Published in The Attention Architect, a newsletter on LinkedIn, March 29, 20 22

They say the car you drive says a lot about who you are, and that logic makes sense because my old college buddy, Trent, and his Subaru were reflections of each other. 

For four years of undergraduate school, I watched Trent race his Crimson Red Subaru around campus, over curbs, into the muddy back roads while camping, and navigating through the worst winter ice storms in the mountains. However, throughout our entire education, I never once saw Trent change the oil, add fluids, schedule a tune-up, put air in the tires, or get the steering aligned. Not even a car wash! 

The only maintenance Trent ever did to the car was to “fill-er-up with gas and beer,” as he was prone to say.

WHO NEEDS STEERING?

During our final year of school, Trent talked me into making the 12-hour trek down to Florida for the annual Spring Break ritual.

We took turns driving the “Subie,” and during my time at the helm, I noticed the steering wheel kept slipping and dragging slightly behind as if there was a screw loose underneath. Driving this old car at 75mph in the rain after a sunburnt week of Long Island Ice Teas was a terrifying, white-knuckle experience for me.

When I suggested to Trent that we should get the car looked at by a professional, he told me, “Nonsense! This car fixes itself.”

This cavalier attitude was how Trent approached everything in life, but I had to admit that Subaru was one of the most reliable, durable, and low-maintenance cars I’d ever seen. But whenever anyone suggested he take the car into the shop to have it checked out, Trent would trot out the old Subaru tagline: “Inexpensive. And Built to Stay That Way.”

About six months after our road trip, the Subaru’s steering wheel finally snapped out of the column, and Trent wound up in a ditch. Although he was lucky to be alive, Trent had two broken ribs, a missing front tooth, and twelve stitches across his forehead. 

When I visited Trent in the hospital, his first medicated words to me were, “Well, I guess even the most reliable things in life eventually fall apart.”

“Yes, they do, Trent,” I said. “That’s what preventative maintenance is all about — to keep things in good working order when you need them most.”

“I’ll take the car into the shop when I get out of here,” he mumbled. “I promise!”

STRONG HEADWINDS

After we graduated from college, I went to work in a design firm, and Trent in the family clothing business, which his father had grown into an international enterprise.

For the first ten years of his chairman-in-training role, Trent had a cushy job. But when his father unexpectedly passed away, it unleashed the demons of an ugly board takeover attempt.

Trent’s timing to assume the position couldn’t have been worse. The company was weathering a severe credit crunch, increasing competition from overseas, management strife between the old guard and newcomers, and difficulties attracting younger consumers. And that’s when Trent called me at the consulting firm I co-founded and asked, “Do you want to help me fix the steering on something important?"

“On the old Subie?” I asked, excited.

“No!” Trent said. “My father’s company is coming apart at the seams, and I need to get the brand back on the right path to higher ground.”

THE BRAND AS ORAL HISTORY

The first thing my team and I did was conduct a brand audit/interrogative of Trent’s company. We also did a lot of qualitative research to understand the brand perception in the market and within the company.

It didn’t take us long to realize there were no internal brand rules or guidelines, much less a distillation of the brand into succinct words. Like Trent’s Subaru, the brand hadn’t had a brand tune-up in decades, and without a checkup, there was no reliable way to steer the brand in a specific direction.

Somehow or other, the brand ran by itself based on a loosely defined oral history of how his father liked to run things. But as successful as an entrepreneur as Trent’s father was, the world had changed six times since his last involvement.

While the management staff continually added and subtracted stuff to the marketing programs, there was no central brand document or brand bible for others to refer to, much less abide by when making decisions. Both the head of sales and marketing had different perspectives on the brand, but neither was in charge or wanted to talk about it openly.

Everyone on the C-Suite floor seemed to have their interpretations of the brand and based critical decisions on those personal opinions. These beliefs often contradicted each other, contributing to a neutralizing effect on the brand’s clarity, potency, and appeal.

Worse yet, there was no regular forum or dedicated meetings to discuss the brand deeply. The only mention of the word “branding” we could find was at the tail end of the Monday morning meeting agenda when everyone was in full tactical gear mode and ready to leave the room.

When I asked Trent how his company’s leaders made decisions regarding issues that affect the brand with no brand codification, he dared to quote me another Subaru tagline: “When you get it, you get it.”

“Oh, no, Trent!” I said, “not this Subaru philosophy again.”

“It’s true! Even though my partners can’t articulate it in the fancy terminology you use, the folks around here know what the brand stands for in their gut,” Trent declared. But I wasn’t buying it this time.

