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We're happy to announce that two of the smartest minds in branding will be visiting us at the Emory Marketing Forum on February 28th - Bernd Schmitt and Lou Carbone.  The event will be held at the Intercontinental Hotel Buckhead in Atlanta.  Learn more here and buy your tickets here >>

The event will be held in two sessions:

Session 1: Customer Experience Management

An attractive customer experience is critical for differentiating brands. In his presentation, Dr. Bernd Schmitt will cover tools and methodologies for managing the brand experience. He introduces the five-step Customer Experience Management (CEM) framework, a comprehensive tool for managing the customer experience and connecting with customers at every touch-point. The framework demonstrates how CEM enables managers to:
" Gain original insight into the customer's world
" Develop an experiential strategy platform
" Create a unique and vivid brand experience
" Provide dynamic interactions at the customer interface
" Innovate continuously to improve customers' lives.

As part of the CEM framework, Mr. Schmitt will present cases of successful CEM implementations in a wide variety of industries. Join us to see how he links customer experience to customer equity - the financial value of customers.

Session 2: Experience Engineering

Through illustrations from Fortune 100 clients, Dr. Lou Carbone will share how the systematic design and delivery of experience clues can have immense impact on customer value, loyalty and the bottom line. Experiencing thought leader and author Lou Carbone will change the way you think about customer experience forever. His message to business leaders and professionals is simple: Create customers that come back and customers that tell others, by connecting emotionally with them through the experiences you deliver.

Carbone urges business to focus on managing experience "clues", conscious and unconscious, because experiences are what customers value most. He stresses that the world has moved from making and selling to sensing and responding-a dynamic change that requires new competencies.

Complete info here >>

Logically, strategy must precede metrics.

However, in many companies, metrics develop a life of their own and begin to dictate strategy.

Because of reward and incentive systems based on key performance metrics, managers all too often manage metrics such as ROMI rather than managing the business. For example, when profits or returns are limited under adverse economic conditions, companies often cut back on marketing investments in order to produce acceptable performance (ROMI’s). Ironically, for strong companies, this may be the best time to go on an offensive because less robust competitors may be weaker still.

Using the same metrics to both measure past performance and to resource the future can have disastrous results:

• The best way to kill new product innovations that have long-run payoffs is to use short-term, backward-looking metrics such as margins, turnover and return on assets that favor incumbent products thus starving innovations of badly need growth funds.
• Blurred insights can lead to questionable decisions. For example, higher short-run sales response elasticity for price-promotions has led to a systematic decrease in the share of marketing mix budgets allocated to advertising in the long run.
• Because marketing activities are listed as expenses rather than investments, they must typically “pay” for themselves within a year. Ironically, market-based assets such as customers and brands are the only assets that appreciate, and not depreciate.

If strategy is to precede metrics, knowledge of the competitive environment and company objectives must precede strategy development. Short-cycle environments require fast-cycle capabilities such as flexibility and agility. Product-markets where customer benefits are more intangible (e.g., fashion and branded goods) require different types of support.

Welcome to the Emory Marketing Institute's blog - where we focus on the intersection of branding practices and business performance.

Our goal is to start meaningful conversations around a few topics of interest to us:

- Branding History
- Benefits of Branding
- Brand Strategy
- Resource Allocation
- Brand Lifecycle Management
- Marketing Programs
- Operations Management and Branding
- Brand Strength Assessment
- Brand Performance
- Brand Valuation
- Business to Consumer Branding
- Business to Business Branding
- Technology Branding
- Services Branding
- Branding Case Studies
- Branding Best/Worst Practices
- Private Label Competition
- Branding Commodities
- Branding in Emerging Markets
- Branding Retail Organizations

We invite you to participate, to contribute - ideas, suggestion, comments and insights. Join us in our learning journey...