About 15 years ago my mom got a new micorowave and I got her old Sharp Microwave. After a couple of years of using it, it broke down for the first time in 20 years. So I called Sharp and asked them how to go about having this wonderful (the best microwave ever made) aparatus repaired. Turned out they had outsourced reparations of their electronics to another company. However, this "service" company was not about delivering service. Having them pick up the microwave was a challenge in itself. They didn't pick up defect electronics during the evening. They answered my question on that with: "Well little lady, we cannot start doing that, because that is what everyone then wants". Fulfilling a need that apparently everyone has, seemed pretty straightforward to me, but to them it was an alien concept.
Ever since that experience I have been wondering and thinking how you protect your brand in your supply chain of network of partner organizations you work with. As this microwave was so utterly wonderful (did I mention it was the best one ever made?) I held Sharp in high regard. Their outsourced repair partners however, totally frustrated that. Maybe it was an area that received little attention as these microwaves hardly ever broke down.
This crossed my mind when Marion de Vries posted an interesting question (Dutch) on Twitter yesterday.
How do you guard a #corporatebrand in a network marketing organization?
No employees but a collection of #personalbrands.
My answer was: shared values and a strong culture within that network. And the selection of personal brands becoming would become very important. Marion's answer was that in a network marketing organization the selection is often not on the person but on that person's ambition. And that it is the mix of people that makes it interesting. I responded by saying that other selection criteria are needed for a supply chain brand like that. Based on share values instead of shared goals.I was intrigued by this question and promissed to think and blog about it.
My first thought was about the different types of rationality of actions that Max Weber wrote about a century ago. He described actions based on values and actions based on goals. Actions based on goals, through time, lead to inconsistent behavior as goals change over time. They goals can basically change anytime a new CEO or manager arrives on the scene. Actions based on values lead to consistent behavior according to Weber. And as a corporate brand you definitely want to be consistent.
Selecting network partners on ambition, is selecting them on shared goals or dreams. This selection criterion could result in inconsistent behavior between corporate brand and partner brands. For instance, an ambition can be to become the market leader. But there are many ways to reach that goal. You can be all Dallas like JR about obtaining succes or you can be the exact opposite. Resulting in all kinds of incongruent behavior within the network. Inconsistency is the outcome and thus bad for the corporate brand.
It would be totally different if shared ambitions (goals) are fed by shared values. If the corporate brand and its partners are all JR-type entrepreneurs, you may not like them, but they are consistent. Just think about Al Qaida and all its cells. They share values. They share goals. And as a result you could say that they have a consistent corporate brand.
I am sure that there are nuances on this that are determined by criteria such as "intended duration of the partnership" and "needed expertise within the partnership". I can imagine that if the expertise you seek as a corporate brand is very unique you will compromise on values as long as the ambition is the same. This would always be an incidental short term partnership. If the expertise you seek is widely available than you do not compromise on shared values and shared ambitions. Not even if it is a short term partnership. For a long term partnership with a unique expert, you may have to position this partner as an excentric but authentic brand alongside your corporate brand. I tried to put this in a matrix:
These were my thoughts on this topic. What do you think?
