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Brand Vision
by Carol Holding
Entrepreneurs dream in visions. Visions of making it work. Visions
of victory and vindication.
We are proposing a new way of thinking about vision. A vision
not linked to a founder, not subject to the foibles of a human
being. This vision is connected to the brand.
Brand Vision is not about simply winning in business, it’s about
changing the world. It is the essential dream that inspires people
inside the company to keep striving even when the financial rewards
are taken away (i.e., the stock goes down), the product’s a failure
(beta tests take twice as long as estimated); and the culture
goes to pot (a favorite soda is no longer automatically stocked
in the fridge). Brand Vision survives even the loss of a beloved
founder.
With companies just starting up, Brand Vision is the difference
between success and failure.
Brand Vision is what is whispered in the hallways of companies
that are bound for greatness, the dream that only people inside
the company believe is possible.
Have you ever heard people in a start-up talk about having "drunk
the kool-aid" (at Maxager Technology)? Or being "members of the
cult" (at Inktomi)? " Or bleeding "purple" (at Federal Express)
or "yellow" (at Caterpillar)?
Brand Vision is religion: it can’t be described in a simple phrase,
and yet simple phrases are essential to communicating and reinforcing
that vision among its disciples.
Start-ups that have become wildly successful began with a Brand
Vision that inspired this cult-like dedication – and expanded
on that vision as the company matured.
Cisco Systems had a vision from the very start: to allow all the
computers in the world to talk to each other. The idea came from
two IT people at Stanford University, Leonard Bosack and Sandra
Lerner. They were trying to connect the departments they worked
in by computer – enabling different computers to communicate with
each other.
By the time they left Stanford to start a business, their vision
was in place: to connect every government, educational, organizational
and business computer in the world. It was a truly noble, egalitarian
ideal, that no computer could claim to be inaccessible because
of its power or advanced technology, that no person couldn’t talk
to another just because their computer was little or cheap.
It started as a vision of its two founders - but it was shaped
by the Cisco brand itself. All the richness of a Brand Vision
grew spontaneously from the entire web. Tribal mysteries began
almost from the start, as engineers began conversations over ARPANET
(early Internet) that turned into sales.
It was a vision powerful enough to support the company through
trials and tribulations of rapid growth: the constant battling
between Cisco’s founders and John Morgridge, the professional
CEO its venture capitalist hired; the stock price tanking (yes,
even Cisco’s has had its falls); the rancor caused by a shift
in focus from technology and engineering to business.
The Cisco Brand Vision had emerged into the mainstream as the
Internet came to be a mass communications forum. Eventually, Cisco’s
original Brand Vision was absorbed by the culture and fed back
in the New Yorker cartoon "On the Internet, no one knows you’re
a dog." Cisco’s Brand Vision had been achieved.
But once the dream becomes reality, once you’ve achieved the vision,
the brand is fully realized, and you need to expand the vision
or lose the troops to complacency.
Cisco has extended its Brand Vision: to connect all people everywhere,
regardless of how they’re communicating. That means connecting
not just data, but voice and video too. It’s a Brand Vision as
grand as the original, and, given the powerful competitors in
voice and video, almost as seemingly far-fetched.
The human spirit loves a challenge – especially if it is directed
at an attainable ideal. Brand Vision provides the focus that ensures
a stable, cohesive foundation through the hurricanes of growth.
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