The Web of Brand Collaborators

Branding is a very complex task. In my opinion, this might be the most adequate statement about branding. This is not only because branding touches everything you do, say and ... not do, or because branding is a life-long task, or because branding is complex and requires to be insanely consistent.

What makes branding really complex is that fact that you need a whole web of people and companies working together to make a brand really successful. Here are just a few:

Executives Strategy
Consultants
Design Firms
Advertising Agencies
Research Companies
PR Firms
Industrial Designers
Environmental Designers
Employees
Suppliers
Distributors
Partners
Stockholders
Customer‘s

Now, of course, many of the tasks can be done in-house with your own people. But the bigger a company gets and the more tasks are done in a more deeper fashion, the brand management team needs to think about managing brand collaboration.

There are three main models how to manage brand collaboration. One is outsourcing brand management to a one stop shop, which performs almost all tasks inside their shop. The other is outsourcing it to a brand agency, which picks the best providers for each category and manages the brand process. Using brand agencies might be the most common type of brand collaboration management.

The third model is stewarding the brand internally with an integrated marketing team. This model has been troublesome for many years because brand management tools have been rare and incomplete or too expensive.

However, this has changed today. With the Internet and the tools available from graphic design, social media, website design and even brand management apps, companies have all they need to implement any branding processes themselves.

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