Developing over time

The annual brand review is an opportunity to achieve a number of brand management tasks. The following are typical agenda topics:

Reviewing problems and opportunities
This may include reviews of:

• How to improve working relationships between the various teams with brand management responsibilities
• How to improve all the ‘marketing information’ activities relevant to the brand
• How to improve key strategic brand relationships (suppliers, partners, distributors, etc)

Reaching consensus on the ‘current brand’
This would include the analysis of the available marketing information (as well as, possibly, commissioning additional research in advance of the review) as a basis for defining the current brand, and therefore assessing the level of progress towards the desired brand.

Assessing, and ideally validating, the desired brand
The other dimension to the marketing information analysis is to assess, and ideally validate, the existing ‘desired brand’ statement that you are working towards.

It is important that the annual brand review is approached from this perspective. It should not be approached as an annual opportunity to re-define the desired brand. If the process has been properly managed in previous years this should not be necessary. Ongoing annual changes are not the way to build a strong brand.

Exploring strategic brand opportunities
On the BuildingBrands website we offer the following definition of strategy:

"Strategy is the direction and scope of an organization over the long term: ideally, which matches its resources to its changing environment, and in particular its markets, customers or clients so as to meet stakeholder expectations."
Johnson & Scholes

The brand strategy that you have developed (your desired brand) and the plans that you have to implement it should meet this definition: the direction of your brand over the long term should match its strengths to its changing environment, and in particular its markets, customers and clients, so as to meet stakeholder expectations.

Strengthen the legal protection of the brand
Finally, the annual brand review should also include a review of the legal protection of the brand. This should cover:

• Any known infringements of the brand’s legal properties, how they were handled, and what can be learnt.
  
• Any changes in legislation that could make a difference to brand protection
  
• Current legal status of the brand and its legal properties.
  
• Opportunities for achieving additional legal protection for the brand.

How these issues are addresses will depend on the markets in which the brand currently operates (and intends to operate) and the legal framework that exists in those markets.

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