Insight
Powerful when there is a will! A Brief Introduction to Brand Vision
(Written by: Lee Kwok Wing / Honorary Advisor of Process Pro Brand Taiwan)
In the midst of the recent outbreak of a new coronavirus pneumonia, and amidst the global panic and scientists' search for solutions, Gilead Sciences was the first to develop an antiviral drug that brought a ray of hope in the fight against the epidemic, with the company's vision of "refining therapeutics to combat life-threatening diseases around the globe". GILEAD's vision is to "advance therapeutics to combat life-threatening diseases worldwide", which is highly consistent with its outstanding results, and has received significant coverage in the global media, resulting in a positive corporate image.
In addition, Business Week also reported that in the face of the impact of the epidemic, Lion Travel, even though it canceled 3,000 tours on New Year's Eve, did not focus on the huge loss of 260 million dollars, but went back to its original intention to provide a high level of customer satisfaction as the criterion to think about how to prevent the epidemic, and made the decision that is not easy, but is commendable. The report mentioned that Lion had already taken advantage of the SARS outbreak to transform itself, reorganizing the customer experience that it hadn't had time to optimize during its busy time in the past, and then doubling its revenue the following year to become a brand that customers loved and embraced.
What is a vision? Why is vision important?
As the name suggests, "vision" is "the desired scene of success", according to Shih's "Vision and Corporate Culture":
- A realizable dream that is linked to the purpose, mission, and mandate of the company - Something that everyone is excited about - Something that is worth pursuing on a long-term basis - Not short-term and not in the distant future.
You may ask: Why is vision important?
Mark Lipton in Vision in Action says, "...organizations that have grown consistently for decades or more have never made the maximization of shareholder wealth or profits the primary goal or driving force of the organization. Shareholder wealth or profits can be likened to the oxygen, food, and water that living things need to survive, without which life cannot exist, but which are not the purpose of life." According to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory, after satisfying the basic needs of survival and security, people will have the higher needs of self-realization. Nowadays, people are generally well-fed and clothed, and their need for a higher level of fulfillment has become more and more intense. With a vision, we can cultivate a mission that all people are willing to work for, make all investments in the same direction, and accumulate long-term efforts to stay ahead of our competitors and ensure that our foundation will continue to grow and flourish.
What is the relationship between brand vision and corporate vision?
As the scope and level of success that each company aspires to is different, the visions of the company itself and its product or service brands are different, but they still echo each other. For example, the vision of Unilever, a world-renowned lifestyle company, is "Our aim is to make sustainable living an everyday reality"; its many brands think in terms of society and the environment, and set clear goals to encourage people to take practical action to bring about real change and make people's lives better.
Unilever's brand vision for Dove is "We believe that beauty should be a source of confidence, not anxiety. That's why we're here to help women around the world develop a positive relationship with their appearance, helping them to increase their self-confidence and realize their full potential." By helping them to build confidence and appreciate their own attributes.
From this example, you can see that the more corporate-level visions highlight the general direction, while brand visions are relatively focused on specific areas.
How do you create a vision? How do you build team consensus to create a vision?
Developing a vision can be broken down into five steps: (1) understanding trends, (2) understanding goals and career scope, (3) brainstorming with key executives, (4) communicating with all employees, and (5) building consensus.
Generally speaking, the vision is set by the core members of the enterprise. However, as the company expands, the departments are busy with their daily operations and are prone to the silo effect, which prevents them from building consensus and generating synergies due to a lack of internal communication and mutual understanding. In particular, we have assisted many OEM-to-brand companies, and we know that the process of injecting branding ideas into the original OEM business is fraught with anxiety, doubt, and conflict between departments, which makes it increasingly difficult to build a brand vision from within. The ideal approach is to organize a visioning workshop, guided by a neutral professional from the outside. Through tools such as ice-breaking ceremonies, hero activities, and vision walls, we can help members of the company to participate in the processes of brainstorming, organizing, naming, and deciding on meanings, so that they can actually observe the diversity of perspectives to stimulate thinking, expose connections, and astringent choices in order to form a consensus, and then finally, give them a commitment to extract what the core members of the company know deep down but have not yet said. The final commitment is to distill the unspoken visions that the core members of the organization know deep down, and ultimately to communicate them.
Venerable Sheng Yen said, "Where there is a wish, there is power." Peter Drucker said, "The best way to predict the future is to create it." Einstein said, "Logic can get you from A to B. Imagination can take you anywhere." Are you ready to unleash your potential, co-create your brand vision, and dream your way to success with your company partners?