Brand Vision

Introduction

It was late in the day when I received a frantic call from an account manager at the business-to-business (B2B) agency where I worked. The client’s president and CEO was demanding a “clear line of sight” between business strategies and marketing tactics. How, they wanted to know, would a specific tactic—like a trade show, brochure, or video—help the company achieve its strategic goals? Things like value innovation or global reach.

The request was not that unusual. American companies each year spend billions of dollars in business planning and strategy. Yet, in a global survey of 4,400 senior executives,¹ consulting firm PwC found that about 80 percent of the respondents admitted that their overall corporate strategy was not well ...