Monday, 23 September 2013 00:57
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Corporate personality Rohantha Athukorala, who is a Board Director for many private and public sector companies, addressing the Women in Management Luncheon Meeting on the topic ‘Marketing Vs Sales’ urged organisations to monitor brand equity so that an organisation can evaluate the impact the marketing activity has on a consumer in the long term.
There are many marketing companies that evaluate performance just on revenue, profits and marketing budget spend but they forget that these are only short term measures in evaluating performance, said Athukorala. The most important measurement if you want to ensure long term sustainability of your organisation is the value of your brand in the market place based on the message communicated.
A case in point taken was Seylan Bank where the brand value took a hit when the Golden Key debacle hit the market but there after with some focused brand marketing initiatives, recovery took place.
However, a point highlighted by the speaker was that if one just evaluated the organisation on profitability, the company immediately recovered by quadrupling the value but net profit continued to get hit in the period 2008 to 2012. But thereafter, focusing brand building the overall equity development took place and as it was monitored, one can see how the real health of the company took place.
This is the real benefit of moving an organisation from a financial/sales orientation to a marketing-oriented company, commented Athukorala. But if data like awareness, top of the mind awareness, main message recalled and then finally the brand value are not evaluated on a periodic basis, it will not be possible know if you are practicing marketing oriented, meaning what gets evaluated becomes your direction, said Athukorala.
Apparently even in the International arena, sought-after organisations like the United Nations now monitor their brand equity not only from a country perspective but also globally for focused management.
Women in Management Chairperson Sulochana Segera said: “Unless we have messages such as what the speaker highlighted based on real life experience, we in management will continue to operate in a style that we are used to. Today, we heard another dashboard that we must architecture to the business monitoring model, which is essentially the role of professional associations like Women in Management.”
