Two types of MBA’s, but only one that matters
April 24th, 2014 | Tony Altilia, Partner, Maxim Partners Inc.
I have a Campbell Soup mug on my bookshelf. It was a given to me as a welcoming gift from the Campbell Soup Company Ltd when I joined the company after being recruited from university.
I was recruited as a marketing assistant. I was the assistant to the assistant product manager. We helped the product manager research, write and defend marketing plans designed to sell more of our portfolio of products. We worked on frozen foods, Swanson and Pepperidge Farm Dessert brands.
Our focus was on selling product. We were measured on sales and market share gains. Perhaps we inherently knew we were building brands but that was not our focus. Our focus was on selling stuff. Brand value wasn’t discussed.
How the world has changed in the nearly 4 decades since. Lining my bookshelf today, next to the Campbell Soup mug, are some twenty-five books on brands. Over the course of my career product managers were replaced with brand managers.
Brand managers differed from product managers. They were still responsible for building sales and market share but they were also charged with adding brand value and nurturing the brand. At Leo Burnett we used to say we were charged with making the sale today, while they built the brand for tomorrow.
Brand value is often the most valuable non-tangible asset on a balance sheet. Thus, everyone must be a brand manager. Great companies understand the value of their brands and refuse to relegate brand stewardship strictly to the marketing department.
A company’s most important brand manager should be its CEO. If she or he takes a passionate interest in nurturing and adding value to the company’s brands it will filter down through the organization. When a fish stinks, it stinks from the head. The opposite also holds true.
Someone once said successful companies hire only MBAs. Not Masters of Business Administration but Managers of Brand Assets.
Everyone in an organization should be an MBA, a brand champion, a brand zealot. Only then will value be added to brands and endure like Campbell Soup, like the mug on my bookshelf.
Tony Altilia
Tony Altilia is a partner in Maxim Partners Inc. a Canadian Boutique Brand Consultancy and is a former President of DDB Canada. He is also authour of the book I Wish Someone Had Told Me That. Follow Tony on twitter @tony2altilia.
