In CFO magazine today, Strategic Hotels & Resorts’ branding exercise is covered briefly. And there’s a growing awareness of brands, even in the financial community.
   The journalist had a limited space to write what he could, so while the view is simplistic. You could say reputation is less an antecedent of branding than a consequence of it, or you could say it is part of the entire process, which includes business performance. But it does hint that there is far, far more to a company’s valuation than what the financial community traditionally focuses on. Brands are more than goodwill.
   The last paragraph brings that point home well:

But branding can backfire if the message doesn't match reality.

Pity the rest of the paragraph, with a quotation, falls a bit flat, and takes it all back into twentieth-century corporate comfort. To the guys who took the finance class at uni rather than marketing: we can work together to develop a better model. posted by Jack Yan, 9:39 PM  permalink