What do you need to know about a brand centre of excellence (COE)?

A brand centre of excellence (COE) is a group of people who make sure that all your branding activities follow brand consistency and who ensure that they are as effective as possible. In this article, we are going to show you everything you need to know about COEs. Let’s get right to it!

Let’s get right to it!

Large organisations have their marketing and sales-related activities spread across many different departments and offices. Content creation is a perfect example. There is content created globally at the company’s headquarters, and there are also local branches in given countries that are responsible for creating new texts and materials with the local audience in mind. More often than not, other areas work the same way.

Furthermore, the number of areas and communication channels that need to be covered is continually growing. Many companies started with print, outdoor and maybe TV. Today, everyone is mostly focused on the digital world. Digital marketing itself has grown to be something huge, with many different branches and sectors. For instance, we have social media marketing, email marketing, performance marketing, content marketing, SEO… The list is long.

What does it all mean? That staying up to speed has become challenging. Moreover, even large companies have a hard time spotting and responding to new technologies, new trends, new solutions and new customer expectations. So, what can be done about that?

What is a brand centre of excellence?

In general, it’s a structure within an organisation comprising a set of resources and competencies that are used to attain and sustain performance and value in a specific area (in our case – branding). In practice, a centre of excellence is made of a group of people from different departments (and of different experiences) that work together and provide learning and oversight over the branding of a given organisation. Therefore, they can keep the brand up to date and develop it based on findings coming from many different disciplines and markets.

How does the centre of excellence model work?

In many instances, within a COE, we have a group of people that have a common space to talk, exchange ideas and discuss current issues. Even a Slack channel can be sufficient for that. Such a group of people conducts meetings and workshops, and they provide training, best practices, and resources for the rest of the organisation. They are also responsible for collecting available data (both from the company and from the market) and drawing conclusions that the whole company can use in order to maintain growth.

In order to create a COE in your company, you have to take four elements into account:

1. Decide who will be on the centre of excellence team: Typically, there should be people from all substantial areas of your business, especially marketing, sales, IT, customer service, and HR.
2. COE has to meet regularly: The whole point behind a centre of excellence is for its members to work together and discuss urgent matters. Therefore, it is beneficial to set regular meetings (let’s say, once every one or two weeks) and provide an agenda prior to every meeting.
3. Set goals and timelines: There’s no art for art’s sake here. Everything COE does has to be purposeful. What do you expect after each session? When should a specific part of the job be finished? These requirements should be transparent and known to every team member.
4. Create a hub: On our blog, we told you about a brand portal. Here, you need something similar. It’s an online space where team members can discuss, exchange ideas, share files and presentations, and keep all the results of their work. A COE hub can be a sub-section of a brand portal in your company.

What are the benefits of centres of excellence?

• They provide knowledge, experience, and findings from many different areas and your company can use these resources to improve its operations and performance.
• They enable both small and large companies to see the bigger picture (not just focus on small fractions of different projects) of what they do and benefit from it.
• They offer a fresh perspective on how your company should work and where it should be headed.

Why should you consider using a centre of excellence?

COEs are all about innovation, improvement and transparency. With them, the company can develop in a specified direction and use all of its assets to grow without hassle. If you want to increase customer experience in your company, introduce new products and services, change the way the market perceives your brand, and implement new solutions (e.g., technical ones), you will benefit greatly from a centre of excellence. Of course, provided that it works correctly and the company is willing to listen to its findings and ideas.

How can our experience be helpful?

As always, you can approach the question of COE from two different angles. You can either create a COE on your own (using internal resources and in-house team members) or outsource it and work with a branding agency such as Admind. Both options have their pros and cons, but we’d like to turn your attention to the fact that a professional branding agency is already involved in at least several COEs.  This means they know what to do to make them effective and how to govern their work.

For instance, Admind currently runs a centre of excellence for a global industrial brand ABB. Within a COE, we help them with:

• Digital presence and experiences
• Cross-team collaboration
• Design and production of digital events
• Interactive products and VR
• Storytelling
• CSR
• Recruiting new team members

We will gladly do something similar for your brand!

How can you deliver value through digital centres of excellence?

In summary, that’s the way to think about COEs. You have to understand that their primary role is to deliver value to the organisation. In today’s dynamic environment, it’s easy to miss a vital opportunity or neglect an emerging trend. Business-wise, that can cost your company millions of dollars! Because of that, it is important to be on the constant lookout and respond to the ever-changing market. And that’s just what COEs do.

Therefore if you want to know more about centres of excellence, or maybe you’d like to create such a centre in your company – feel free to contact us. We will help you set a COE, manage it and make it useful.