Company types: Wanters and Dreamers
The personality of any company is a determining factor for commercial success. The management of (visual) branding, the way this is organised throughout the company, the nature of the ambitions, the feasability of ambitions, the results; these strategic factors are profoundly influenced by the culture and structure of a company. The previous outline dealt with the first two types of companies. Now I will tell you more about the other two types: Wanters & Dreamers.
Parameters
There are five basic parameters that determine to which category a company belongs to:
1. Position of the brand(s) in the Management Board
2. The way the discipline Brand Management is structured
3. Relationship of the brand(s) v. business targets and results (profit & loss)
4. Internal governance of the brand(s)
5. The quality of the output and the results
Wanters
Wanters are led by managers who understand that a brand is important, but they do not have a great affinity, knowledge or ambition to understand the complexity of branding. The brand is treated as the derivative of the actual business activity. The branding policy is the prime responsibility of the Marketing Communication Department, though in certain companies the Corporate Communications Department also has a say in matters. What also happens is that the responsibility is divided between the two departments. Together they have to advise and convince the Management Board.
None of the members of the Management Board has a professional background or sufficient experience with branding and marketing. Often one of the members has the brand in his portfolio. The brand is explicitely part of the joint decisionmaking process. In terms of professionalism and budgeting you can say that Wanters are more limted than Originals and Professionals. Brands that are owned by Originals and Professionals are often used as benchmark. They strive to reach with their brand(s) a comparable level and commercial strength. They mostly lack the same level of consistency, awareness and perseverance to actually become equals to Originals or Professionals.
Another matter is that they are limited in the way they are consistent with their brand. The managers in charge often turn to ad hoc activities that have a specific goal, but affect the consistency of the brand. This is due to the fact that the branding policy is not deeply embedded in the mind, mentallity and organization.
Quite often third parties can place a strong mark on certain (marketing) activities. Looking at the business sectors, I have noticed that Wanters can be found in more traditional markets like building, construction, engineering, but also ICT. Another field you will find them in, is the privatised companies. Take for example Deutsche Post and the Dutch energy-company Eneco. My assumption is that it takes these formerly state owned companies at least ten years or more to grow from Dreamers into Wanters. So what are Dreamers precisely?
Dreamers
Dreamers are conducted by managers who don’t perceive the company as a brand. The company is nothing else but the business activity, the Management Board is primarly focused on trade or administration. The concept of marketing and communication is very limited. These type of companies do strive to be professional, but are weak with respect to budget and content. The focus is more on communicating their message then on building a brand.
Therefore the way the brand and communication are internally organised is restricted. The department and manager in charge does not have a strong position with the company. He is more focused on execution and experiences a great distance. It is hard to get the brand to become an agenda item and it is difficult to take decisions. This leads in general to weak brands, only the good intentions are visable.
Many examples of Dreamers can be found in for instance health care, non-governmental organizations and in (semi) government institutions.
A friend of mine collected logo’s of ICT-related brands. He ended up with an huge collection of brands that more or less all have the same visual identity. What all these brands communicate is “we are indifferent about our brand, we are generic as a company, we have nothing special to offer, we have no ambition and skills in marketing”.
Be it tomorrow or in the future, these companies – or their competitors – will discover that you can boost your company culture and market performance by paying more professional attention to (visual) branding. Ambition will bring them from Dreamers to become Wanters, and maybe in the long run to the status of Professional.
Migration
My basis rule is: you can migrate from one company type to another. Up and down. In general not more than one step at the time. There is –like always- one exeption to the rule: Originals are born that way. You can’t call yourself Original by strategic planning. Therefore, It will be very difficult, if not impossible, for a Professional to become an Original. This can be hardly a problem, for most Professionals it would be a foolish ambition. There would be little to gain and a lot to loose. Being an Original has everything to do with a deeply embedded culture of entrepreneurship and a strong adventurous spirit.
Image below: The example from collected logo’s of ICT-related brands.
