Companies usually assume if their sales are good, then their brand and reputation must be strong. But all too often, they don't have a clear understanding of the values that drive brand and reputation and actually sustain long-term profitability and growth. This leaves companies vulnerable to dangerous backlash between corporate values, and those of their stakeholders: customers, employees, shareholders, media, government, and community. Even well-known and seemingly successful brands and reputations have suffered from this backlash (e.g. Nike and overseas sweatshops, Wal-Mart and unfair employment practices, McDonald's and obesity issues.) Every stakeholder applies their personal and professional values to judge the performance of a company. Branding expert John Foley has developed the BalancedBrand System, which helps companies assess corporate values, identify potential flashpoints, and align values to build a stronger brand and reputation. BalancedBrand identifies and helps manage the forces that will change the way business does business. Foley and co-author Julie Kendrick have created new tools that build and protect brands and reputations.

Today’s organizations are embedded in global and local network relationships that demand more. They have to consider the importance to customers, investors and employees of being respected in wider society and behaving ethically, so it is increasingly important for companies to reflect systematically on how to balance profits with other criteria when making decisions and acting. In short, they need to learn how to become The Balanced Company. Requiring sustainability in production processes and ethical employment of the work force in suppliers' production facilities, at home and abroad, has resulted in new challenges. Strategists need to make balanced choices about long-term goals and the allocation of resources. They must analyse, understand and adjust strategies to market, political, value and technology-related changes. Communication specialists need to take the value systems and assumptions of stakeholders into consideration. Change specialists need to balance continuity and change. Meanwhile, managers make balanced decisions about control or trust; human resources design jobs to make them attractive as well as motivating, and marketers must consider what is important to consumers and stakeholders. Last but not least, leaders have to acknowledge that there are times when organizations have to be taken out of balance during change. The Balanced Company provides answers to corporately responsible and ethically driven balanced decision making. Read it to help your company and stakeholders identify what can be achieved and what to avoid, and about the processes by which values are taken into account and applied in practice.

A company's workforce is its most valuable asset. It is the employees who translate an organziation's strategy into reality, interact with consumers and determine the corporate brand.In this fully updated second edition, Nicholas Ind demonstrates how a participatory approach can enhance employee commitment, improve service standards and focus effort to deliver business goals. This can be achieved by building meaning, purpose and values into the organization to foster a culture of enthusiastic employee participation. This practical and inspirational book is about how organizations can empower and enthuse their employees to create 'brand champions'. The themes of Living the Brand are:employees flourish in organizations where they identify with the brand;organizations flourish when the brand has relevance and creates meaning;purpose and values are not created - they exist; the issue is how well they are articulated and embedded;brand clarity creates freedom;brands come to life when the boundaries between the internal and external blur;stories and myths are important for sustaining brands;living the brand requires imagination.With the use of original international case studies, Nicholas Ind discusses the insights and problems of articulating and then delivering brands through people. The book examines the nature of branding and why people have become such important definers of the brand. The conclusion being that both organizations and people need values - it is essential to their well-being and sense of worth.

Are you responsible for reinvigorating your brand to achieve enduring profitable growth in a volatile world? Or for keeping a still-strong brand from fading in relevance and value? The Six Rules of Brand Revitalization, Second Edition presents an intensely practical blueprint for resurrecting or revitalizing any brand, and driving it to unprecedented levels of success. Larry Light and Joan Kiddon illuminate their blueprint with up-to-date case studies and specific examples from their unsurpassed brand experience, offering detailed "dos" and "don'ts" for everything from segmentation to RandD to executive leadership. You'll discover how to eliminate siloes, and refocus your entire organization around common goals and brand promises... restore brand relevance based on an ever-more-profound knowledge of your customers... reinvent your total brand experience, leveraging innovation, renovation, marketing, and value. Using McDonald's and other prominent examples, Light and Kiddon show how big brands get into trouble by committing several common mistakes... how to reenergize them... why hard-to-change bad habits can lead brands back into trouble again... and how to keep that from happening to your brands. Along the way, they demonstrate how to define and measure progress, rebuild brand trust within and outside the organization, create a "plan to win," and execute on it!

Branding and human capital are considered a firm’s most important assets, and the development of these intangible assets is a particularly challenging and important management task for human resource managers and marketers. Employee-based brand equity is a key advantage for the organization and an important part of the brand-based evaluation. To develop an effective and strong employee-based brand equity, firms need to focus on the perceptions of employees and promote positive attitudes about affiliation with the firm. Antecedents and Outcomes of Employee-Based Brand Equity explores the antecedents and consequences of employee-based brand equity from different perspectives and different artifacts of employee-based brand equity. This book highlights the importance of brand equity from a human resource management perspective. It further highlights the ways in which brand equity can be fruitful in understanding and learning different theories and concepts with the interaction of different industries and culture. Covering topics such as employee retention, psychological capital, and brand experience, this premier reference source is an indispensable resource for corporate offices, human resource managers, business leaders and managers, governmental organizations, marketing professionals, customer service professionals, libraries, students and educators of higher education, researchers, and academicians.

Positioning is hot. Not only in the realm of consumer goods manufacturers, but also for other companies, institutions, governments and even individual persons. An explosion of good quality products on the market and targeted media and advertising campaigns has led to an increasing interest from organizations as to how to strategically position their brand. Up to now, only a few books on positioning were published. Positioning the Brand picks up the gauntlet with an approach based on two fundamental choices: Firstly, the book was written from the perspective of the brand manager, and has therefore been shaped as a practical roadmap. Secondly, this book advocates a new stance on positioning, teaching the reader to look from the inside-out, instead of adopting the usual outside-in methodology. This inside-out approach departs from an analysis of the corporate identity, enabling better fulfilment of external positioning, and ensuring internal support. This book is intended for (future) managers, marketing professionals and communication professionals responsible for the commercial success and reputation of a brand. The contents have a practical set-up, reinforced by engaging examples, and enable the reader to individually complete a positioning process.

3 breakthrough guides to building, revitalizing, and sustaining great brands — and profiting from them! In three indispensable books, you’ll discover powerful new ways to build, rebuild, and sustain any brand — and leverage branding to supercharge profits and growth. In Six Rules for Brand Revitalization, Larry Light and Joan Kiddon teach the invaluable lessons of one of history’s most successful brand revitalizations: the reinvigoration of McDonald’s®. Drawing on that experience, the authors introduce a systematic blueprint for resurrecting any brand, and driving it to unprecedented success. Learn how to refocus your entire organization around common goals and a common brand promise...restore brand relevance based on profound knowledge of your customers... leverage innovation to reinvent your total brand experience… create a “plan to win,” and execute on it. The Truth About Creating Brands People Love reveals 51 bite-size, easy-to-use techniques for building great brands, and keeping them great. Learn powerful truths about positioning brands and developing brand meaning; using brands to drive corporate profits; managing advertising, pricing, and segmentation, and much more. Finally, What’s Your Story?: Storytelling to Move Markets, Audiences, People and Brands shows how to leverage the universal human activity of storytelling: your most powerful, most underutilized tool for competitive advantage. Legendary business thinkers Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker help you take control of the stories your business tells, make them believable and unforgettable, make them move your customers to act! From world-renowned leaders and experts, including Larry Light, Joan Kiddon, Brian D. Till, Donna D. Heckler, Ryan Mathews, and Watts Wacker