A reference in branding in Brazil, Ana spoke about how much the activity has evolved in the country
One of the main references in branding in Brazil, Ana Couto speaks in this Interview about the evolution of the activity and the importance of a brand having a simple and clear purpose. Purpose is the talent of the organization made available to the world. For Apple Think different, challenge the status quo. For Google, Organizing the World’s Information is such a comprehensive vision that it doesn’t need to reinvent itself.
And with that, these brands keep growing, exemplifies the CEO of the company that bears her name. She also highlights that, in a VUCA world, there is no more linear building of brands and control. Therefore, you need to make a very healthy management so that when a crisis comes, the company can reverse it.
How long have you been working with branding and what were the main changes since then??
I have a background in design along with anthropology, I lived in the United States for five years, where I did a master’s degree in visual communication and set up the agency. There, I came across a much more evolved market at the time, when design was already a very strong business construct, it brought a lot of value to brands, which already had very strong visual identities, such as Fedex and Coca-Cola. That was in 1993, so we’ve had this challenge in Brazil for 30 years. I came back with the thought that design in Brazil was still in its infancy, from the point of view of visual identity, and of bringing branding as a business strategy, for managing the value of organizations. I remember that at that time Brazil did not have brands among the most valuable in the world and there was a gap, as the country was very strong and already produced a lot. And branding accompanied, at the turn of the 20th to the 21st century, the evolution of how value is built in organizations, which is important because of marketing, a product push, and because of branding, it is a value management. I make this distinction a little. Branding evolves from a brand strategy to a strategy that aligns brand, business and communication. That is, who I am as a brand, what my personality is, my attributes, how I am perceived; what is my product, what is the value proposition and what does my business do. This is very important, because the brand experience has a huge impact. And there are also the challenges of the 21st century, which is the vision of purpose. The purpose is nothing more than the talent that the organization has to impact the world in a positive way.
So this is the modern concept of branding?
This is a concept that we have been developing over these 30 years, working very hard with Brazilian companies that had no management framework and aligning many global companies, such as Coca-Cola, P&G, Souza Cruz, which brought an important framework in which we worked from it. Understanding that at the end of the day, each and every effort is based on this alignment, who is the brand, what are the equities, how to build an iconic brand, with the business value proposition, how to place the consumer at the center and with this view on purpose. And there is a whole market change with several examples ready in this transition that are very relevant, such as the trajectory of Nike, which is a relatively recent brand and focuses a lot on product development from the athletes, brings great identification to people, because he says he wants to be the best known and most valued brand on the planet, with a strong clarity of purpose. Until the downside happened when they started to accuse Nike of producing with slave and child labor. And then people started to say that they no longer wanted the brand’s products and Nike’s shares dropped in all markets, because at first the company’s attitude was to say that it did not produce, that it outsourced, and the market reacted by stating that she was responsible for her ecosystem. And that’s when we started to see the paradigm shift in the market, from being a production chain to looking at its ecosystem. Nike then went on to create a series of assumptions for not producing that way anymore and returned to the cycle of building value. Therefore, branding with ESG, this whole front is very clear, it shows that we are going to have a new capitalism in the 21st century, because otherwise the planet will not be able to withstand it, consumption will not be able to withstand this unbridled growth at any cost or just to generate profit and results for the shareholders.
And how is technology in this scenario?
Technology has impacted each and every market, bringing a new look at the way consumers are relating to the brand. The consumer becomes not only very important in the purchase decision, but also in the reputation decision, because he has the power to make the complaint echo on the internet.
How to keep brand reputation safe in times of social media?
We work with branding with a view to managing and generating value. Not linear. The VUCA concept – Volatility; Uncertainty; Complexity (Complexity); Ambiguity shows that it is increasingly difficult to control, because the world is very volatile, ambiguous, complex and uncertain. The challenges of organizations are increasing. We work with a methodology that we call value waves in which we start to measure each and every strength of the brand, always from the point of view of the product, the business and the differential it offers. But this wave of product is not enough to build value. We need to get into wave 2, what we call the people wave, on how to generate brand identification. We evolved from the 4Ps of
marketing for the three waves of branding. And the third wave is purpose. In each of these value waves, you work with the three dimensions: brand, business and communication. So, the branding management is this management of is, does and speaks, which is our tagline who you are, what you do and how you say it. And we manage to measure the perception of stakeholders with research, social listening and performance, combined with branding. And you can see when it’s building value or when the brand is on the downsides. I say that the amount is like credit in the bank, there will be a time when you will need to use the money and the problem will not go into negative. The company that has little value building when it has a problem, the chance of going bankrupt is very high, it will use what it does not have. Today, building branding at a very VUCA moment is fundamental, because all brands will have problems, that’s a fact, nobody has a linear construction anymore, you don’t control it. Therefore, it needs to make a very healthy management so that when a crisis comes the company can reverse it, as happened with Nike.
