Reinventing the brand: bridging the gap between customer and brand value

Outlines a new approach for managing brands that brings the process into line with recent advances in the management of flatter, customer‐facing organizations. Argues that the traditional marketing and brand‐building approach, characterized by a narrow, product‐focussed selling proposition, no longer adds sufficient customer value. As a result, a gap has arisen between the value offered by the brand and the value expected by its customers. The factors which contribute to this value gap are discussed in the context of the changing customer and the changing organization where customer value is increasingly generated by business processes traditionally outside the remit of brand management. Introduces a management tool, the Unique Organization Proposition (UOP) to bridge this value gap by integrating the company’s core business processes into a visible set of credentials that adds customer value through the supply chain. Identifies and discusses the ways in which the UOP links with each of five core business processes. In conclusion argues that if marketers are to regain their role in the heart of the value‐adding process, they must lead in the management of the UOP and relegate their traditional brand engineering tools to an appropriate place in the overall UOP architecture.