Brand Driven CEO - Embedding Brand into Business Strategy_Dec 2016_ PRINT FINAL

THE BRAND-DRIVEN CEO
EMBEDDING BRAND INTO BUSINESS STRATEGY
LEVEL5 LEADERS FORUM SERIES
ISSUE 1, VOLUME 8
DECEMBER 2016
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

THE BRAND DRIVEN CEO - EMBEDDING BRAND INTO BUSINESS STRATEGY
BRAND-DRIVEN CEOS EMBED THEIR COMPANY’S
PURPOSE, VISION, VALUES, COMPETENCIES AND
PROMISE INTO THE BRAND.
AT-A-GLANCE
In this white paper you’ll collect key insights about:
• Why brand management needs to start at the top – with the CEO
• How embedding corporate purpose into the brand expands brand value
• How to drive brand accountability by what you measure
• The importance of creating consensus and communicating brand value to
stakeholders
DECEMBER 2016
2

BRANDING AMONG THE UNBRANDED
BRAND AS A STRATEGIC ASSET
Creating value and sustaining profitable growth has become more difficult than
ever in today’s increasingly complex, disruptive and constantly changing business
environment. CEOs are faced with finding and sustaining competitive advantage
and profitable growth, while at the same time delivering short-term profits and
enhancing shareholder value. Empowered with technology and social media,
consumers are becoming increasingly connected and well-informed – and they
expect more from brands and from the products and services they purchase.
Strong, consistent brands are more important than ever in helping organizations
achieve sustainable, competitive advantage.
Don’t just take LEVEL5’s word for it. The world’s five most valuable brands and
their brand values in U.S. dollars, according to Forbes’ 2016 ranking, have some
familiar names on the list 1
:
• Apple – brand value $154.1 billion
• Google – brand value $82.5 billion
• Microsoft – brand value $75.2 billion
• Coca-Cola – brand value $58.5 billion
• Facebook – brand value $52.6 billion
Each of these global leaders has a recognizable brand, and it didn’t get that
way by accident. It got that way through clear and consistent commitment to
managing the brand as an asset by each company’s most senior executives. At
these companies, brand is guiding not only what the company sells but also how
the company is run. In the process, they are moving their margins up, changing
their conversations with customers from prices charged to value delivered, and
extending the impact of their offerings from the utilitarian into the emotional and
experiential. And each has realized solid financial impacts as a result of its brand.
Unfortunately, the reality is that for every Apple and Google, there are a myriad of
companies who struggle to understand (and subsequently manage) their brand
as a strategic asset. Consequently, brand remains one of the greatest untapped
assets that CEOs have at their disposal to drive long-term sustainable growth.
While most CEOs conceptually understand that their brand is an asset, few know
how to begin to manage it as one. The natural tendency is to relegate management
of the brand to the marketing department and to view it as a cost on the income
statement. Instead of bringing the organization’s full power to bear on the
brand’s growth and success, they handicap themselves and squander a powerful
competitive advantage — often at great cost!
How, then, does viewing a brand as an asset change the way brands are managed?
For starters, brand-driven CEOs see their brand not as a function of their marketing
department but as an important, value-creating business asset that must be
nurtured and protected.
1
http://www.forbes.com/powerful-brands/list/
It’s a holistic exercise, not a
marketing exercise, that needs
to start with the leadership
team defining what the brand
stands for.
- Joe Natale,
former CEO, TELUS
DECEMBER 2016
3

Employee
On October 5th, 2016, LEVEL5, in partnership with Spencer Stuart, hosted our
eighth Brand Leaders Forum series power breakfast to offer Canadian business
leaders a new way to think about and manage their brands as assets. Ken Wong,
renowned professor at Queen’s Smith School of Business, moderated discussions
with four prominent brand-driven business leaders who have embraced the
concept of Brand as a Business SystemTM
and, as a result, unleashed extraordinary
new value for their organizations:
• Allan MacDonald, President, Canadian Tire Retail
• Joe Natale, former CEO, TELUS
• Ana Dominguez, President, Campbell Company of Canada
• Michael Jones, President & Chief Executive Officer, Equity Financial Trust
This white paper distills the six success factors our panel focused on to transform
their company into a brand-driven organization and culture:
1. PURPOSE Only a CEO can truly define an organization’s purpose—its why
2. LEADERSHIP
3. CONSENSUS
4. CHANGE
5. ACCOUNTABILITY
6. COMMUNICATION
Brand management always begins at the top
C-suite agreement drives alignment across the organization
Organizational transformations that succeed are brand-driven and led by the CEO
Brand measurement drives brand performance
The brand promise must be clearly understood by both external and internal
stakeholders
DECEMBER 2016
4