“The problems with your brand won’t fix themselves, Trent,” I said.” And this kind of cavalier thinking will land you and your company back in the ditch again.”

“If you’re serious about me helping you get out of your sales rut, you’ll need to let us build more discipline, structure, and consensus in how the brand operates around here.”

“You got it, Captain!” Trent said, giving in to my demands. “I’m going to sit in the backseat and let you steer this brand to the right place for us.”

THE BRAND CONSTITUTION

After putting the brand on the lift for six weeks to do an all-points inspection, my team and I decided to restore and rebuild the brand piece by piece.

We created a Brand Constitution that included profoundly simple statements that captured the brand promise, values, beliefs, soul, personality, image, and felonies on one sheet of paper. 

This one-page document helps everyone involved in managing, touching, representing, or working for the brand to have a sense of who they are as a company and what they stand for. A definitive brand constitution also helps staff know what not to do and what is clearly out of bounds for the brand, which is way more important than what you’re allowed to do. We call this critical part of the brand constitution the Brand Felonies.

To be clear, though, the brand constitution is not about answering “how” the brand should operate. Instead, it answers the question of “why” the company/brand even exists in the marketplace.

Every organization needs to have a compelling sense of who they are and where they are heading as a collective, just like a nation does. But many companies don't have a brand constitution. Instead, they manage the brand based on things they remember the founder saying, except everyone has a slightly different version of it, depending on the organization's political climate. But oral histories never work over the long haul.

THE BRAND STEWARDSHIP COMMITTEE AND THE CBO

Most companies have detailed processes, procedures, and meetings focused on accounting, tax planning, legal and human resources. But can you imagine what your accounting books or tax situation would look like if you didn’t tend to them for five to ten years? 

If that much time passed, the books would be an utter mess. Worse, hidden problems lurking underneath the hood could put the company at significant risk. Yet this is what many companies' brand books look like when we arrive.

While many businesses will take the time to study and construct their brand once, far too many won’t take another look at their brand for another decade, usually when it is not working, irrelevant, or in a ditch.

And that’s when we usually get the call as the brand repair shop. 

To prevent this kind of brand wreckage, we recommend companies do the following:

1) Appoint someone to serve as the Chief Brand Officer (CBO) to be responsible and accountable for leading the brand strategy and maintenance. This CBO position is similar to having a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or head of legal or HR.

2) Establish a Brand Stewardship Committee that meets regularly to monitor the brand’s health, vitality, and livelihood quarterly, if not monthly or weekly.

The individuals who make up this stewardship committee should consist of those strategic leaders involved in making decisions that affect the brand. If necessary, this group can serve terms on a rotating basis if that helps gain organizational buy-in.

BRANDING IS REALLY ABOUT RESOURCE ALLOCATION

These stewardship meetings should have a list outlining all the company’s various brand programs, efforts, and initiatives. Next, there should be a priority and hierarchy assigned to those brand initiatives that the organization believes it can realistically achieve in a 3-year time frame.

We often find that companies have 30–50 brand initiatives, all going on at the same time, which is way too many balls in the air. Even the biggest, most sophisticated international companies we’ve worked for can only handle 6–8 strategic brand initiatives at a time. But management teams often struggle to limit and prune these overly ambitious goals, so they throw everything they can at this mound of brand dreams. 

One of the brand stewardship committee’s primary duties is to ensure that the list of brand initiatives is reasonable and realistic given the available resources. Adding new initiatives shouldn’t be allowed without an act of organizational congress. This discipline is critical to successfully achieving your first list of brand initiatives. However, many companies go from one brand crisis to the next, never thoroughly completing any of them satisfactorily or, more importantly, on a stellar level, which is why so many mediocre companies struggle for success.

YOU DON'T NEED A BRAND UNTIL YOU NEED A BRAND

My team and I were able to help rebuild and restore the brand of Trent’s company to a healthy and robust position with its target customers.

The tools and disciplines we brought to the table allowed Trent to see who was on board with the brand direction as a team versus those who had personal or selfish ideas inconsistent with the brand constitution. Because of the brand stewardship process, he could see where the brand was out of organizational alignment within weeks, not years like before.

In addition to serving as the company president, Trent also served as the interim CBO for the first year. He wanted to learn more about the branding process and help set the brand’s DNA since he was the closest to his father’s vision. But once we got the brand on the right path, we worked with Trent to interview and eventually hire a full-time CBO.

Trent’s brand is not only relevant today but is at the forefront of driving fashion trends. But despite his augmented wealth, Trent still prefers to drive around town in his favorite car brand, a well-maintained Subaru.