Focus Areas

This study sought to examine five key areas of business-to- business branding.

• Brand architecture – How best-practice organizations balance and manage corporate, divisional, and product brands and leverage brand equities across the organization
• Cobranding – How business-to-business organizations build brand value through initiatives such as ingredient branding, licensing, composite branding, and sponsorships
• Development of the brand-value proposition or brand promise – How business-to-business firms use tools and processes to distill the brand to its essential values and articulate a memorable and compelling brand promise to external and internal audiences
• Integrated brand communication – How leading practitioners plan, budget, and execute brand communication programs across the full spectrum of communication venues to customers, prospects, employees, investors, and other relevant stakeholders
• Measuring success – How organizations monitor brand equity and determine the return on investment of their branding activities

Overview of B 2B Branding

Business-to-business organizations face a variety of challenges that distinguish their marketing activities from those of their consumer counterparts. They often face long buy-in periods and complex buying processes in which purchasing decisions are ostensibly made using only rational, objective criteria. Further- more, rapidly changing technology means that products may be obsolete within a few weeks or months of leaving the factory floor. Perhaps most daunting of all, some firms have a traditional managerial mind-set focused on products, production, and distribution rather than creating perceptual value in the minds of customers.

In spite of the unique nature of commercial and industrial marketing, brands are built in the business-to-business arena in much the same way as they are established in the consumer marketplace. Branding is about establishing trust and creditability. Strong business-to-business brands create an intellectual and emotional bond with customers, prospects, end users, channel partners, employees, and other stakeholders. And strong business-to-business brands are clearly delineated from their competitors. The best-practice partners detailed in this report have established unique and distinctive presences in their respective markets. In most cases, these brands have successfully extended their reach from the bricks-and-mortar world to the Internet. Partner firms are far more likely than sponsors to report they have a clearly differentiated brand identity, report much higher levels of immediate recall, and believe they have achieved higher rates of customer retention than have their competitors. Furthermore, most are able to command a premium price for their products and services.