How To Brand
If there is a top brand in the teaching of brand leadership, that's Martin Roll. In this interview, he shares with us insights into brand management and execution.
What's the best way to create a Brand? Is it through the use of stories?
• By creating experiences for customers
• By ensuring that brands are woven in the daily fabric of your customers
• By engaging customers through innovative brand activities
How does one company or one individual achieve Branding Excellence?
• By implementing the three bullet points mentioned above.
What is the future of Branding?
• Very strong given the need to create differentiation
• Very global given the flattening of the world
• Very Asian given the shifting of the global business headquarters and the new power structures
What's the best book on Branding?
• Asian Brand Strategy by Martin Roll
• Strategic Brand Management by Kevin Lane Keller
• Brand books by David Aaker – they are timeless and classics
Name us 3 Asian companies that have created global brands. Tell us briefly how they did it.
• Singapore Airlines – Creating extraordinary brand experiences consistently
• Samsung – Emphasizing quality and coolness factor in cutting edge designs
• Toyota – Implementing customer orientation backed by top notch manufacturing
How has Social Media changed the media landscape? How has it affected Marketing and Branding campaigns?
• Levelling of information asymmetry between companies and customers
• Instant and constant flow of images, experiences and values of brands
• Emergence of a sense of global brand communities
Which company has the best Branding turn-around story?
• Samsung – From a huge, diversified conglomerate to an outstanding global iconic consumer electronics brand
Who are your personal heroes? Why?
• Richard Branson – a great entrepreneur
• Giorgio Armani – he build an iconic brand without compromising
What are you hungry for?
• To help educate CEOs and corporate boardrooms the real and untapped values of creating global iconic brands
What would you like to see that more companies do in relation to Branding?
• Elevate branding to a boardroom level and start to see branding as a strategic journey, and brands as assets
• Have the CEO as the main brand ambassador – it does not happen often
• Design company strategy with their brand identity as their guiding blueprint
• Continuously invest in creating and nurturing brands to extract their inherent value
About Martin Roll
Business & brand strategist
Martin Roll is a world-renowned thought-leader on value creation through brand equity driven by tremendous global experience and insights. He facilitates business leaders and organizations to think bold for future strategies. By focusing on building and managing successful businesses through iconic brands, Martin Roll helps boardrooms to enhance shareholder value and create sustainable competitive advantage.
Martin Roll delivers the combined value of an experienced international business strategist and senior advisor to corporate boards and marketing executives of the world’s largest companies including many corporations in Asia. He brings more than 20 years of management experience. Martin Roll holds an MBA from INSEAD.
Martin Roll is not only a highly accomplished speaker and presenter but as well a talented and well trained moderator of panel discussions and roundtables. He is a valuable contributor to any senior management discussion on the subject of leadership, innovation, growth, organizational excellence and brand equity, its close link to management and how it drives outstanding performance through shareholder value.
He strides the industry-academia continuum and delivers superior value to his global audiences. Every year, he travels 500.000 miles on all continents and speaks at more than 100 global top-level conferences. He is a frequent guest lecturer at INSEAD, Nanyang Business School, CEIBS and several other global business schools.
Martin Roll is the author of the global bestseller Asian Brand Strategy, a very compelling book of frameworks for Asian branding and the winning formula for any boardroom. Asian Brand Strategy was named “Best Global Business Book” by Strategy+Business magazine.
Martin Roll is currently writing two new global management books. The first one will look at the important interface between branding, leadership and strategy, and the role of the CEO. The second will discuss the role and position of the Chief Marketing Officer in management, which is set to change dramatically in the future.
