Making 'strategy' work

Jim Everhart's book brings brand marketing to life

Brand Vision: The Clear Line of Sight Aligning Business Strategy and Marketing Tactics

Author: Jim Everhart

Publisher: Business Expert Press

Pages: 202

Price: $26.99

In many organisations, the essence of “business strategy” and its relevance are lost upon even internal stakeholders. A Pricewaterhouse- Coopers global survey offers enough proof: About 80 per cent of the 4,400 senior executives surveyed felt that overall corporate strategy was not well understood even within their own companies. This points to the fact that organisations do not communicate corporate strategy properly. Doing so is especially important in the marketing functioning, where strategy needs to come to life if it has to be impactful. Jim Everhart quotes this study to introduce us to the theme of his book Brand Vision.

Strategy should not be esoteric, abstract, or confusing, he says. It needs to be crystal clear, even intuitive, he says. He refers to the “80-100 rule” (mentioned by Orit Gadiesh and James L Gilbert in their Harvard Business Review article “Transforming Corner-Office Strategy into Frontline Action) to underline its relevance. A strategy that is 80 per cent right and 100 per cent implemented is better than one that is 100 per cent right and not understood (or implemented). Business history, however, is replete with examples that expose the distinct disconnect between corporate strategy and marketing. In recent years, the gap has only widened with the proliferation of marketing channels. As Mr Everhart observes, websites, PR releases, ads, e-mails, or Facebook posts exist on their own, with little connect with the strategic core.

He goes on to present a practical framework for applying strategy across the entire marketing programme. The different steps in the brand vision process — strategy, audience, creative, campaigns, and measurement—are discussed in great detail. Across five chapters, he uses pyramids to explain the various concepts. Put together, these offer a clear line of sight from strategy to return on investment. 

Mr Everhart is a freelance strategist and writer, working with corporations and agencies to develop marketing communication tactics and campaigns. He has spent more than four decades in the industry, most of it at US-based Godfrey Advertising.

His wide experience and expertise reflects in the granularity he brings to his argument.

The theme of the book is set in the contemporary context of perpetual market flux and the new reality it is shaping. To succeed in such an environment, marketers need to have a fresh understanding along with a set of new tools, he says. To develop effective marketing communication, it is imperative to define how a company fits into the industry landscape. Knowing the customer’s place in the industry structure is important too, he adds, because it strongly influences factors such as product, price, and quality.

On “positioning”, he establishes why it is important for a brand to embody it. In many cases, it is ingrained in the organisation but not spelt out properly, or it gets relegated to the background under the assumption that everyone knows it.

“Your social media needs to express it. Your products need to align with it. Your website needs to live it. You ignore it at your peril,” he adds.

Further, he warns us against the dangers of a company having multiple stories—sometimes sales has a story, marketing another, and individual reps may have their own accounts. There should be a strategic vision capturing what it needs to communicate — with a story that is aligned, connected, and differentiating, he adds. This also applies to media strategies. The wide range of choices sometimes comes as a curse than a blessing, according to Mr Everhart. Many have a separate web strategy, email strategy, even a separate Facebook and Twitter strategy. Marketers lose sight of the fact that these media platforms are just tools, not strategies.

It is also important to understand that they cannot exist as separate entities in this era of connected media that can deliver a unique user experience. “That means a social media post has a link to a product announcement. An email link to a landing page… Sparking interest, giving the audience a chance—and a reason—to find out more,” writes Mr Everhart. Diligence lies in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the various channels and cashing in on the advantage of each. From here, Mr Everhart leads us on to the CCC (Connect-Convince-Convert) Model that comprises the three phases a marketing initiative needs in order to move a potential buyer from one step to the next. While bridging the gap between marketing and strategy, he answers many other pertinent questions too — how to launch a brand, how best to promote a product, how to create campaigns that deliver, why business objectives should flow naturally out of the overall strategy, why it is important to know the concerns of each cohort among the audience, and so on.

Filled with actionable insights, Brand Vision showcases the potential a synergetic link between strategy and marketing can bring over the long term. And in the course of tying the two closely, Mr Everhart offers a guide to creating a common language for improving internal communication, ending debates about aesthetics, making the best use of data, and maximising marketing investment. Most importantly, he succeeds in showcasing marketing as a strategic capability—as a powerful force rather than just a clutch of aesthetic decisions on typography and graphics.