True transformation beyond the brand — Robert Ferguson // SAP

Quotes

• "I've been transforming brands for the last better part of 15 to 20 years. I started my career working out of China, helping multinationals position and brand themselves effectively in the China market. And whether it's in a global market, like China, or a home market, brand transformation stems from the same place of helping drive understanding between what the market or your customers needs and what brands deliver upon and at least authentically communicate to the market." - Robert Ferguson

• "Brand transformation is a go-to-market strategy; a brand is merely a tool we use to help businesses grow and make a lasting impact wherever its objective might be. The most critical aspect of brand transformation is getting people to reconsider what a brand is and what it can do." - Robert Ferguson

• "The way to look at a Brand regardless of the organization's size or how matrix or global they are. The similarity in using a brand is all the same." - Robert Ferguson

• "Being a brand strategist is like investigative journalism, and it's about going out and seeking the answers or the truth you then use to tell the story." - Robert Ferguson

• "There are certain truths that we're trying to find. And so, the one, I would say, is a market truth. What's happening in the world where I'm operating both from a competitive standpoint and a macro perspective is vital for me to understand." - Robert Ferguson

• "The second truth is our audiences and stakeholders not only thinking about your customers and who you're selling to but also thinking about whether it's shareholders, investors, whether it's employees, I think often goes underrated, like, what are their sentiments and truth of what's important to them." - Robert Ferguson

• "And then, finally, you'd have your organizational truths. What's true about what you're doing in the marketplace, like what value you are doing, what exactly you are delivering?" - Robert Ferguson

• "When you understand those truths well, you can effectively craft or leverage the brand to achieve strategic business goals." - Robert Ferguson

• "China's no different in that there are specific ways that they perceive the world and a hierarchy of what's needed and what's important. But there are these universal truths that that's what people want from their brands or their products. The similarities are the same as building an effective brand in the China market and creating an effective brand in the Bay Area. It all comes back to understanding the realities in which they operate and how they want the brand or company to meet a need or a want." - Robert Ferguson

• "The greatest overlooked opportunity when rebranding or trying to transform a company or a brand is the employees' internal element and the largest challenges and the greatest opportunities I've had. I've always started with the employees." - Robert Ferguson

• "Too often, people approach a rebrand from the outside, as we're trained to do. And so we've been taught so much to be. It's really about what is customer-centric, what they need, and what they want. And we need to correct how we think about building or transforming a successful brand." - Robert Ferguson

• "Thinking about the internal engine and the power of that when it comes to building a successful brand you have whether it's 100,000 employees, whether it's ten employees if you don't have all of them, believing and understanding precisely the value in what you deliver in the market, it'll be impossible to get the rest of the world to think and feel the same way." - Robert Ferguson