Apple: a true brand-led business

The new CMO of sponsorship agency IMG, Robert Birge, perfectly summed up Apple’s success  in a recent interview with Craig Montgommery’, that I discovered thanks to the Brand Builder Blog:

“Apple’s vision can be seen in everything they do. While many companies
view “brand” as the domain of marketing, Apple understands that
business strategy and the brand are indistinguishable. 

If you don’t believe you have a differentiated and relevant
business strategy, it’s going to be challenging for anyone to craft a
compelling brand story. If a CEO wants a brand as
powerful as Apple, they should take on the role of brand manager.“

As Birge says, Apple use their brand idea to drive everything they do: the stores, partnerships with brand like Nike, product design, the OS user interface. Its what I called in The brandgym  a true “brand-led business”. In contrast, many other companies still think branding means creating an “image wrapper” of communication and visual identity to cover up a mediocre product (see below). This flawed logic is what leads to the nightmare of “re-branding”, a fancy name for a new logo (more on this in a future blog).

5 minute workout: is your brand idea driving your whole business, to create a “branded business strategy”? Or are you falling into the trap of only creating an image wrapper, leaving the product and service un-touched?

 Learn about brand stretching and architecture services offered by thebrandgym.