Kate Moore
- 23 years experience working and consulting in brand positioning, communication, identity, growth and development.
- Clients have included Johnsonville Sausage, The Hershey Company, Tully's Coffee, The Outdoor Channel, Living.com, Deutsche Post DHL, Corporation Service Company (CSC), Pepsi Foods International, Cadbury Schweppes, Beatrice Foods, Proctor and Gamble, PepsiCo, Nabisco, Miller Brewing Company.
- Strategic focus group moderator and qualitative researcher conducting seminars and workshops in branding, concept development, positioning, and messaging and communication strategy development.
- National marketing director for the Häagen-Dazs Company and senior product manager for Frito-Lay, Inc.
- All 7 Best Practices
- Pre-Meeting Discovery Process
- One-on-One Call with Expert
- Meeting Summary Report
- Post-Meeting Engagement
Developing and Selling Your Brand Internally
Common Problems
- A company that has a variety of divisions, businesses or brands recognizes the need for "unification" under one umbrella.
Many companies do not understand the benefit of a single company brand message. Instead they feed their perceived need to be many things to many different constituencies. This is a huge problem for organizations because it's not only impossible to be all things to all people, but crucial to own and communicate a clear, simple and unfettered brand identity.
- Key stakeholders in an organization cannot readily define the brand, or express "who they are" as a business.
- When employees are confused or uncertain about the meaning of the brand, the brand will suffer in the marketplace. It is crucial that all parts of the organization, especially employees, are properly aligned with the company's branding strategy. The most effective way the brand can be meaningfully positioned to the marketplace is first through employees who truly understand the brand's business and are able to correctly articulate it. The larger the organization, the more effort it takes to educate employees.
- A company is unclear about how to best differentiate its brand versus its competitors.
- A brand may have similarities to its competition, but unless a distinction is clear, the brand will not have a place in the marketplace and will be unable to perform and grow to its maximum potential. The company must effectively define the brand's unique benefits in order to sustain its reason for being and subsequent value.
When initial communications about the brand's attributes and benefits show consumers how the brand aligns with their own core values, the brand is off to a strong start. Subsequent brand messaging then succeeds by illuminating the brand's competitive stance and articulating the distinction between it and a group of "inferior" brands. - Sometimes an agency's brand brief can serve to alienate key company stakeholders.
- Typically, a brand brief is authored by an advertising agency. It is written to provide direction for creative development as well as strategic guidelines for managing and growing the brand's business. While a brand brief may be well understood by management and the marketing strategy group, it might sound like nonsense to manufacturing personnel or to the sales team focused on making its numbers. The specific translation of the brand's value proposition relative to each functional group by key stakeholders in an organization is essential for real brand success and longevity.
- Past internal branding programs fell short of employees' beliefs and feelings about the brand and that disconnect costs the company money.
One of the most difficult problems with internal branding can be the aligning of consumer-driven brand positioning with employee perceptions about their company and brands. While the brand and its products may be highly valued by employees, the company itself may not be well regarded. Employees might feel that the company does not deliver against the brand benefits the organization extolls. All of the best internal branding program development in the world will not be effective under circumstances where employees have collectively internalized negative company perceptions.