Is Your Brand Ahead – Or Behind – Your Business?

“The business is ahead of the brand.”
– David Roman, Chief Marketing Officer – Lenovo, Fast Company Dec ’11/Jan ’12

Ok….quick – how many Chinese brands can you name? Not many, if any at all. Certainly that will change, but its pretty amazing to us that Chinese brands are still relatively unknown in the west. One that is known (sort of) is Lenovo, the technology company. Lenovo is a $21 Billion dollar brand that is perhaps best known as the people who bought IBM’s PC business. Lenovo is the second largest seller worldwide of PCs, moving ahead of Dell and Acer, yet still behind HP.  Yet, Lenovo’s brand awareness lags throughout much of the world.

And, here’s an interesting comparision….while brand leader Apple’s sales ($108B) are 5x the sales of Lenovo, Apple’s profits are 100x the level of Lenovo. The power of branding.

We see the same issue in the hospitality tabletop business. There are great companies that sell well in the hospitality segment – some very well – yet have very little brand recognition. And, of course, there’s always those brands whose recognition factor is well beyond what that brand’s sales would justify.

When you are a production, sales, and distribution company….often sales are driven by price. Price driven selling implys lower cost production or razor-thin overheads. Brands with strong points of differentiation typically can command higher prices, therefore high profit margins. Higher profits lead to more resources to continue building the brand.

The comment of where the Lenovo brand is versus the Lenovo business by CMO Roman is an interesting and a telling comment. Having worked previously for both Apple and HP, he should know.

So……is YOUR business ahead of your brand?