What is brand orientation?
Brand orientation is a management philosophy that places the brand at the heart of the organisational decision-making. In a brand-oriented company, everything it does, both internally and externally, is informed by the brand. Everything from products and services to the recruitment policies and the office layout – it is all designed to express and reinforce the brand.
At first glance, it might sound as if brand orientation is incompatible with customer centricity. If the company primarily revolves around the brand, does that not mean that the customer is secondary? Not at all. In brand-oriented companies, the brand is built upon a purpose – an answer to the question of why the company exists, and what it wants to achieve. A brand purpose is more than just a goal of achieving a certain size or market share. A strong brand purpose is centred on making a difference for a group of people, improving something for them, somehow.
This means that customer centricity is built into the heart of the brand. If everything the company does revolves around a purpose, then everything the company does will be about fulfilling that purpose for the defined target group.
Brand orientation’s effectiveness comes from the alignment it achieves between the internal and the external realities of the organisation – between employees and customers. Placing the brand purpose at the core of organisational decision-making gives employees a central, lasting idea that guides their actions. If everyone’s decisions revolve around a common idea and purpose, then everyone has a common vantage point from which to deliver a consistent customer experience.
Brand orientation brings the brand and purpose to life by enabling and operationalising it. The brand is deliberately expressed at every touchpoint in the customer experience and in everything the company does internally in the employee experience. People are recruited based on it, the internal culture and ways of working are built upon it, and people are rewarded based on it. The brand becomes the blood that flows through the veins of the organisation.