Correspondence: Nicholas Ind, Equilibrium Consulting Box 5822 Majorstuen Oslo 0308, Norway. E-mail: nind@equilibriumconsulting.com

¹is a partner in Equilibrium Consulting. He is the author of a number of articles and papers and eight books including The Corporate Image. The Corporate Brand, Living the Brand and Branding Goverance (with Rune Bjerke). He is also the editor of Beyond Branding.

²is an Associate Professor at Oslo School of Management. Previously, he taught at BI Norwegian School of Management. He holds a PhD from the University of Otago in New Zealand. He is the co-author of Branding Governance.

Received 22 August 2007; Revised 22 August 2007; Published online 9 October 2007.

Abstract

While much marketing literature sees delivering customer experience as the role of the marketer, we argue that this is an organisation-wide responsibility. The organisation-wide approach is based on the premise that the brand-building capability of the organisation is determined by the combination of marketing, human resources, organisational culture, leadership and evaluation. It is our contention that the role of marketing should be concerned with connecting these elements to optimise brand equity (eg awareness, perceived quality, associations, loyalty). In this paper, we suggest a participative model for an organisation-wide approach where the role of the marketer is Janus-like in that he/she must face both outwards to connect with customers and other stakeholders and inwards to build coalitions inside the organisation to deliver a clear and consistent customer experience.