We are losing our heritage brands.

We are losing our heritage brands. After the collapse and loss of businesses such as Deane Apparel, Line 7, LWR and in Wellington Radfords the question must be asked why such iconic businesses fail. In the case of Radfords this was a brand that had been in the market for over a century.
Well stand back because there are many more brands of significance on the path to extinction. There are two issues I need to draw attention to; first these failures don’t have to happen and secondly when it does occur the nation is robbed of hugely valuable assets.

We are mis-managing our businesses. Not deliberately but because we are averse to change. It is easy to understand that the science of making stuff and the art of creating a service should be the primary focus of any business. I’m not suggesting this isn’t important but it is rapidly taking a back seat to another business prerequisite 'engaging an audience'; skills and experience more akin to marketing than the legal and financial skills we currently see.
Marketers, advertising and PR people have struggled to find a seat at the board room table mainly because their profession has relied for the most part on creativity and suspect research (not the kind of skill sets needed around a board table).
So for the most part, warming the seats of our board rooms are accountants and lawyers.
Let’s understand why accountants and lawyers on their own can’t run modern businesses (with some notable exceptions).
A lawyers primary reason for being is to protect legally what you own (that assumes you have something worth protecting). A laudable enough idea except you can’t own a brand because it resides in the minds of your customers. Once upon a time when markets and audiences were more static and easily defined legal protection was sensible, but legal protection comes after you have built the business.
Accountants view businesses through a rear vision mirror (they have a forensic approach). Their job is to study where you have travelled and predict where you might head and ensure you have the right measurement and assessment tools in place. They base their predictions on past activity. Again a long time ago when markets performed in the same old ways year in and year out this was a very sensible and effective approach but now no longer enough.
Neither of these groups have skill sets required to tackle markets that are at best chaotic, now global, and in constant and rapid change.

The marketing view is about understanding markets today and how they will trend based on how consumers might behave tomorrow so that you can manoeuvre into the right place at the right time. Most marketers have been trained in the old world practises and are unlikely to understand the new chaotic commercial environments. They still have a penchant to call in the advertising agency as their solution to growing the business.

The new path forward will come from understanding the science of branding and brand building
With the assistance of neuroscientists and psychologists we can now make far more accurate predictions about purchasing and decision making behaviour than we could have even a decade ago; many of these advances have occurred in only the last five years.
Brand building (the science) is a skill set required at an executive and board level if businesses are to survive let alone thrive. These new skills are unlikely to be found in traditional advertising agencies or marketing firms; these people are thin on the ground but they are out there.

But these new business builders are struggling to push back old paradigms and are battling entrenched thinking.
Unless business embraces these new business builders and give them seats on the executive and in the board rooms, then the future will be difficult indeed.
It is time to accept the new reality; there are too many products and services, traditional media is failing, old marketing methodologies are struggling and the new 'more for less' economy is here to stay. It all adds up to a need for a fresh approach and the refresh starts at the top.

If businesses want control and certainty then they must embrace the new brand building dynamics and enshrine it in the planning process.

They need to or they will perish.