Brand Management

CEOs offer 12 points on managing your brand communication in the digital age.

While CEOs of S&P 500 companies are overwhelmingly seeing tepid revenue growth and declining profits, a few highly innovative companies are successfully accelerating organic growth by building emotional connections with customers.

Peter Drucker, the guru of modern management theory, said these now famous words: “the purpose of a business is to create a customer, and the purpose of the leader is to grow the value of the customer.”

Rebranding a business is a great opportunity for a company to show how it has evolved over time and debut its forward-thinking vision and mission to its constituents. It also is a tremendous undertaking, which requires precise strategy, exact timing and a great amount of preparation that must be communicated from the top all the way down.

Former Valeant Pharmaceuticals chief executive Martin Shkreli may be the poster boy of price gouging run amok, but the heat is increasingly on for the rest of the industry to tamp down on drug price increases and base growth more on productivity and less on arbitrary hikes to please shareholders.

Every week seems to bring some new revelation of trouble for the manufacturers that once dominated the U.S. and global processed-food business: Kellogg, General Mills, Kraft, Campbell Soup, PepsiCo, ConAgra and the like. And it equally brings news of some upstart brand that is helping to reorder this massive business with some new innovation in products, packaging, marketing or all three: Annie’s, Amy’s, Plum Organics, Chobani, Lifeway cultured-yogurt drinks, and Vita Coco coconut water.

Since Tim Cook and Howard Schultz stood on their soap boxes and advocated for gay rights and race relations, respectively, more CEOs have taken to the pulpit to speak their minds on social issues. Their opinions are also more frequently showing up in their strategies.

One of the most under-appreciated factors in the success of a middle-market business—or any company, for that matter—is for the enterprise to have a cohesive internal identity and culture that is authentic and resonates with employees, helping to retain them and keep them happy.

Out of the mouths of babes—or at least 9-year-olds—can flow some pretty sage advice for CEOs and business chiefs. At least when it comes from Alina Morse, the founder of a startup company called Zollipops, which has received national acclaim for its innovative product—cavity-fighting lollipops. Here are 8 basic but timeless insights based on the Zollipops experience.

There’s a bigger desire than ever by CEOs of non-American companies to establish a foothold—and more—in the U.S. market.