Kellogg on Branding in a Hyper-Connected World

CHAPTER 5Leading the Brand: Brand Strategy Orchestration and Implementation

Eric Leininger

The previous chapters in this book are devoted to the discipline and creativity required to strategically position a brand and a portfolio of brands for success in a rapidly changing and hyper-connected marketing ecosystem.

It is equally critical to apply the same level of discipline and creativity to the orchestration and implementation of the brand platform. As Phil Marineau, former CEO of Levi’s, taught his teams, “You will be more successful if you get the strategy 80 percent correct and the execution 100 percent correct than getting the strategy perfect and executing at only 80 percent.”¹

This chapter will focus on why strong leadership of brand implementation is so important. We will look at pitfalls to avoid and consider a framework for driving brand implementation.

Leadership, Implementation, and Branding

A company cannot sustain a strong brand image, let alone be agile in the marketplace, unless marketing leaders focus on and anticipate potential implementation issues during the development of brand strategy. Senior leaders must communicate an implementation-friendly strategy that inspires cross-functional collaboration. Too many strategies are overly elegant and complex, which can deprive the initiative of focus. This in turn can lead to unwieldy and suboptimal execution. Simply put, if employees across the organization don’t understand the brand positioning, it will be impossible ...