Branding now is like when marketing used to be part of the business strategy.

In the 1960’s, the four P’s of Marketing (product, price, place, and promotion) were a coined. This was a time when the marketing professional sat at the level of the company hierarchy with the people that made the business decisions and the direction of the business was directly interweaved with the marketing direction. Since then business structure has changed exponentially, as has the world within which we conduct our business. Marketing has been levered out of it’s seat at the decision making table and the accounts department has secured the position and the role has become one of doing the best one can with a dictated budget and a restrictive brief.

Additionally, three of the P’s today are closer associated with the business strategy and not marketing at all, for without a product, price, and way of distributing (place) you wouldn’t have a business. Leaving the last P, promotion, as the only tool the marketer has left – as long as they stay within budget that is.
Branding is the way marketing used to be. Branding is all about strategy and building a business with a brand. It cannot work in the position of the company that the marketer sits, because you cannot build a successful brand based on budgets and promotional decisions. A brand works from the top down and forms the foundations of the business because you cannot say one thing and do something different and expect to create a brand.

Don’t expect a marketer in the 2010’s to provide you with a brand plan while operating from their position out on a branch of your company, or to turn your sales around by creating a trusted brand, while you drip feed them the values and goals of your business. They will do their best, with the limited tools you give them, to say what you do, but if you don’t do what they say you do, maybe marketing should be the first budget you cut. But if you want to work on business development that will in turn create a better return for your marketing, take a long hard look at your business through branding eyes, and don’t confuse the marketers of decades past, and their results, with the marketers of today and wonder why they just don’t work like they used to.