Magic and Logic: 2 Steps to bridging the gap

Imagine that you head up a large marketing department. You've got a digital specialist. A PR specialist. A DM whizz. B2B, P2P, SEO and every other acronym covered. They all love you. You are a marketing genius and embrace new trends and technologies while paying homage to the classics. You are untouchable.

Then one day, while out visiting the back offices of your corporate hinterland, you catch sight of your old corporate identity plastered all over pens, stationery and signage. You call your corporate identity specialist into the office and ask how this has happened, but she is as perplexed as you are. After all, millions we’re spent on launching the new identity – hell, your CI website won an award for best practice!

What happened?

Chances are you were so busy focusing on marketing excellence that you overlooked delivery. Your guideline document was a work of art, but you failed to explain the reasoning behind the rebrand to your delivery team, a hodge-podge of operations and facilities managers. What’s more, you failed to address the fact that these people have full time jobs and rebranding encroaches on business as usual. Finally, you forgot the golden rule: rebranding is 1 part design (the magic), 9 parts implementation (the logic).

So what can you do?

Too many marketing departments ignore the fact that a big part of their job is selling the brand internally, educating the doubters. In a lot of B2B firms marketing is seen as a superfluous, secondary function with no real impact on the bottom line. You might know better, but you’re not going to convince anyone unless you engage them head on. In essence, you need to bridge the gap between marketing and operations, between the design and the delivery, the magic and logic.

Step 1: If you are planning a rebrand, put together a cross-functional steering group comprising of facilities managers, finance executives and anyone else outside the marketing team who is willing to get involved. That way you can get the message across, learn more about your business and ensure that the delivery team are truly onboard.

Step 2: Once you’ve got going, provide the delivery team with the right tools to get the job done. Ever try and put together Lego without the instructions? While you can get pretty close to picture on the box, you’ll still have plenty of mysterious pieces left over. It’s not enough to provide guidelines, you need to provide the tools – IT tracking systems, product/print specifications, helpdesk and recommended suppliers. Finally, you must provide triggers and deliverables in order to maintain momentum, and recognition for the people who helped make it happen.

Also posted on www.endpoint.co.uk