Brand Architecture: client feedback
A couple of months ago, a gentleman signed up for my Brand Architecture session - a CMO of an American industrial company. We had a pleasant session and a personal follow-up, and as I always do I asked for his eventual feedback.
He just did this morning. And I'm sharing it here because it makes exactly the point I advocate in my Masterbranded_com courses: I can't give you the answer to your challenge (I can only do so if I actually do the work), but I'll share a way of thinking about it and examples that will help you address it -- as opposed to what other learning offerings promise: vague formats and templates that you can apply to any and all challenges.
Here's what he wrote (unedited):
"It is difficult and even treacherous to hire or outsource work that one does not understand. We have all felt overwhelmed by the diversity of marketing expertise required today. I don’t spend much time on Branding, and have adjusted Brand Architecture only once in my career. After only two hours, your content and perspective significantly increased my confidence in running my project as it gave me insights, frameworks, and examples to intelligently design it and vet agencies to support my work. I need more resources like this. The project is coming along well enough and we are close to making a choice: our architecture will most certainly improve, but it remains to be seen whether we achieve the ideal one. Our agency is helping us through the process, but they do not have the perspective and frameworks you shared with me."
Based on the last sentence, it makes me think that maybe the agency (don't know what type - marketing? advertising? design?) is helping well with either or both Portfolio Management (all the dry facts of your corporate-wide business proposition) and the visual rendition of that Portfolio (that is, the 'signatures' of the companies, perhaps with 'a company of' endorsement). But as I always say, what I call 'Brand Architecture' sits in the middle of the two - and way too often it's not done or glossed over.
Reach out if you want to talk about it.
(the image is a page from my Course)