Points are good because they stick into things

Join CIM for another great webinar in the Graduate Gateway Marketing Club on Thursday 25 February 2021.

Every brand needs a point, a sharp definition of its purpose that will stick in people's minds. It stands to reason that a brand-aligned behind a shared point will have a better chance of success than one that isn't. However, this means making a choice about what that one point is, and that can be can fiendishly hard to do. A brand strategy can do this.

This session will introduce what a brand strategy is (and what it isn't), how it delivers financial value to an organisation, the key elements that make up a brand strategy, the role it plays in shaping the brand, the need to engage the whole organisation in its development and how it can fit into the broader marketing and planning process.

Based on the Brand Arrow®, a planning tool covered in Bruce M Mckinnon's award-winning book 'What's Your Point?', it will cover the four of the core building blocks of any brand strategy:

• Vision - defining where the brand wants to head to and the barriers and drivers to reaching it
• Positioning - describing what is at the heart of the brand, what makes it unique in the market
• Proposition - capturing that positioning in a way that engages firstly your team and secondly your customers
• Values - defining the character of the brand to act as a benchmark for both the team and the brand's customers

Bruce will also explore the tangible deliverables a brand strategy can provide including:

• Elevator pitch - a sentence that defines the problem that all its customers are facing, and a sentence then defines how the brand will solve that problem
• Key messaging - the 5 most powerful messages that ensure the brand is using consistent and correct copy across all its communications channels
• Brand name - using the brand strategy as a tool to first ensure the brand name reflects its direction and if required the development of a new or evolved brand name

At the end of the session, delegates will all have a good idea of how brand strategy can add both strategic and practical value to any organisation.

Speaker: Bruce M Mckinnon

Bruce has worked in brand marketing for 30 years and passionately believes the right brand strategy is the most effective tool a client has to deliver its point. In 2009, he founded the specialist brand strategy practice The Brand Arrow and has since delivered over 70 assignments in Europe and North America in a variety of sectors including artificial intelligence, legal tech, financial services, food and drink, real estate, and software.

In 2019 Bruce published What’s Your Point? containing the proprietary Brand Arrow framework, winning silver at the US Business Book Awards (Axiom).

Bruce regularly speaks on the subject of brand at conferences, business schools, facilitates workshops, and has been invited to speak at both CIM Marketing Club and annual CIM Tutor Conferences. He holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management and the CIM Post Graduate Diploma in Marketing.

Bruce's book What’s Your Point? is currently on offer in the CIM bookshop.

This is the second of four CIM Graduate Gateway Marketing Club online events planned for this academic year.

What is the CIM Graduate Gateway Marketing Club?

For the past three years leading universities across the south of the UK have collaborated with the CIM to run a programme of on-campus practitioner-led events for marketing students and marketers alike. This year we will be running UK-wide Marketing Club events online.

The webinar will last about an hour and is inclusive of a live Q&A session after the presentation.

Information on how to join, along with the link, will be sent closer to the date of the webinar so please do check your spam/junk folders the morning of the webinar in case the email has been directed there by your email provider. If you don't receive an email containing the webinar link by 11 am on Thursday 25 February please let CIM know as soon as possible.