I created BEXIO to provide a model that would guide

and inspire brand practitioners to play out scenarios for

their brands and discover their future greatness.

I hope you will find it useful.

Anders Braekken Anders Braekken, BEXIO Creator

The model approaches brands and branding from different

perspectives, looks at the branding process through different

lenses and represents a style and philosophy of doing branding.

It is just as much about management, operations and capabilities,

corporate culture, decision-making, execution and relationship-

building as creative thinking, design and communication.

Ever since the 1980s brands have proliferated and competition among brands has

proven to be a fierce battlefield. We have observed how classical brand and

business models have been replaced or complemented with new ones.

Massive penetration and diffusion of communication platforms, devices and services

together with the digitalisation of processes and contents have changed consumer

and organisational behaviour leading to new branding practices. We have witnessed

how entire industries have been fragmented and transformed and how societies

have changed.

However, as the brand landscape continues to change and adapt to its environment,

as it always has, the ultimate challenge of literally any brand remains the same:

How to connect with people, become part of their lives and stay there?

Where to position the brand and how to get there?

What operations are required to deliver the brand promise?

What resources and competences do we need to deploy?

What should the brand be called and look like?

When and how to express the brand and engage stakeholders?

How do we manage stakeholder perceptions and our brand's reputation?

How do we create value for stakeholders and shareholders?

The BEXIO model advocates the use of simulation excercises to play out alternative

scenarios of the brand in order to identify the best possible choice of strategic

direction and elaborate possible contingency plans. Scenario simulation is a

powerful tool for anticipating and managing change imposed by competing brands

or changes in the general business environment. Simulations into demographic

changes, people's behaviour, social trends and cultural context will also yield great

insights for the brand.

The BEXIO Model considers branding an iterative process which will become ever

more effective as learning, drilling and training takes place. Examples from such

wide disciplines as sports, entertainment and the armed forces offers compelling

arguments for why organisations should do training and simulation excercises to

keep their brands fit.

● End-to-end overview of the branding process.

● Corporate and brand strategy alignment.

● Brand strategy and execution alignment.

● Coherence and consistency in branding initiatives.

● Faster and smarter decision-making and execution.

● Clarifies priorities and defines the agenda for action.

● A roadmap for creating and managing stakeholders’ perceptions

Before embarking on a branding project a profound understanding of the

organisation's business model and overall strategy framework is of critical

concern. Through an internal and external organisational audit, the

following five questions should ideally be answered:

● Where are we competing? (Product-market scope, geographical

scope, horizontal and vertical integrations).

● How are we competing? (Competitive adv. and bus. strategies).

● What do we want to become? (Organisation’s vision statement).

● What do we want to achieve? (Mission statement and KPIs).

● How will we get there? (Growth models: Organic, M&A, alliances).

To answer these questions we audit the organisations:

● Core capabilities

● Competitive advantage

● Corporate culture

● Strategies

● Structures

● Systems

● Value chain

Brand strategy expresses where and how a brand wants to be positioned

and how it wants to compete. Shaping stakeholder perceptions is always

at the core. It is a blueprint conveying a compelling vision stating what the

brand aspires to become, what it wants to achieve for its stakeholders

and how it pretends to get there. The key concepts of brand strategy are

listed below.

● Brand architecture

● Brand experience map

● Brand platform

● Brand positioning

● Brand success factors

● Brand value propositions

● Critical brand drivers

● Product-service bundling

● Stakeholder insights

● Stakeholder relationships

Brand operations outline how the brand strategy will be delivered across

the organisation's activities and processes, and together with partners. A

brand operating model ensures aligment of all organisational units around

objectives. It offers clarity of responsibilities, decision-making and

communication. Finally, brand operations provide a framework for

performance measurement.

● Brand performance indicators

● Brand team and structure

● Branding processes and work flows

● Brand software, tools and systems

Brand capabilities refer to what is required to deliver the brand strategy and

prosper. Brands need tangible and intangible resources and capabilities to

take advantage of opportunities in the marketplace. Financial resources,

branding knowledge, skills and abilities are crucial to brand performance as

is a positive and strong reputation among stakeholders.

● Brand budget and investments

● Brand engagement and culture

● Brand intelligence

● Brand management style

● Brand reputation equity

● Branding competencies and knowledge

● Intellectual property rights

Brand identity is the outward expression of a brand. This includes

everything from its name and visual appearance and imagery to the way it

sounds, feels, smells, tastes and moves. The brand's identity is its

fundamental means of consumer recognition and symbolizes its points of

difference. It represents a unique set of associations which affect how a

brand appears in consumer's minds.

● Verbal identity (naming and identity)

● Messaging

● Tone of voice

● Visual identity (shapes, colours and symbols)

● Typography

● Sensorial identity (sound, smell, taste, texture, motion)

Once a brand has been created it needs to be expressed and articulated

to its target audiences. Every single touch-point between the brand and a

stakeholder, whether it be directly or indirectly, makes a contribution to

the overall experience and image of the brand. Brands can be articulated

in unlimited manners and some typical examples of brand expressions

are listed to the right.

● Above-the-line (ATL) and below-the-line (BTL) communications

● Corporate Social Responsibility

● Digital media

● Events

● Employee interactions

● Environments (e.g. corporate and retail)

● Packaging

● Products and services

● Sensorial mix

A brand's reputation represents stakeholders' accumulated perceptions of

the brand built over time. The aggregated differences in perceptions of

one brand and competing brands representing the same offering make up

the brand's equity. Stakeholders apply a number of reputation filters to

decide whether to acquire the brand or not. The better a brand is aligned

with the stakeholder's expectations, emotional motivation, previous

experiences and cultural context, the probability of acquiring the brand

increases. The principal brand reputation filters are listed below:

● Above-the-line (ATL) and below-the-line (BTL) communications

● Corporate Social Responsibility

● Digital media

● Events

● Employee interactions

● Environments (e.g. corporate and retail)

● Packaging

● Products and services

● Sensorial mix

It is a widely held belief among brand practitioners that a brand is not

what the brand owner says it is, but what the brand audiences say it is. A

brand is a cluster of perceptions created by a person’s encounters with

the brand. These perceptions shape the person’s attitudes, beliefs,

expectations, feelings, images, thoughts and behaviour towards the

brand. A brand rarely means the same to everybody. The main brand

acquisition drivers for acquiring a brand are listed below

● Awareness

● Differentiation

● Esteem

● Knowledge

● Quality

● Relevance

● Trust

BEXIO Tools are used to twist and turn the brand upside-down inside-out, by

approaching the brand from different perspectives.

The tools are adapted from cutting-edge techniques, models and best practices in a

range of business management disciplines to fit into the model and make it even

more powerful and versatile.

Wherever you are in the branding process, you will dispose of a

number of practical and powerful tools that will inspire and facilitate

the branding process significantly.

The tools bring you onto the right path faster, guide you on the

journey to meet your objectives, and will in many cases, be

instrumental in crossing the tipping point where a good idea is

turned into a fast and smart brand concept.

Wherever you are in your career as a brand practitioner you cannot afford stop

acquiring new skills and knowledge. Workshops provide branding teams with the

skills necessary to achieve success, manage costs, increase project effectiveness

and improve return on brand investments.

Providing your team with cutting-edge concepts and skills not only will drive

performance and make a contribution to meeting your strategic goals. It will also

show your organisation’s commitment to progress and excellence making you an

employer of choice.