ZIBS ANNUAL AWARDS

- ZIBS Distinguished Practice Award
presented to managers that embrace innovation in brand management

- ZIBS Distinguished Theory Award
presented to the authors of articles that make significant contributions to brand science

2005 Awards
ZIBS Award for Technology Branding - Samsung
ZIBS Award for B2B Branding - IBM
ZIBS Award for Services Branding - UPS
ZIBS Award for Consumer Branding - Procter and Gamble
ZIBS Award for Brand Theory - Kevin Lane Keller

ZIBS Distinguished Practice Award

The ZIBS Distinguished Practice Award is designated to honor managers that lead in their application of brand practice. The award had four sector-specific classes to recognize those who achieve:

- Excellence in technology markets branding
- Excellence in business-to-business branding
- Excellence in services markets branding
- Excellence in consumer markets branding

The basis for the award focuses on the performance of the organization's practices under seven criteria including:

1. Definitive brand leadership,
2. Brilliant brand strategy,
3. Competent brand resource management,
4. Integral brand operations management,
5. Agile brand lifecycle management,
6. Insightful brand performance management, and
7. Deft handling of sector specific brand management issues.

ZIBS Distinguished Theory Award

The ZIBS Distinguished Theory Award is given annually and honors significant contribution to the field of brand science. The award recognizes scholarship based on the benefits of time and hindsight and will acknowledge contributions and outcomes made to both impacting managerial practice and furthering academic theory.

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2005 AWARDS

• 2005 ZIBS Award for Technology Branding - Samsung

  Samsung, a name that means "three stars" in Korean truly has been rocketing to success. It is the worlds leading manufacturer of flat-panel screens, and of flash memory, which is pervasive in this digital age found in cameras, iPods, and computers. Samsung is ranked number three in the world of consumer electronics after Sony and Matsushita. It is rivals Motorola in cell phones for second place after Nokia. This stellar success is showing in the bottom line. Its profits topped $10 billion last year on $92 billion in sales. To put that in perspective - not only is it more than three times the profits of Apple Computers it is more profitable than Microsoft. Its profits exceeded those of Dell, Oracle, Motorola, and Texas Instruments. And Samsung's market capitalization is roughly double that of Sony's.

  Samsung was founded in the late 1930's by Byung-Chull Lee as a small exporter of fruit and dried fish. By the 1960s and '70s it became a key partner in the government's postwar industrial development drive, venturing not just into electronics but shipbuilding, petrochemicals, heavy machinery, and construction. Kun-hee Lee, the founder's son, took over after his father's death in 1987. Holding an MBA from the US he set out to make Samsung a leading brand.

  In the 1990's Samsung was a pioneer in the memory business. It led the market in SDRAM, superfast memory used in personal computers. However, by 1997 the memory business had become quite commoditized. And because Samsung was but a mere fast follower in the consumer electronics business it faced rough times.

  Despite this adversity the stars shined on Samsung. Samsung found its lucky window of opportunity in the digital flat panel screen business. Fueled by this rebirth, Samsung transitioned itself from an engineering-driven business into a market-driven one by embracing market and customer research as a method to drive new product development.

  In this renaissance Kun-hee Lee issued the slogan "Balance of Reason and Feeling" to express Samsung's design philosophy. It states that Samsung will meet the emotional needs of its customers with the technological solutions it has.

  The firm has created an elite CNB Group (short for creating new businesses) to explore long-term social and technological trends that could spark new product lines. CNB Group team members develop animated films and 3-D models of how products might be used in the future world. This helps the firm engage in how to create that future. Samsung backs up this customer focus with R&D muscle, spending 8.3% of revenue on R&D last year. That keeps Samsung on the forefront of the technology s-curve. It is Samsungs relentless pursuit of customer led technology development that catapults it to the top of the list in brand excellence.

• 2005 ZIBS Award for B2B Branding - IBM

  Business to Business (B2B) branding is an area that is often overlooked.
  Managers in B2B firms often consider branding as more of a consumer goods domain issue. Yet, branding in B2B may be more powerful than in the consumer goods sector, as a brand essentially represents the entire offer to the customer, encompassing both the tangible and the intangible. And the intangible component of an offer is often the key consideration in making the sale in B2B. Branding is there to say, "I define what I believe in, what my values are, what my brand stands for, and what you should expect."

