and returns as cheaply as possible.”

In my opinion the article just emphasized how important it is to act now and change the way how companies organize for marketing and define the role marketing has within the organization. (Below the article there is also great dialogue about the matter.) Read here

The CMO’s should have the best view on how the customers both perceive and experience the company and translate that reality for business owners and the CEO. Mandate for this position comes from the customers. The CMO’s role is to understand how the product/service range and customer experience influence the overall value experience, brand perception and preference, demand and capacity to generate premium pricing. CMO should define how the company should position different products and services in order to optimize the overall growth, sales and profit margin.

Dr. Rod King’s tools for Blue Ocean dashboard tool felt like rather easy and rapid tool for over all view creation, opening eyes for the whole. Here it is: