Designing a Brand Risk Management Process

Abstract

Having looked at the nature of brand risk and the levels of awareness and ability to manage risk of a range of brand owners, it is clear that a new approach to brand risk management is required. It is unlikely that a one-size-fits-all approach is likely to work given the scale and variety of the nature of brand risks. Consequently, this chapter focuses on the process by which a brand owning organisation can develop its own custom brand risk management process. Rather than developing the process from traditional brand risk and business theory, a new approach was taken, that of applying the principles of engineering design and interaction design to make a more user-friendly solution. This combined approach relies on developing an understanding of the risks faced by a particular brand owner, the full context of those risks and also the brand owner’s capabilities for identifying and managing those risks. Gaining this understanding is facilitated by mapping the risks and the available skills and then synthesising these into tools for designing a new process. An example of how this may be accomplished is the use of personas within defined context scenarios to tell particular brand risk stories. Using those stories, a more complete brand risk management process can be developed.