Issued by: Kemistry


The annual SA Brand Custodian Survey, developed in collaboration between Vega, The Brand Communications School and Kemistry Brand Consultancy, went online again today, designed to measure the relative importance that brand custodians assign to topical brand management issues in practice in South Africa.

Now in the second year of this five-year research project, the survey compares the relevant shifts in attitude in the various brand disciplines interrogated in year one. This year the survey is also at least four times quicker to complete, streamlined into a traditional one-answer rating structure.

The survey is now ready to delve deeper into the issues that affect brand custodianship, as the first year represents a good baseline for comparison. “We hope this platform is adopted by all Brand Custodians to contribute to this body of research. We are very excited about the prospect of comparing two years worth of data, for the benefit of our discipline,” stated Charles Walker, the CEO of Kemistry.

“It is now more vital than ever to utilise all the research available to assist when making solid brand building decisions. The South African Brand Custodian Survey engages and prompts thinking in appropriate territory. And as the branding and marketing budgets get squeezed and every rand spent analyzed in terms of return on investment, the value of this survey will increasingly become of interest,” Kevin Collins, Academic Navigator for Vega, The Brand Communication School in Johannesburg.

Brad Dessington, Head of Brand Strategy at Kemistry adds, ”At a time when the effects of brand focused choices evidently impact on the bottom line of business - think IPod, Facebook, Nokia - we are keen to investigate who is making the strategic business and customer-focused choices, and how those choices are modelled. Are they based on who the consumer is and what they prefer or purely as a result of a focus on what the business wants to achieve?"

One of the major findings last year was that many brand custodians believed that brand strategy is not given the platform that it deserves to align with, influence and support business strategy. This year an interesting debate has raised its head; the perception that CEO's are beginning to take more and more ownership of the brand. In this context, Thebe Ikalafeng explores, in a recent article in Leadership magazine, “why the global evolution of chief executives into chief brand officers is leaving marketers out in the cold”. He discusses various global studies that indicate that the CEO is the driving force (brand leader) behind a brand's reputation, its influence in the development of shareholder value, delivering on the brand promise and living the brand and its values. He compares similar trends in the South African context. He writes: “It is therefore no surprise that the 2006 Sunday Times Brand Leadership/Markinor 'State of the Marketing' survey was dominated by chief executives with strong personalities. Marketing as traditionally understood, barely feature in the survey, conducted among 400 decision-makers across marketing, finance and operations nationally.” He continues, “It's clear therefore that traditional marketers have little, if any, significant impact on the botton line.” Do CEO's and marketers agree that this is the case?

The South African Brand Custodian Survey examines three specific areas:
- What the most important factors are driving brand management in contemporary South Africa?
- What are the significant factors that shape brand strategy development today?
- And what do they believe does it mean to effectively build a brand in terms of the communication thereof?

In the past year, we have witnessed the successful brand centred effort of MTN and the focused creative brand communications of Metropolitan Republic for their client. In discussions with other brand consultancies, clients are also placing more and more effort into aligning their internal brand cultures to ensure that their staff understand and are motivated to deliver on the brand experience and its promise.

Globally, Brand Custodianship operates in a context of radical change. In the States, the big theme is digital marketing overtaking traditional advertising. China is set to rewrite the rules in many ways, more than just its impact on the brand discipline. This weekend Terry Behan, writing for Media & Marketing in the Saturday Star claims that 80%of companies perceive their customer experiences are “fantastic”, but that only 8% of their customers agree. He quoted the former Chairman of Ford Motor Company, Ian McAllister, who stated that: “In the 1980's quality was a differentiator. In the 1990's, brand was a differentiator. In the 2000's, customer experience is going to become the differentiator”.

In stark contrast, at home, the black middle class rapidly grows as our country normalizes and continues to capture the imagination. The research and more specifically the term initiated in part by Refiloe Mataboge when at Research Surveys - to segment this consumer segment and understand them and the marketing opportunities that they represent better - the so-called “Black Diamonds”, has gained popular culture status in some circles and urban myth status in others.

In her article in the FinWeek, published on the 6th of September of this year, Siwkazi Jekwa analyses the drivers behind black spending power amongst black professionals and draws attention to how the concept of “Black Diamonds” misrepresents them and “seems to perpetuate the myth of black professionals as being greedy, money hungry consumers who live their lives for no other reason than to spend conspicuously, clinging to some unfulfilled desire to become just like the white man.” She writes that many black professionals believe by implication that it is designed to blind them and lull them into a false sense of security. “The assumption being that once blacks are more secure in their financial success, they won't pursue transformation and empowerment initiatives as hard and ferociously if they perceive things to be changing rapidly.”

This year the SA Brand Custodian Survey will continue to develop a deeper insight into the world of the brand custodian. Again delving into varied topics, such as

o Towards Brand Leadership
o Letting the marketer into the boardroom
o Building brands in emerging markets
o Shared brand values – and its potential as a dominant form of brand building
o Developing Core Values to be truly representative of a brand and its resources
o The influence of brands as a form of social cohesion
o Positioning – and the different models that exist
o The rise of brand integration
o Advances in Strategic Marketing based on a more holistic, customer centric approach
o The emergence and development of language (cultural) marketing in SA

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[9 Oct 2007 13:12]

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