Posts filed under 'Branding'
A recent article appeared in BusinessWeek (April 16, p58 - or see it here http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_16/b4030071.htm?chan=search
Basically, Eddie Lampert who runs/owns Sears and KMart has issued bonds to the value of $1.8bn based on the Kenmore, Crafstman and Diehard brand names. “In essence, [Sears] has transferred ownership of the brands to another entity, which it then pays for the right to use the brands…” the article goes on to say “…the market in bonds backed by intangible assets could be even bigger thn the market for junk bonds, given that 70% to 80% of the total value of the stock market rests on intangibles…”
This struck me as very, very interesting given that Sears has, essentially placed a value on its three core brands and now has the opportunity to monetize them quickly (in the same way, the article points out, David Bowie monetized his songs by selling bonds backed by royalties to the songs for $55m). Given the spate of leveraged takeovers by private equity companies, I imagine that a number of these folks are considering how to unlock the value of the brands that they are buying into. And if they can do this easily, they will be on the prowl not only for underleveraged companies that can generate cash, but underleveraged companies that have underleveraged or strong brands. This will bode well for companies like Interbrand who can provide some sense of the value of the brands (although its still a little too ‘black box-y’ for me) as well as for ad agencies and brand consultancies who know how to build brands quickly.
I think we’ll be hearing a lot more about securities like these in the near future.
April 17th, 2007
An important part of activating the brand is our Brand Action Workshops. In these workshops we usually work with specific departments or business units to identify gaps between the current situation and the desired brand vision.
Enemies of successful Brand Action Workshops
I’ve been thinking a lot about Brand Action Workshops and what makes some more or less successful. I’ve done a lot of these, so much of what in this post has been learned via error and perfect hindsight. I’ll post these issues one by one and hopefully get your comments.
1.Hubris:
The least successful workshops are those in where the manager and his or her dept has little or no self awareness about what makes them ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Very often this is a result of hubris. A few years ago I ran some workshops in an organization in which every department complained about another particular department (let’s call them dept X). Just about everything was blamed on Dept X from poor sales results to global warming. Yet when I did the Brand Activation Workshop with Dept X, not only the top managers of the dept thought that they were doing a great job. It was as if they were living in a bubble. Too often we do workshop where we rely on self-reported strengths and weaknesses. While this may work, I’ve found workshops are infinitely more helpful if we present some form of ‘objective’ data for the managers to respond to, even if it’s anecdotal. The point is to provide some sort of challenge and provoke a reaction. For example “It’s interesting that you think that everyone in the company is happy with process ABC when in actual fact I’ve heard a great deal of complaints about it” More next week.
March 21st, 2007
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March 17th, 2007
Speaking of operationalizing your brand, I tried to log on to USAirways website and forget it. Tried calling their reservations line and waited 25 minutes only to get an operator who put me on hold with a wait time of another 30 minutes.
How long can the airlines use the Valentine’s Day storm to justify the absulutely deplorable treatment of travelers? I’m now convinced that the notion of a Passenger’s Bill of Rights should be adopted by the Congress and airlines should start paying penalties for their disregard and mistreatment of flyers.
Their recent trend to profitability has been won at the expense of the traveling public, with non-existent reservations service. lost bags and rude staff.
What’s your view?
February 19th, 2007
