The NTT view of brand | WARC | The Feed

The NTT view of brand

Brand is, in essence, what your company stands for, according to NTT’s chief marketing and demand generation officer, who wonders whether the term ‘brand’ has had its day. 

Why it matters

Technology services business NTT is itself on a transformation journey and recently spent almost three months looking at whether the values it stands for as a company tally with the external brand it wants to put into the marketplace. “It’s been a pretty eye opening experience,” according to Matt Preschern. 

“Your brand is more than a visual identity,” he told the recent B2B World Fest. “What you stand for, who you are, what you literally represent as a company matters. And it matters to your employees, and particularly younger employees who … want to know that they work for a company that stands for something and that stands for something that’s meaningful.”

Takeaways 

• Marketers have to avoid giving in to the quarterly pressures of business leaders if they are to help position the company in a meaningful way to drive long-term growth.
• B2B marketing is rarely about short-term transactions (and in any case the average sales cycle is six to nine months) but rather about building relationships with customers with a team that will help solve their various challenges. 
• Marry traditional customer data with real-time feedback and real-time insights and then act on the findings. 

Quote

“When [customers] interact with us they don’t really wonder whether they’re interacting with what the brand team put together or what the demand team put together. The only thing they worry about is, are they actually interacting with the company in an authentic way, and do they have access to what we stand for” – Matt Preschern, chief marketing and demand generation officer at NTT.

^{BEC [Image: fauxels from Pexels]}