The masterbrand mandate: The management strategy that unifies companies and multiplies value
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ck cover gushing endorsements should always be taken with a pinch of salt, especially with business books where those gushing the most profusely often turn out to be colleagues or business partners of the book’s authors. In the case of ‘The Masterbrand Mandate’, however, the glowing quotes elicited from such luminaries as David Aaker, Kevin Lane Keller and Charles Bryner (group chief executive, Interbrand Corporation) turn out to be fully justified. Companies the authors have worked with include Bayer Corporation, Visa International, Walt Disney, Bell Atlantic, 3Com Corporation, Bank America and so on. From this wealth of experience Upshaw and Taylor have developed the concept of the masterbrand. The centrality of branding is well stated in the book’s foreword: ‘One of the most enduring myths in global business today is that brands are solely a marketing tool. In the right hands, they are much more: a model for organizing, a structure for selling and profit generation, a focus for achieving, and a template of performance metrics. The very fact that the word brand rarely appears in most management texts is a good indication of the latest wave of ‘marketing myopia’ that has led brands to be compartmentalized as specialized weapons of the marketing department.’ 74
This view is in stark contrast to that espoused by Naomi Klein in the flawed but brilliant ‘No Logo’;1 whereas Upshaw and Taylor advocate a more central role for branding within companies, Klein asserts that this has already happened and that the separation of branding and production has led to the shameful phenomenon of developing-world sweatshops slavishly producing branded products for developed-world markets. This has echoes of the perennial debate over the power of advertising, the paradox being that outside observers tend to overstate the sinister power of the advertising process while those working within the industry fret ceaselessly about whether they are having any impact at all. In oxymoronically titled chapter one, ‘Built to Change’, Upshaw and Taylor offer a definition of a masterbrand: ‘Leaders with foresight are now reshaping their entire organizations around companywide brands that are jointly ‘owned’ by their people and their surrounding ‘brand communities’. We refer to these types of companies and their selling structures as masterbrands. Masterbrands are a companywide brand force, composed of a central set of associated meanings and benefits, whose scope stretches from the company’s strategic
䉷 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 71–76 SEPTEMBER 2001
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core, throughout its people and partners, enveloping its customers, and beyond to its outer perimeter of influence. Masterbrands enact the continuously evolving positioning of a company among its competitors and the character that makes that company uniquely attractive to its constituencies. The masterbrand incorporates the company mission, vision, and values, but translates them into more concrete, leverageable forms.’
Having defined what a mas
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