I created BEXIO to provide a model that would guide
and inspire brand practitioners to play out scenarios for
their brands and discover their future greatness.
I hope you will find it useful.
Anders Braekken Anders Braekken, BEXIO Creator
The model approaches brands and branding from different
perspectives, looks at the branding process through different
lenses and represents a style and philosophy of doing branding.
It is just as much about management, operations and capabilities,
corporate culture, decision-making, execution and relationship-
building as creative thinking, design and communication.
Ever since the 1980s brands have proliferated and competition among brands has
proven to be a fierce battlefield. We have observed how classical brand and
business models have been replaced or complemented with new ones.
Massive penetration and diffusion of communication platforms, devices and services
together with the digitalisation of processes and contents have changed consumer
and organisational behaviour leading to new branding practices. We have witnessed
how entire industries have been fragmented and transformed and how societies
have changed.
However, as the brand landscape continues to change and adapt to its environment,
as it always has, the ultimate challenge of literally any brand remains the same:
How to connect with people, become part of their lives and stay there?
Where to position the brand and how to get there?
What operations are required to deliver the brand promise?
What resources and competences do we need to deploy?
What should the brand be called and look like?
When and how to express the brand and engage stakeholders?
How do we manage stakeholder perceptions and our brand's reputation?
How do we create value for stakeholders and shareholders?
The BEXIO model advocates the use of simulation excercises to play out alternative
scenarios of the brand in order to identify the best possible choice of strategic
direction and elaborate possible contingency plans. Scenario simulation is a
powerful tool for anticipating and managing change imposed by competing brands
or changes in the general business environment. Simulations into demographic
changes, people's behaviour, social trends and cultural context will also yield great
insights for the brand.
The BEXIO Model considers branding an iterative process which will become ever
more effective as learning, drilling and training takes place. Examples from such
wide disciplines as sports, entertainment and the armed forces offers compelling
arguments for why organisations should do training and simulation excercises to
keep their brands fit.
● End-to-end overview of the branding process.
● Corporate and brand strategy alignment.
● Brand strategy and execution alignment.
● Coherence and consistency in branding initiatives.
● Faster and smarter decision-making and execution.
● Clarifies priorities and defines the agenda for action.
● A roadmap for creating and managing stakeholders’ perceptions
Before embarking on a branding project a profound understanding of the
organisation's business model and overall strategy framework is of critical
concern. Through an internal and external organisational audit, the
following five questions should ideally be answered:
● Where are we competing? (Product-market scope, geographical
scope, horizontal and vertical integrations).
● How are we competing? (Competitive adv. and bus. strategies).
● What do we want to become? (Organisation’s vision statement).
● What do we want to achieve? (Mission statement and KPIs).
● How will we get there? (Growth models: Organic, M&A, alliances).
To answer these questions we audit the organisations:
● Core capabilities
● Competitive advantage
● Corporate culture
● Strategies
● Structures
● Systems
● Value chain
Brand strategy expresses where and how a brand wants to be positioned
and how it wants to compete. Shaping stakeholder perceptions is always
at the core. It is a blueprint conveying a compelling vision stating what the
brand aspires to become, what it wants to achieve for its stakeholders
and how it pretends to get there. The key concepts of brand strategy are
listed below.
● Brand architecture
● Brand experience map
● Brand platform
● Brand positioning
● Brand success factors
● Brand value propositions
● Critical brand drivers
● Product-service bundling
● Stakeholder insights
● Stakeholder relationships
Brand operations outline how the brand strategy will be delivered across
the organisation's activities and processes, and together with partners. A
brand operating model ensures aligment of all organisational units around
objectives. It offers clarity of responsibilities, decision-making and
communication. Finally, brand operations provide a framework for
performance measurement.
● Brand performance indicators
● Brand team and structure
● Branding processes and work flows
● Brand software, tools and systems
Brand capabilities refer to what is required to deliver the brand strategy and
prosper. Brands need tangible and intangible resources and capabilities to
take advantage of opportunities in the marketplace. Financial resources,
branding knowledge, skills and abilities are crucial to brand performance as
is a positive and strong reputation among stakeholders.
● Brand budget and investments
● Brand engagement and culture
● Brand intelligence
● Brand management style
● Brand reputation equity
● Branding competencies and knowledge
● Intellectual property rights
Brand identity is the outward expression of a brand. This includes
everything from its name and visual appearance and imagery to the way it
sounds, feels, smells, tastes and moves. The brand's identity is its
fundamental means of consumer recognition and symbolizes its points of
difference. It represents a unique set of associations which affect how a
brand appears in consumer's minds.
● Verbal identity (naming and identity)
● Messaging
● Tone of voice
● Visual identity (shapes, colours and symbols)
● Typography
● Sensorial identity (sound, smell, taste, texture, motion)
Once a brand has been created it needs to be expressed and articulated
to its target audiences. Every single touch-point between the brand and a
stakeholder, whether it be directly or indirectly, makes a contribution to
the overall experience and image of the brand. Brands can be articulated
in unlimited manners and some typical examples of brand expressions
are listed to the right.
● Above-the-line (ATL) and below-the-line (BTL) communications
● Corporate Social Responsibility
● Digital media
● Events
● Employee interactions
● Environments (e.g. corporate and retail)
● Packaging
● Products and services
● Sensorial mix
A brand's reputation represents stakeholders' accumulated perceptions of
the brand built over time. The aggregated differences in perceptions of
one brand and competing brands representing the same offering make up
the brand's equity. Stakeholders apply a number of reputation filters to
decide whether to acquire the brand or not. The better a brand is aligned
with the stakeholder's expectations, emotional motivation, previous
experiences and cultural context, the probability of acquiring the brand
increases. The principal brand reputation filters are listed below:
● Above-the-line (ATL) and below-the-line (BTL) communications
● Corporate Social Responsibility
● Digital media
● Events
● Employee interactions
● Environments (e.g. corporate and retail)
● Packaging
● Products and services
● Sensorial mix
It is a widely held belief among brand practitioners that a brand is not
what the brand owner says it is, but what the brand audiences say it is. A
brand is a cluster of perceptions created by a person’s encounters with
the brand. These perceptions shape the person’s attitudes, beliefs,
expectations, feelings, images, thoughts and behaviour towards the
brand. A brand rarely means the same to everybody. The main brand
acquisition drivers for acquiring a brand are listed below
● Awareness
● Differentiation
● Esteem
● Knowledge
● Quality
● Relevance
● Trust
BEXIO Tools are used to twist and turn the brand upside-down inside-out, by
approaching the brand from different perspectives.
The tools are adapted from cutting-edge techniques, models and best practices in a
range of business management disciplines to fit into the model and make it even
more powerful and versatile.
Wherever you are in the branding process, you will dispose of a
number of practical and powerful tools that will inspire and facilitate
the branding process significantly.
The tools bring you onto the right path faster, guide you on the
journey to meet your objectives, and will in many cases, be
instrumental in crossing the tipping point where a good idea is
turned into a fast and smart brand concept.
Wherever you are in your career as a brand practitioner you cannot afford stop
acquiring new skills and knowledge. Workshops provide branding teams with the
skills necessary to achieve success, manage costs, increase project effectiveness
and improve return on brand investments.
Providing your team with cutting-edge concepts and skills not only will drive
performance and make a contribution to meeting your strategic goals. It will also
show your organisation’s commitment to progress and excellence making you an
employer of choice.
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