ONLY A CEO CAN TRULY DEFINE AN ORGANIZATION'S PURPOSE - ITS WHY
Customers don’t buy what you sell; they buy why you sell it. Brand-driven CEOs
know this, so in order to get clarity on their particular why, they constantly ask
themselves a fundamental question: What business are we in, and why? Just two
years ago, Ana Dominguez, Campbell Canada’s new President, began to raise that
question with her team after research told her that “the younger generation was not
buying our brand.” Why weren’t they buying, she wondered? After all, Campbell’s®
Healthy Request line—which focused on the benefits of a healthy heart—had
been a popular go-to supermarket brand for over two decades. But Campbell
Canada's research revealed something even more useful: Millennials cared less
about heart health than the amount of fibre and preservatives they consumed.
Since Millennials represented Campbell’s®
future, something had to be done.
As it happens, Dominguez and Campbell Canada were “the thin edge of the
wedge”—they were charged with developing Campbell’s global strategy. “We
knew we had to develop a whole new way of managing our brand inspired by an
understanding of what a new group of consumers wanted,” Dominguez said. “So
we mobilized every aspect of the company.” But first they had to go back to basics.
When the team at Campbell Canada asked themselves what business they were
in, they realized they weren’t in the soup business; they were in the nourishment
business, and if they wanted to attract a new generation of customers, they had
to go a step further and define their business and their brand to provide Real Food
that Matters for Life's Moments to Canadians. The company worked hard to make
significantprogressinlivingintothispurpose—fromworkingtoeliminateartificial
colours and flavours in its foods, BPA in its packaging, antibiotics in its chicken
supply, to adding vegetables and whole grains, and embracing transparency
from farm to family. "Our purpose became our burning platform and transformed
everything we did—from our marketing, to our supply chain, to operations."
Joe Natale, former CEO of TELUS, Canada’s third-largest communications carrier,
believesthat purposeshould driveeveryactivitythat takesplacewithinabusiness.
“I think more than ever, organizations need to really embed their sense of purpose
into the brand and business system.” As the saying goes, it’s not about having
the best drill, it’s about helping the customer make the best hole, which is why
at TELUS everyone learned they weren’t selling cellphones, they were selling an
important life connection. That benefits-based perspective truly defines what a
brand-driven CEO is all about.
We had an iconic brand that
wasn’t relevant to a whole
new generation of consumers.
We needed to reinvent the
company, so we began by
redefining our vision and our
brand.
- Ana Dominguez,
President, Campbell Company
of Canada
ORGANIZATIONS NEED TO REALLY EMBED THEIR SENSE
OF PURPOSE INTO THE BRAND.
- Joe Natale, former CEO, TELUS
1. PURPOSE
DECEMBER 2016
5

