Consensio

Everybody is talking about the economic down turn. In Australia the boom went bust, but unlike the US or Europe, we had softer cushioning. Mining and support industries, however, will wash out many employees in the following months. Manufacturing companies are not very optimistic.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce released their quarterly ACCI Westpac Survey of Industry Trends, and in  a nutshell

“The US and Australian manufacturing cycles have a
historical tendency to move broadly in synch. A widely
divergent relative performance was apparent from mid-
2006 to mid-2007 as Australian conditions trended
higher while US conditions deteriorated markedly.

That gap narrowed somewhat during 2008 up until the latest
quarter, as US conditions stabilised while Australian
conditions deteriorated. The December quarter saw
conditions in both economies deteriorate markedly further,
both well into contractionary territory (sub-50), more so
for the US.”

Apart form the economic indicators of this, and the ongoing fear of employees to lose the job that pays the bills, how does it impact on the intangible assets of companies? (more…)

In an article recently published in the Professional Journal of the Australian Marketing Institute, Rachel Olding describes in depth the divide between Marketing and Finance and how

“Intangible assets are the the reason marketers get out of bed in the morning”.

According to Olding, assets that make up brands, reputation and customer value are only slowly coming to the attention of other senior executives particularly in Australia.

Quantifying brand performance has senior marketers and finance executives fighting to grasp each other’s language and context.

“Quite simply, successful brands require effective marketing and financial management”

Major contributing factors to the communication gap are:

• A culture of departmental silos
• mistrust in the marketer’s measurement skills
• underestimation of the importance of brand from the senior management
• limited and fragmented relationships between departments

Olding goes on to cite two Australian business case studies illustrating her point that only a joint collaboration and coordination between Marketing and Finance achieves deeper brand equity.

She goes on to quote Prof. Don Schultz, who is summarizing the standard of Australian brand management as too little up-front investment in resource allocation and too much time spent on measuring past performance.

This is a very poignant article which is very appropriate to all firm sizes and industries across Australia. How often does your CFO/Accountant partner with the Managing Director, and the CMO/Marketing Manager/Coordinator in your business to discuss the next year in a brand panel?

…last part to this…and the most important!

Very often, people are skirmish about naming because it involves thinking out of their comfort zone and maybe saying something in front of people that gets culled down with cynicism. In recent years it has become very difficult to name a company and trademark it without a due diligence process.

The ‘obvious’ names are taken or unavailable as domains. Simply going through the dictionary is not enough. Resorting to fantasy names is not often a clever idea if it is too impossible to pronounce the names. I know there are people who seriously use name generators on the net, but they are the equivalent to buying instant coffee..or trusting Babelfish for business translations…
(more…)

Your core stakeholders usually sit beside you every day (if you employ people that is). So make sure these are the people you roll out the name to first- they are the ones, who are actively involved in the name giving. After all, they will be your front door and ambassadors for your branded business idea. All your employees (from the truckdriver to the senior managers) are required for this job if you want this to be effective. (more…)

… it’s like naming your child! It’s a personality and needs to live with it for a long time…

So how do you do it (without a beer drenched night and a birthday names book or Dictionary on your knees)? (more…)