There are two distinct ways of promoting and creating a successful organization brand. One approach is to promote and ‘Create a brand for Organization’ which in turn will grow the business and people; the other is to promote and ‘Create a brand for an Individual’ which in turn will promote the organization and business. For different set of groups, organizations both work very well.
Several small to mid political parties are good examples of the second approach. They often create their media plan, campaign around the head of the party because that’s what is likely to get them most mileage. Once they are able to create a strong brand for that person, the organization tends to ride on their brand. They find it easier to differentiate and strong play the characteristics of an individual in most of the cases as against that of the organizations. A strong individual brand is something that has seen to be in many walks of life. Look at some of the following examples:
- When a political party makes agitation or strong remarks against a certain Amitabh Bachchan, or a Sharukh Khan does an advertisement, they are all trying to get mileage out of a personal brand.
- In corporate world you have example of L N Mittal, now amongst world’s richest person, who has done a great job of creating a personal brand through self marketing. Before his organization reached a new country for a takeover, his personal brand had reached before and in many places government actually went all out to help him. Ones which did not, as in case of Arcelor takeover, could not stand against his strong brand eventually.
- In education field Arindam Chaudhry of IIPM has done the same thing. Frankly with all due regards ‘Beyond IIM’ is a joke…but then he has created a strong brand and at the back of that the institute has presumably done some good work as well
The common thing in most of the above cases is they are usually single person dependant to take them to certain milestone of success and driven by personal charisma and characteristics of that person.
On the other hand several very large political parties, established institutes, corporate houses follow the principle of creating an organization brand and use that to promote its people. This is ofcourse a time tested formula and needs no detailing.
As much as it might look natural or juvenile in some cases due to the kind of incidents, taglines etc that you see, both methods of creating a brand are infact well thought through management concepts. They require strategic thinking and some intelligent planning of actions, marketing and media.
~~Rohit~~
Rohit Jain