BRAND MANAGEMENT ALWAYS BEGINS AT THE TOP
Three years ago, Allan MacDonald, President of retailing stalwart Canadian Tire,
realized that the company’s iconic brand was slipping. “We had failed to create
an identity with the next generation of customers. We had been 'everyone’s go-
to store' for so long, we didn’t realize our definition of 'everyone’ was shrinking
rapidly.” Although the company has close to 60,000 employees and nearly 500 "big
box" stores across Canada, MacDonald and his team knew it was time to rethink
the brand at the executive level, so they began by establishing a Brand Committee
of the Board. This was not some powerless bureaucratic subcommittee—"it was
basically Canadian Tire’s entire Board," said MacDonald.
Canadian Tire’s top executives were tasked with examining and reviewing the
health of all of the company’s major brands (including its private label brands)
and measuring their performance against a series of brand metrics. MacDonald
knew the company’s future profitable growth depended on staying a step ahead of
an aggressive group of global retailers, so they invested heavily in connecting a
younger generation of target customers with the iconic brand, to help them fall in
love with Canadian Tire the way their parents did before. It began with identifying
what those younger customers valued most — quality, style and design and strong
brands—then fulfilling those desires. They developed higher quality products, new
and exciting private brands and entirely new digital experiences that showcased
the assortment: like the fully omnichannel (paper+digital) catalogue, or the in-
store virtual patio builder and wiper selector tablets. "Technology has absolutely
helped us to rebuild our brand with Millenials and other consumer groups, but it’s
always anchored in the brand experience we want to create; to drive conversion and
sales growth," says MacDonald.
When Michael Jones was appointed the new CEO of Equity Trust Financial (ETF), he
knew that the only way he could restore the brand was to focus all his efforts on the
stakeholders, beginning with his managers and employees. “Brand management
has to come from the top or else everybody’s left to interpret what the brand really
means. When brand management is left to the head of marketing, it can become
ambiguous for everybody else.”
“Brand-building starts with the leadership team,” agreed Joe Natale. “We have to
be on the same page as to what the brand stands for and why that matters—both
to customers and to our employees. That means we need to create a sense of focus
and alignment. It may seem obvious, but that is not always the case." The entire
extended executive team needs to spend at least a full day together each month
focusing on customer issues and priorities. Brand leadership is important, but so
is culture change, says Natale, "because I see culture as the emotional wrapper
of a brand."
Brand management has to
come from the top or else
everybody’s left to interpret
what the brand means.
– Michael Jones,
CEO, Equity Financial Trust
2. LEADERSHIP
DECEMBER 2016
6

BRAND CONSENSUS CREATES ALIGNMENT ACROSS THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION
Because brand building is such a long-term, organization-wide endeavour,
consensus on what the brand means and what it stands for must be forged at
the top. “We don't have a marketing department, we have a senior management
team,” Jones noted, “and that senior management team had to reach a consensus
astowhatthebrandis.”ConsensusloomedlargeatEquityTrustFinancialbecause
if there wasn’t a clearly understood consensus, ETF’s brand repair and rebuilding
process would quickly come off the rails. Fortunately, EFT’s definition of consensus
is quite a simple one, says Jones: “It may not be my idea, but when I leave the room
I’m supporting it or we’re in trouble.”
The brand promise at TELUS is "The Future Is Friendly," but Natale pointed out that
a lot of people on the executive team didn't always understand what that really
meant. “They were living the thoughts that they believed the brand meant, not
what it actually meant. To help create consensus around its brand, I believe it's
important to send managers out into the field to experience what is actually going
on with customers. Spending a full day in a store or with a field technician at one
of the call centers helps team members understand what if feels like to execute
on brand."
BRAND-DRIVEN CEOS ALWAYS LEAD MAJOR ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
Successful brand-driven CEOs understand that they must personally oversee the
change process if they want the brand promise to become firmly entrenched in the
organization. When Campbell Canada transitioned from being a soup company to
a food company offering Real Food that Matters for Life's Moments to families,
Dominguez and her team had to engage in “a lot of training, a lot of conversations
and reorganization.” And that included their retailers. “We totally changed how we
engaged with them. We moved from a very transactional relationship to a more
strategic one that was more anchored in our purpose and our brand.”
ETF’s Michael Jones managed the change process by "giving our people clarity"
about where the company was going and what they were trying to achieve. They had
a whole list of strategies tailored to different aspects of the branding "depending
on who we’re talking to. To make the change effective and lasting, we had to get
agreement across the board as to what the brand was all about and what we were
trying to accomplish."
Brand is part of the way you
operate. A lot of people on the
leadership team don't always
understand what that really
means.
- Joe Natale,
former CEO, TELUS
3. CONSENSUS
4. CHANGE
DECEMBER 2016
7

