Fragmentation

Fragmentation
It is hard for companies (or other organizations) to maintain sufficient span-of-control over their brand and brand architecture. They are faced with a vast amount of internal and external people involved with the brand, who have their own professional (and personal) interest, opinion and ambition. Companies are also faced with a complex media landscape (see 1 and 2) that they need to navigate in order to reach the consumer. Together this creates fragmentation. The basic cause of fragmentation is that the level of complexity in marketing a brand exceeds the span-of-control in a company.

Governing a brand therefore is a difficult and complex affair. Besides, in many organizations, much of the mentality is based on traditional thinking. When it comes to branding, there still is much one-sided emphasis on advertising and marcom. Review boards or Decision Making Units, for instance, are often completely focused on marcom. If you take a close look at brand tracking research, you see that many research models actually do not offer brand tracking, only advertising tracking. The crucial, dominant visual side of all branding efforts is simply overlooked, or at least not sufficiently top-of-mind.

This is partly due to the fact that marketers and p&l responsible professionals have difficulty with terms like design or design managment. Because it creates the feeling that design as such is the main focus. It sounds more like design is a force on its own, than a contribution to the common cause: the success of the brand. That is also why I attach great importance to the wording Visual Branding. (and respectively visual brandmanagement). Because it expresses exactly what design can do: build strong, successful, effectively communicating brands.