Marketing with Smart:ROI

Tail wags dog

Reputation management

Fusing business model with brand strategy

Brand management in higher education

1 + 1 = 3

The best of both worlds

Engaging and embedding internal communications

Enhancing the brand through the IPO maze

Brand Architecture: considerations

ENHANCING THE BRAND THROUGH THE IPO MAZE

An IPO presents a number of challenges and opportunities with respect to the corporate brand. It is one of the times (depending on the size of the organisation) that media coverage (serious broad sheet coverage at that) is pretty much guaranteed.

The challenge is to ensure that the brand proposition, values and core positioning together with the primary and secondary messaging are well defined, tested and validated/ revalidated. This is not simply against the ‘market context’ that the company is operating within, but also what is being said in the prospectus.

The CMO needs to be able to influence this and also review his brand fundamentals in-light of it. He or the Corporate Communications Director will also have to fight for a share of voice, for as far as most advisors are concerned ‘brand’ (certainly in the non-FMCG sectors) doesn’t have a priority or even the right to sit at the table during the IPO process. The risks are clearly very high and the rules and controls very tight (varying on the listing exchange), but there still is an opportunity to raise profile, manage impact and enhance the overall brand through an IPO.