Prior to discussing the role of the board in developing and communicating an organisations brand it is perhaps important to address two issues – what is a brand and why is it important. There are many dramatic, supposedly insightful and unnecessarily complex definitions of brand and branding. Indeed, it is in the best interests of […]

Prior to discussing the role of the board in developing and communicating an organisations brand it is perhaps important to address two issues – what is a brand and why is it important. There are many dramatic, supposedly insightful and unnecessarily complex definitions of brand and branding. Indeed, it is in the best interests of consultants to make the concept sound as complicated as possible. Put simply a brand is a summary of the audience’s expectations of an individual or organisation and branding is the process of managing those expectations to your advantage. There are all sorts of airy fairy reasons offered to support the importance of branding. Put simply, branding is important because it creates the expectations required to attract purchasers of your product, maximise the perception of value and therefore margins, attract the best staff and retain them, and to manage other stakeholders including financiers and government. So…