Article

The analysis of different enterprises and their success patterns reveals a recurring constant: They are founded, led, and made successful by extraordinarily capable people. It always starts with an idea – carried by one or several persons – then driven forward with passion and finally rewarded with success. All successful brands of this continent carry in their DNA that of their origins, and with it the entrepreneurial personality.

Successful brands pass essential values for economic growth on to the next generation, like a testament. This is why they are so important in corporate succession.

Not just technical knowledge can be passed on, but content as well

According to the Federal Ministry for Economy and Energy, 22,000 companies per year are handed down in Germany. "In over 80 percent of family businesses with more than 40 employees that were handed down in past years, the successors feel that the hand-off was well prepared. Three fifths of the company remained in the family, one fifth is now managed by external or former employees," the ministry found.
What is meant by "well prepared"? We might guess that it has to do with technical aspects. But what about content aspects? Who makes sure that the success factors of a company are also "inherited", so they can continue to evolve?

The role of the brand is crucial in this process. Because many customers have already reached the self- actualization level of Maslow´s hierarchy of needs, purely benefit-based arguments are no longer effective. People buy and consume belief, not knowledge. Brands attract because they show their values. People identify with these values and become loyal buyers and fans.

Brands' attractiveness grows most of all when they provide a benefit that addresses an inner belief. People buy security, status, differentiation, belonging – the list of real attractiveness drivers is long. The brand ensures that even engineers in their development of technical ingenuity have to secure this attractiveness by means of belief, not just benefit.

Brands pass on values and passion

The term heredity is defined in Wikipedia as "the passing on of traits from parents to their offspring". Applied to a company, this would mean that values and passion are given a usable form for future growth.

Good » brand strategies can do just that. They compress the historic, typical, unique, differentiating, and superior peak performances of an enterprise into a brand core, which can be passed on as DNA. A perfectly formulated brand strategy has defined the company's No. 1 position. Brands always occupy a "monopoly position in the consumer's mind" (Hans Domizlaff, 1936) and define from this any further developments. Just as they define what will not be done, and thereby outline their own boundaries.

The brand can guide a company, develop it, secure its growth – and allow it to be passed on. The tools for this process are compression, orientation, definition, regulation, and boundaries. Brands give companies a personality, independent of the actual corporate personalities. They are capable of shaping the company's future on a basis of secure value. This is where brand work pays off. Nothing else.