BRAND MEASUREMENT DRIVES BRAND PERFORMANCE
Brands can't be managed if they can't be measured, says Jones, whose own brand
measurement system is about creating as much value as possible. "We call it
organizational effectiveness. It's a fancy phrase for making sure that everybody
has a numerical performance agreement that's reviewed three times a year, and
everybody comes up with a score.” Every quarter Jones’ score is published so the
wholecompanycanseeit.Thiskindofaccountabilitygoesallthewaydownthrough
ETF’s organization. Even the office administration staff have a performance
agreement just like Jones (with different performance metrics attached). There
are no underlaps or overlaps in accountability, says Jones. “It’s a critical process
for us.”
Canadian Tire’s brand metrics are anchored in the relationships they have with
no less than eight different stakeholder groups. A Brand Health and Wealth
dashboard empowers management with an "always on" view of the metrics as
they happen, and they have been quite deliberate in quantifying the benefits of
digital investments through accelerated test-and-learn cycles. "Pace and timing
are critical when it comes to digital as a mass retailer; you don’t want to be too
far behind, or too far out front either; both are poor investments for driving the
brand and the business." Over the past three years Canadian Tire has modernized
its digital platforms like the website, updated to advanced logistics systems, and
developed new data-driven performance management capabilities. This has led to
a shift in some funding away from more traditional investments to new areas of
growth, guided by a robust set of brand-based metrics. “Now, when you see our
ads and they resonate with you, it’s because they’re very specifically designed to
drive a certain brand metric.”
For Campbell Canada, the key metric is: How successful are we in driving the
consumer experience? “Some of our team members asked us, what are we after—
sales or profit? We're after sales and profit,” Dominguez points out. “If it was just
one of the two, it would be easy. Everybody can do one. It's about how we organize
ourselves to achieve our goals and deliver value. We make assumptions when we
launch our promotional campaigns as to what metrics should be moved, and in
what direction and to what magnitude. If we don’t achieve our goals, we learn why,
and then we readjust. That has been a huge shift for the organization.”
At TELUS we created a
single metric—‘likelihood
to recommend.’ That metric
wound up on a scorecard which
measured the results.
- Joe Natale,
former CEO, TELUS
OUR ADS ARE SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO DRIVE A
CERTAIN BRAND METRIC.
- Allan Macdonald, President,
5. ACCOUNTABILITY
Canadian Tire Corporation, Ltd.
DECEMBER 2016
8

Brand performance and measurement are at the core of long term success, says
Natale. Telus has created more shareholder value over the past fifteen years
than any other global telecommunications firm, and getting everyone across the
organization accountable for delivering brand value is one of the key reasons why.
“At TELUS the focus was on— ‘likelihood to recommend, a net promoter score
equivalent'—which everyone could rally around.”
That metric wound up on a scorecard which measured the results.” In fact, over
50 percent of variable pay and compensation was tied to customer metrics in one
way or another.
THE BRAND PROMISE MUST BE CLEARLY UNDERSTOOD BY BOTH EXTERNAL AND
INTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS
Brand is all about trust, and trust begins and ends with good communication.
To rebuild trust with its key players, Jones and his team took their new branding
message to the mortgage brokers who distributed their lending products. “Our
vision and goal was clear,” said Jones. “We wanted to be the first choice for
brokers and borrowers in the non- and near-prime mortgage market.” Jones noted
that brand is not just about what you do but how people perceive what you do.
That’s why along with actually lending money to people, they had to deliver a clear
message as to who they were, what they were and what they stood for. “We were
very careful about how we told people what we were doing.”
To reinforce what the brand stood for with employees, TELUS set up webcast-like
town hall meetings and broadcast them to all employees. At these meetings,
Natale and his team took questions from everyone in the organization to get “clear
and honest” discussions around company issues and create a more transparent
environment. “I really tried to turn them into Oprah Winfrey-like, frank and honest
discussions of the business,” said Natale, “and reinforce the message that this is
something that we're all doing in this organization.”
Dominguez noted that once they had defined Campbell’s vision of how they wanted
to bring their brand to life in Canada, they were “very clear” about how they
communicated that vision to their retail partners. “‘This is the new Campbell’s
that you’re going to see,’ we said to our retailers. ‘This is how we’re going to drive
our brand going forward, and this is how we plan to be a very different partner to
you in order to revitalize the centre store.’” The results have been dramatic. “The
numbers show that we’re actually helping drive growth with retailers who had been
experiencing years of continuous decline.”
We were very clear about how
we communicated our new
vision to our retail partners.
- Ana Dominguez,
President, Campbell Company
of Canada
6. COMMUNICATION
DECEMBER 2016
9

