Interactions - January/February 2010

“Horizontal” Alignment of
Executive
Committee
Managers
Corporate
Employees
Frontline
Employees
Board of
Directors
Vendors
Agencies
Channel
Partners

IBM to drive brand integration
and alignment.

Sony. As Sony faced technological change and continued expansion, its leaders knew they could not assume all stakeholders shared one common understanding of the brand and how to evolve it to maintain the company’s leadership position. So they decided to use the Sony brand to focus and align the company—the brand was central to the organization, and it was used to drive and guide everything Sony did.

The company developed a
Brand Engagement Toolbox to
drive brand execution. This
collection of tools was used to
inform, inspire, and instruct
internal stakeholders—for
example, decision trees guide
people through key decisions
so that the outcomes support
the brand and interactive expe-
riences that help employees
internalize the brand values
and attributes. The Internet-
based Toolbox contained imag-
es, content, video clips, and
quotes, and featured a blog-like
forum for sharing and learn-
ing about the brand from other
employees.

Sony’s initiative was under-taken before Facebook and Twitter were developed, but it’s easy to imagine how a Brand Engagement Toolbox might employ these tools and their applications today. Polling and quiz features might be used to gauge people’s understanding of the brand or to nominate brand case studies. Real-time messaging might enable employees from different areas of the company to ask questions and contribute ideas to brand-building efforts. And consumer input and feedback might be seamlessly integrated into brand-based decision making.

grams (IBM) or virtual Brand
Engagement Toolboxes (Sony).
Both ways leverage the
capabilities of networks and
new media to optimize busi-
ness strategies and experience
design. As such, new tech-
nologies extend beyond their
current brand expression and
communication applications
and affect the business at an
entirely different level.

As business leaders return their attention to growth, they need more than marketing solutions and innovative tactics. By operationalizing their brands, companies use their brands not just to gain a competitive edge, but to change the game completely.

New Technology,
New Brand Building
New technologies can be used
to operationalize brands: One
is by developing and deploy-
ing operating systems in
which brand value is delivered
through social media technol-
ogy, as in the case of eBags, or
through interactivity, commu-
nity tools, and customization,
as in the Nike example. The
other is by using the brand to
align and integrate stakehold-
ers through collaboration pro-

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Denise Lee Yohn has been
inspiring and teaching
companies how to opera-
tionalize their brands to
grow their businesses for
more than 20 years. World-class brands
including Sony, Frito-Lay, Burger King, and
Nautica have called on Yohn, an estab-
lished speaker, author, and consulting part-
ner. Read more by Yohn at http://www.
deniseleeyohn.com/resources.html.