Two comments: as well as the categorisations suggested here, there is a recent study of Sweden’s 500 largest companies (Gromark, J & Melin, F) that shows organisations (Leaders) with the highest brand orientation index (BOI), where branding is the hub of operations are characterised by an ability to combine both an internal and external focus. However, as well as the ‘Leaders’, there are also organizations categorised as ‘Educators’ who see the brand as purely an internal culture carrier, externally oriented ‘Salesmen’ who see brand as a sales tool and ‘Sceptics’ who see it as a logotype. While Leaders represent 34% of the organizations, Sceptics form 30% of the total. This study demonstrates the link between brand orientation and profitability by illustrating the correlation between the two with the group of leaders in terms of orientation showing operating profits almost double the lowest brand orientation group .
Second maybe migration from professional to original is possible. As you suggest none of these company types is a fixed end state, there is always evolution. Nor are any of the typologies absolute. Consequently you can argue that it is possible to go from a dominantly Original type to a Professional one and back to an Original one again. The most obvious example here is Apple and the return of Steve Jobs
Basicly what I read is this: a fence or border between you and creativity. Let’s try to break this rule of blocking out creativity by one step first, as you mentioned. Listening is the first step towards this goal. Migration starts of with listening. To serve a big market you have to listen to quite a lot of people. Good marketing is the best tool to listen to huge crowds. Listening is gathering problems mentioned below the management line. Like the feedbacks from computer-crashes. Read them, analize them, gather them and make it simple. Be responsive to this is the first and easiest step forward in a company. It’s called ‘the art of Kaizen’ by the japanese. This can be done in every stage of a company and the result will be a stage further than your mentioned ‘maitainance’: service! Adding service to a company and mainating this service is the biggest value of a Brand. See all new products and features are based on releasing new services. Not too many at a time, please no! Growth comes with pay for service and support. Visual appearance is just one of these items people are attracted to. It’s a service too, and thus part of a companies strategy to differentiate from the crowd. Like the summer and winter campaigns of Coca Cola are there to set the right feeling right on time. Apples new operating systems come in the fall, just before you give yourself a present at Christmas. You buy a dream and you start off a new cycle, taking customners by the hand through all cycles of development by services and support. They develop together knowledge into a product that appear like a new dream. Again, and again. You don’t have to be born like this. One chooses to be at a certain stage in these cycles. Success is right between knowledge and dream, and every stage of so called migration is needed to get there. Always look back to the stage behind to be sure it’s closed of right. otherwise you stay on one there for too long. You might say the same, but that’s not quite clear yet.
Dear Tom,
Subjoined you will find a short reaction on outline 3 and 4, because I think you can’t separate them from each other. In fact, you devide companies in 4 categories and only Professionals and Originals pay enough attention to brand management and visual branding.
Well, as you ask your readers, I certainly do recognise what you describe and agree with your point of view. There are just a two small things I want to recommend to you:
a) Please clarify in your book (which will be more detailed I assume) how visual branding takes place at an Original company like Apple. In your Third outline, you give people a feeling that design management is under the direct responsibility of Steve Jobs (ooh I am sure that he will be involved!), but I think you have to be more clear about it. I think your are right when you say there is no uniform, corporate Apple style with strict rules and guidelines, but somehow there has to be a group of people in the neighbourhood of Steve Jobs (don’t forget that Apple is huge company nowadays and Mr Jobs has a lot of other things that ask his attention) who are responsible for design management. How do they handle with it?
b) When you sum up five criteria (parameters) to determine to which category a company belongs, I think you should use them to judge the examples (companies) at each criteria. Maybe it is an idea to create a kind of schedule for it and visualize the assessment.
Best regards,
Marcel
PS: You should really order the new book Logo Design at Taschen.com. It is a real pleasure for your eyes and besides that, it is nice and interesting to read the stories behind the cases.
http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/design/new/04407/facts.htm
Dear Tom,
What a good idea to write your book in such an open source method. I would say the next step is to truly write a wiki-book.
With respect to your parameters that determine to which category a company belongs I can recommend you the research of Andre de Waal / the Center for Organizational Performance.
In his research Andre tries to identify which aspects make an organization High Performing … I am very interested in your thoughts on linking (visual) branding to the five cornerstones of a High Performing Organisation.
You can get more info on the cornerstones at this link: http://www.management-development.com/de_5_pijlers_voor_een_hpo
Keep up the good work. I know how much time it costs to write a book & please do not forget to keep spending time with your beloved ones …
Cheers, Patrick