Andrew Welch

The man who led the team responsible for Pick n Pay’s recent corporate identity redesign, Andrew Welch, will share the team’s experiences as well as his approach to today’s cluttered and fragmented brandscape at Brands & Branding for Good2 in October this year.

An executive director in the London office of Landor Associates, Welch will join Paris-based director of Responsible Marketing Practice at Added Value Europe, Lesley Pasquad, and other local and international speakers on the podium at the conference, South Africa’s first ever to include a focus on brand relationships with socially and environmentally ‘aware’ consumers’.

Welch believes that, in the escalating din of global choice and competition, brands are the most effective way of cutting through the racket to reach people’s hearts and minds. However, he advocates throwing out the standard approach to doing business.

“Conventional and historic wisdom dictates that marketers ‘build products first, build brands later’,” he says. “But, given today’s overtraded brandscape, this approach no longer holds water. A new approach is required and, at Landor, ours is to encourage clients to start with the brand promise, lead with it, and let the brand be the driver of the business, not just another way of packaging it.”

To argue his case, Welch intends exploring several brand-related issues during his presentation, including:

• What makes for successful brands in today’s economy
• Why rules are changing and what are the new rules
• How to manage the customer experience from an internal perspective - what is a customer experience, how do we construct it, when do we know a client has got it right or wrong, what new structures and roles clients should be considering from an organisational perspective in order to ensure an end-to-end cohesive experience
• The role of metrics - why every agency in the marketing communications field should be measured against client success, not just creative output
• The role of ‘responsibility branding’ - taking a stance on society, having a position, an how it halo’s across the brand

He will substantiate his points with examples from numerous markets worldwide, including the Pick n Pay brand transformation.

Conference convenor, Ken Preston, says Welch’s presentation is certain to be thought provoking: “BrandZ1, the global brand value survey recently published by Millward Brown Optimor, reports that the top 100 brands in the survey have actually increased in average value nearly 2% over the past year, once again highlighting the true power of brands.

“However, Andrew is preparing to argue that the world doesn’t need another brand… unless you do it right. The conference, and specifically his presentation, will help delegates understand how to do it right and build a brand that can withstand turbulent times and the competitive onslaught,” he says.

“We would like to thank Pick n Pay for sponsoring Andrew’s visit. Having a line-up of overseas speakers adds valule to the conference by exposing brand owners, their marketers and communications professionals to some very smart people with international experience,” concludes Preston

The Brands & Branding for Good conference takes place on 20th/21st October at the Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand.

Enquiries and bookings are via lynn@brandsandbranding.co.za or www.brandsandbrandingconference.co.za.

Note 1: Additional information about the BrandZ survey:

The fourth annual BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking published by Millward Brown Optimor reveals that brands sustain their value, despite the tough economic environment. The BrandZ Top 100 ranking identifies the monetary value of brands. It does this by combining financial data with research on consumers and business-to-business users from BrandZ, the world’s largest brand equity study. The value of the top 100 brands has held its value at $1.95 tn (a marginal increase of 1.7 percent). Google is number one with a value of $100 bn, Microsoft is number two at $76.2 bn and Coca-Cola enters the top three for the first time at $67.6 bn.