  B2B marketing is challenging with its complex decision making units, highly skewed distribution of demand across customers, and variance in customer profitability. IBM recognizes that if you aren't proactive in paying attention to your brand, then that means everyone else - your competitors, your clients, your former clients, your other stakeholders - are the ones who are defining you. We are honoring IBM partly for its longstanding emphasis on brand building, with a brand promise that has remained relatively constant since the company was formed in 1924. It has endured wars, economic hardships, new leadership, market evolution and changes in product portfolio. In fact, the IBM brand is so strong that it was one of the reasons Lou Gerstner decided not to break up the company in the 1990s. However, at the time he also found that it had been neglected and poorly managed and tasked marketing to re-establish the brand as one of the cornerstones of his strategy. IBM has reinvested heavily in its brand, resulting in such memorable campaigns as "Solutions for a Small Planet," e-business and its most recent instantion, "On Demand," which CEO Sam Palmisano announced in late 2002.

  But more importantly, we are honoring IBM because it continues to evolve its brand as its clients' need evolve. Most recently, the challenge facing the brand strategy team in a marketplace offering diverse choices, was how does IBM leverage its brand as a way to demonstrate it can deliver value to clients. To understand what creates an optimal brand experience, IBM asked business and IT decision makers in six geographic markets to think in unconventional ways about the age-old marketer's question: "What do you look for in a provider of IT / consulting services?" The initiative began with the premise that all aspects of IBM's operations impact brand equity, and framed the project to focus on concrete aspects of client experience.

  The research questions were prompted by IBM's continuous attention to managing and building experience-based brand equity. The importance of building a differentiating brand has increased in the current era of high tech, where product development times and lifecycles are ever shrinking. In this new era, customer experience is a critical measure by which companies win and lose accounts in the near term and build customer equity in the long term. IBM sees brand strategy as a critical part of doing business in this era, because customers reward those companies that provide a consistent, differentiating client experience. The challenge then became how to manage the IBM brand - one of the world's most complex global brands - in a way that provides business value to clients, is competitively differentiating and also remains true to IBM's core values. Moreover, the global nature of IBM's business means that if it is going to meet the customer exigencies of the on demand era, it must be sensitive to different needs in the individual country markets that it serves.

  The results have been put to strategic use to direct and focus IBM's brand strategy, operations, sales, education, and integrated marketing efforts worldwide, based on a structural equation model that links customer experience and brand leadership to business results - critical to demonstrating how other functions (sales, development, supply chain) can leverage the brand. It has been used to develop operational performance metrics linked to traditional brand tracking measurements.

  In essence, IBM's brand strategy is designed to demonstrate how IBM can "help clients succeed through business and technology innovation." Its ability to deliver on that promise is what ZIBS recognizes as excellence in branding.

• 2005 ZIBS Award for Services Branding - UPS

  UPS has grown from a small Seattle-based local delivery company to a $36.6 billion company that operates in all four corners of the world. Under the guiding light of founder Jim Casey, the company was built on trust, trust that a 3rd party could handle a retailer's deliveries for them, getting their packages to their customers in a timely manner, and handing sensitive customer lists with confidentiality. The brand was thought of as friendly, reliable, and trustworthy.

  UPS' business has evolved over time as they have reinvented and transformed who they are multiple times. Today, they don't simply move goods, they facilitate commerce through what were once independent flows of commerce - goods, information, and funds.

  "Today, the UPS brand represents a surprising array of capabilities, global reach and technological innovation," said Larry Bloomenkranz, UPS vice president for Global Brand Management & Advertising.

  The challenge though faced by UPS was that few people knew of these new capabilities. Just as it had been since 1907, UPS was viewed by consumers as package delivery only and merely a vendor - not a partner.

  Thus, in February of 2002 the company began laying the groundwork for a rebranding initiative that strived to illustrate the company's new capabilities. After years of research, what emerged was the "Brown" campaign.

  To UPS, Brown is more than the company color seen on the company's trucks and drivers. UPS transformed Brown into a ubiquitous symbol that is commonly identified with the company's capabilities as well as the spirit of its brand.

  In 2003, UPS unveiled a new look and a new logo for the first time in more than 40 years, and added a new corporate tagline: "Synchronizing the world of commerce," all of which were designed to drive home the idea of the new UPS.

