ALIGNING THE BBN BRAND Agency Implementation Guide
OVERVIEW Connect with BBN
The Big Brand Theory The following document has been put together to give guidance on how to introduce BBN branding elements into your brand identity. This includes best practice examples and minimum requirements and expectations as a BBN member agency. Why is this important? Raising the profile of BBN is important to us all. It strengthens our international capabilities, our individual propositions and our collective ability to win and work with international accounts. It helps strengthen your brand perception. BBN is a single entity for large global B2B accounts, unified and strengthened by its members. It is not merely a network of disparate individual agencies. It also keeps all of our brands consistent and aligned as part of The World s B2B Agency. How this will be achieved...
Improved alignment to the BBN brand: Universal alignment to our processes: You can download the latest revised BBN brand guidelines from the Members' Lounge: http://lounge.bbn-international.com/expertise/marketing-pitch-collection/bbnbranding-guidelines
A shift from a Network model To a Central Agency model
DREAM BIG Brand Alignment
A unified BBN brand At the 2015 Owner s Conference, support towards a BBN endorser brand model was overwhelmingly positive. To strengthen BBN s brand perception as well as their own, most agencies agreed to add a BBN agency to their logo. As a minimum requirement, if you do not wish to add BBN to your logo you should still feature BBN prominently on your website homepage and marketing material. This ensures a joined up and consistent journey for anyone investigating BBN agency locations. BBN Brand Architecture As most of us know the brand architecture of an organisation should define how the parent brand and sub-brands relate to and support each other; and how the sub-brands reflect or reinforce the core purpose of the parent brand to which they belong. Often, decisions about brand architecture are concerned with how to manage a parent brand, and a family of sub-brands, and how to maximise shareholder value. That can be pretty straightforward when the parent brand owns the sub brands, but in the case of BBN, where the 'parent' brand is owned by many of the 'sub brands' (agencies). And when all the 'subbrands' are independently owned and managed businesses, we face a number of challenges. In our case BBN brand alignment provides several benefits to our agencies - it is used to add credibility, strength in numbers, unity and potentially help maximise a return on marketing investment. With this in mind, three options can be considered. 1. Agencies remain as individual brands, but then the BBN brand just becomes a 'badge' and the benefits of brand alignment is diminished. 2. Agencies fall under a monolithic BBN brand, but in reality this will never be achievable unless the ownership structure changed. 3. So we are left with the third option which is to use BBN as an endorsing brand, this allows agencies to retain their own brand identity, while at the same time optimising the BBN brand alignment benefits.
ENDORSED IS OUR NEW IDEAL STRUCTURE
SCALED UP THINKING Unifying agency processes
BBN NAVIGATOR A big brand calls for big thinking. As a unified BBN, our main USP is our ability to collaborate seamlessly. By adopting the same tools and processes, we can demonstrate a consistent and unified approach to our thinking. Therefore, all agencies must show that they are aligned to our universal toolkit, BBN Navigator, on their websites, by adopting consistent language when talking about BBN and its processes. We must also all display the Navigator graphic on our websites. This can be downloaded from the BBN Members lounge. http://lounge.bbn-international.com/expertise/marketing-pitch-collection/bbnbranding-guidelines Remember that a consistent look should also be paired with consistent writing. We have devised a number of key blocks of copy describing BBN, the BBN tools and processes. To ensure a level of consistency, and to make it easy for you, over the following pages you ll find copy blocks written for use on all agency marketing material from websites to brochures.
Describing BBN BBN has over 800 B2B specialists in 19 countries, working across 23 different B2B sectors. Across every country and every city, we share the same proprietary BBN tools and processes which results in real-time collaboration for global clients across every discipline from B2B marketing and advertising, to digital, media, research and PR. The global presence of BBN is built upon independently strong local offices, each with experienced Owner-Managers. This drives the culture and ethos of BBN globally, helping us to deliver the award-winning B2B marketing and creativity that sets our agency apart. Describing Navigator BBN S world-class, best practice B2B marketing methodologies, processes and tools have been adopted in all agencies. BBN Navigator is the world s only, truly integrated B2B marketing toolset. It guides marketers through all the challenges of B2B marketing from brand and contact strategy through to campaign delivery. It enables us as agencies to deliver a tried, tested and definitive approach to local and international B2B marketing. STRATEGY Our Brand Asset Management (BAM) toolkit provides a proven, effective and highly collaborative approach to brand development and management. CREATIVE Our Big Long Idea (BLI) process is part art, part science. It provides a concrete methodology for developing ideas that are simple, powerful, iconic and effective. CONNECTION C-Map is BBN s proprietary process for multi-channel connection. It gives B2B brands a framework and strategy to maximise the effectiveness and profitability of campaigns. ACTIVATION Our International Account Management toolkit ensures consistent execution of our proven Go-To-Market strategies to better connect your internal and external audiences.
THE BIGGER PICTURE Be part of something bigger
Something bigger BBN has over 800 employees working for its member agencies. We re part of a huge global agency, but we re not letting anyone know. As of November 2015, Linkedin showed a total of 97 BBN employees. Therefore it would be of significant benefit to us all to update our Linkedin profiles and grow BBN s representation across the world, using the guidelines on the following pages. "Currently, only 14% of BBN agency employees have updated their profiles." Showcasing our size Linkedin Guidelines To maintain consistency, the following instructions can be shared with all agency employees, detailing how to connect BBN to your Linkedin profile. This gives the correct job hierarchy, with your job for your agency appearing first, above BBN. The full instructions for updating Linkedin profiles can be found here: http://lounge.bbn-international.com/expertise/marketing-pitch-collection/bbnbranding-guidelines
If we can encourage all our BBN colleagues to add BBN to their profile, we can grow BBN and agencies representation on LinkedIn by 600%
Feature BBN alongside your current agency position
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