Create an Inspiring Brand That Tells Your Strategic Story

Joining us for today’s show is Michael Speranza, a marketing leader who knows how to create an inspiring brand that tells your strategic story. Today’s topic is Brand Strategy and Planning for the purpose of building brand preference. You can follow along by downloading SBI's annual workbook and flip to the Brand Strategy and Planning phase on pages 174 – 179 of the PDF.

As the Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy & Marketing for IPC, Michael Speranza has guided the brand strategy of his company through a major acquisition. IPC is a global B2B provider of technology solutions for the financial service markets. IPC provides communication, networking, and information governance solutions in the FinTech space. After IPC acquired their top competitor, Michael navigated his company through the brand evolution to help make this M&A investment pay off.

Michael is uniquely qualified to speak on this topic of B2B brand strategy. Listen as Michael demonstrates how to create an inspiring brand that tells your strategic story. This show illustrates brand stewardship responsibilities, and is a must hear interview for anyone acquiring companies as part of their growth strategy.

Why this topic today? Your competitors are making the same claims and promises as you. They are even using the same words. Brands that are built on “who you are” and “what you do” do not result in above average revenue growth. Your brand impacts revenue growth when it gets activated by the sales force and becomes uniquely relevant to your customer and prospects.

We begin today's show by outlining a 360-degree view of your customers and prospects. This involves understanding where your brand lives and how your audience might engage with your brand. Michael describes the brand audit process, that helped inform the new brand strategy, with primary research. IPC conducted in-depth interviews with customers, employees, and stakeholders, plus discovery workshops with many constituents, to identify key brand attributes of IPC and the acquired company.

The brand audit step in the planning process was essential to understand the current assets and momentum. An ideal brand audit should cover all aspects of your customer and prospect engagement including: visual identity, brand, logo, content, web, print, and advertising, as an end to end program that touched every campaign. For IPC, from start to finish, this was a three month long process.

Listen as Michael describes how the B2B brand is lived by 1,400 IPC employees to convey a single, compelling story that inspires customers and prospects. Michael recognizes how important it is to support the sales force and overall employee base when you relaunch a brand.