  This UPS rebranding was not merely superficial positioning however. Since 1998, the Atlanta based company has made approximately 30 strategic acquisitions, ranging from logistics and supply chain companies to Mail Boxes Etc, which it renamed as The UPS Store. This investment provides the foundation of the vision of "synchronized commerce" which is embodied in the firm's seamless connection of the flow of goods, information and funds and in its supply chain solutions.

• ZIBS Award for Consumer Branding - Procter and Gamble

  Procter & Gamble (P&G) has some 300 brands that are available in more than 160 countries. Although the P&G brand is well known throughout the world, it is its recent embrace of innovation that we are honoring.

  Its intense focus on innovation started when A.G. Lafley took over the position of CEO in 2000. Before Lafley's appointment P&G's volume growth was essentially flat. The problem was that although the firm was technically competent it did not understand the customer needs well enough to innovate. P&G was losing its market power with the channel as retailers were rapidly growing their private label brands since the 1990s. And with media proliferation the audience reach of traditional advertising was fracturing meaning the 30 second television ad lost ground to more focused niche reach alternatives. With alternative sources of products coming from retailers, more informed Internet savvy consumers, and consumers more cynical about mass advertising this new environment presented a precarious position to hold.

  To resolve this predicament Lafley drove the organization towards innovating around the consumer. In 2001 he created a new executive level position of Vice President for Design, Innovation, and Strategy and Claudia Kotchka was named as the person to fill the position. They subsequently decided to liven up the innovation gene pool and went on a hiring binge to bring in designers with experience in other companies and industries. They married these designers to the R&D staff and set them on the task to understand customers so they could envision needs for new products. Lafley also established a design board consisting of outsiders who could provide an arms-length perspective on the firm's innovation activities. And to keep the managers in tow they established an innovation "gym" where managers get a mental workout in new design thought leadership.

  P&G has spun off its businesses where innovation held limited prospects like Duncan Hines, Jif, and Sunny delight brands. They have been focusing on categories like health and beauty where they can benchmark against substitutes like dentists for teeth whitening and salons for hair care products.

  In addition, P&G now embraces "open innovation" (as does ZIBS which is a collaborative network organization) whereas three years ago 20% of the ideas, products and technologies came from outside P&G, now 35% do. The target is to get 50% of the innovation sourced from the outside.

  With P&G embracing this innovation focus we are bound to see it launch and invigorate more brands in the near future, just as they have done in the recently past with brands like Crest White Strips and Swiffer.

• 2005 ZIBS Award for Brand Theory - Kevin Lane Keller

  Kevin Lane Keller is the E. B. Osborn Professor of Marketing at the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He previously held faculty positions at the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University and the University of North Carolina. Professor Keller is an academic pioneer in the study of brands, branding and brand equity.

  Professor Keller has conducted a variety of studies that address marketing strategies and tactics to build, measure, and manage brand equity. His textbook on those subjects, Strategic Brand Management, the second edition of which was published September 2002 by Prentice-Hall, has been adopted at top business schools and leading firms around the world and has been heralded as the "bible of branding." With the 12th edition published in March 2005, he became the co-author with Philip Kotler of the all-time best selling introductory marketing textbook, Marketing Management.

  Professor Keller's advertising and branding research has been published in three of the major marketing journals - the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, and the Journal of Consumer Research. He also has served on the Editorial Review Boards of those journals. With over fifty published papers, his research has been widely cited and has received numerous awards including, the Harold H. Maynard Award in 1993 awarded annually in recognition of that year's best article on marketing theory and thought published in the Journal of Marketing; and, the 2003 Sheth Foundation/Journal of Marketing Award, awarded annually to honor the best article published in the Journal of Marketing that has made long-term contributions to the discipline of marketing.

  Professor Keller is acknowledged as one of the international leaders in the study of brands, branding, and strategic brand management. Actively involved with industry, he has worked on a host of different types of marketing projects. He has served as brand confidant to marketers for some of the world's most successful brands, including Accenture, American Express, Disney, Ford, Intel, Levi Strauss, Miller Brewing, Procter & Gamble, and Starbucks. Additional brand consulting activities have been with other top companies such as Allstate, Beiersdorf(Nivea), Blue Cross Blue Shield, Campbell Soup, General Mills, Goodyear, Kodak, Mayo Clinic, Nordstrom, Shell Oil, Unilever, and Young & Rubicam. He is also an academic trustee for the Marketing Science Institute.