How to align product, culture and brand communication?
The product makes the value proposition tangible and it is fundamental. In the old days, in the age of marketing, when you could advertise very well, the experience of the product could be bad and it didn’t reverberate very much. The power of that bad experience of the product was smaller and you didn’t fight so hard to retain your consumer, there wasn’t so much exposure, offer. Today, there are many pressure channels. This context has changed a lot, we have to understand that the brand needs to build a strong, healthy branding, to enter turbulent times and get out of them. People today have many points of contact, many channels, and if you don’t have a clear strategy of who you are, how you do it, you get lost.
And how to build brand reputation in an age of fake news and inappropriate content on the internet?
I think that the more value it creates with its consumers, stakeholders, starting with its employees, investors and the society that is impacting the direct ecosystem, the better the brand will surf. I need to have brand advocates. Apple, for example, is the most valuable brand on the planet and the one that spends the least on communication. And why? Because she has the , does and speaks totally aligned. Of course everything can be broken and change. But it is this consistency of being, doing and speaking that is winning the game. Another important thing is knowing how to respond to the context. Branding is obviously a long-term strategy. Coca-Cola, for example, which is a century-old brand, has great clarity in equities, colors, script. She knows her purpose, to create happy, family moments, and she has been evolving. It stopped being just a soft drink company, bought a portfolio of juices, and evolved in a consistent way in the value proposition. The context is changing and organizations that do not respond to the context in a way that is true to their belief will fail.
When a reputational crisis strikes, what should a company do first?
Assume (the problem). Companies can no longer omit themselves. In wave 3 of purpose, we say that the brand needs to have a point of view and position itself. She can be wrong, say she made a mistake, assume the mistake and move forward. When the brand does not assume a point of view, does not assume an error, it becomes a windowpane. And glass ceiling today very dangerous. In this case, the role of organizational maturity plays a role. There is a famous case in the United States, built on top of the branding era, that of Starbucks, when it brought two transvestites to be campaign speakers and the conservative wing of the USA boycotted the brand, saying that it would no longer enter the stores and asking them to the brand taking the campaign off the air. And the CEO of Starbucks went to a meeting to present the results and told the shareholders: We are the company that brings the most return to shareholders, one of our values is diversity and whoever is not with us is invited to withdraw as a shareholder. , collaborator and consumer. We believe in diversity and we are not taking the campaign off the air. And the investment market, instead of going out, has tightened up more. And consumers also supported the brand.
Do you believe that diversity is one of the most sensitive points for the corporate world?
I think it’s all very sensitive. We are in the midst of many changes, all feeling very threatened. When human beings feel threatened, they either close down or attack. And we are all human beings, very vulnerable. I think it’s not easy, diversity comes into this context, you can’t leave anyone aside. Again, technology gives us a new level of transparency. a very different reality.
What is the difference between brand value and purpose?
Within this very competitive, complex context and with a lot of information, for the employee to really introject the mission, vision and values, a very high level of complexity is required. It also happened along with this that organizations are no longer closed, what used to be closed under lock and key, such as goals and culture, today is no longer there. And the brand needs to engage not only the employees, but the ecosystem. Since these large, most valuable organizations on the planet, such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, began to work with an open ecosystem, not a closed production, it is necessary for their purpose to start from the inside and reverberate outwards. And a higher level of simplicity in speech. Today, the purpose is worked with the following vision: the purpose is the organization’s talent made available to the world. For Apple Think different, challenge the status quo. For Google, Organizing the world’s information is such a comprehensive purpose and not a vision that ends and needs to reinvent itself. And with that, Google and these brands are growing. Purpose gives you a dimension of talent to grow the timeless worldview. Because people have to think long term. It’s an engaging way to say who you are and introduce yourself. The organization needs to be evolving and transforming.
Read the full interview in the special anniversary issue of PROPMARK