ARE YOU A BRAND-DRIVEN CEO?
A common theme throughout the Brand Leaders Forum was that the CEO is
ultimately responsible for defining the brand’s purpose and ensuring that everyone
within the organization understands their individual role in bringing this purpose
to life. Below is a series of questions to help you evaluate whether you’re on the
right track to transforming your company into a brand-driven organization and
culture:
As the leader of my organization, I am the guardian of our brand—not just an
ambassador or spokesperson.
I have created a clear sense of purpose, direction and vision for our brand that
allows tough choices to be made more objectively.
The responsibility of managing your brand begins at the top with me—the
CEO—along with my C-suite team: CFO, COO, CMO and even board members.
I consistently make important organizational decisions through the lens of my
brand—hiring, firings, restructuring, resourcing, etc.
My organization has a culture that permeates the organization, uniting employees
at all levels with a common purpose that they understand, feel part of, and are
passionate about achieving.
Employees understand their contribution to the brand’s success, whether or not
they interact directly with the customer.
I have a clear understanding of the value that my Branded Business SystemTM
creates for various stakeholders.
My organization employs a common performance management system that
signals success and how each department/team contributes and is rewarded
for it.
As our four panel espoused, building and managing a strong brand begins at the top, with a deep understanding of the business' purpose and
a willingness to, as Natale stressed, "really embed their sense of purpose into the brand."
The primary objective of LEVEL5's Leaders Forum was to offer senior executives a new way to think about and manage this process. At LEVEL5
Strategy Group, we are committed to helping our clients drive dramatic business results through the power of their brand. Given LEVEL5’s
perspective that "Your Brand is your Business System™,” in future Forums we plan to continue exploring how CEOs are managing and
integrating key people, process and partnership decisions to become central drivers of their brand’s profitable growth.
LEVEL5 invites you to continue the conversation on this white paper. Send us your comments or inquires to:
L5LeadersForum@level5strategy.com.
DECEMBER 2016
10

18 KING STREET EAST
MEZZANINE LEVEL
TORONTO, ONTARIO
M5C 1C4
416 361 3468
LEVEL5STRATEGY.COM
ABOUT LEVEL5 STRATEGY GROUP
LEVEL5 Strategy Group™ is a firm of experienced management consultants
that advise organizations on realizing their potential – achieving the highest
level of performance – by identifying, creating and unlocking value from
their most important asset…their brand. Our successful track record
of growth for organizations is driven by our unique perspective on brand
management and the practical application of insights that comes from
having walked a mile in your shoes – all of our Partners are former c-suite
executives. You shop in LEVEL5 stores, make family meals with our products,
ride our transit systems, enjoy our concerts and have your check-ups in
our healthcare facilities. We invite you to learn how brand and digitally
led transformation come together to drive profitable, sustainable growth.
Smart. Brave. Action.™ LEVEL5™.
ABOUT SPENCER STUART
Spencer Stuart is one of the world’s leading executive search firms. Privately
held since 1956, Spencer Stuart applies its extensive knowledge of industries,
functions and talent to advise select clients — ranging from major multinationals
to emerging companies to not-for-profit organizations — and address their
leadership requirements. Through 53 offices in 29 countries and a broad range of
practice groups, Spencer Stuart consultants focus on senior-level executive search,
board director appointments, succession planning and in-depth senior executive
management assessments. We were the first global executive search firm to enter
Canada in 1978, helping clients across the country achieve outstanding leadership
solutions for their organizations from our offices in Toronto, Montreal and Calgary.
For more information, please contact Carter Powis at 416 203 5575 or
cpowis@spencerstuart.com.
DECEMBER 2016
11

© LEVEL5 STRATEGY GROUP™ 2016
NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM OR TRANSMITTED, IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS,
ELECTRONIC, MECHANICAL, PHOTOCOPYING, RECORDED OR OTHERWISE WITHOUT THE PRIOR PERMISSION OF LEVEL5 STRATEGY GROUP.

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