Consumer touchpoints are numerous and complex today. It’s no longer possible for marketing directors to control everything related to the brand, which is why it is crucial to have a clear strategy that others in the business understand and can follow with their own decisions.

That was a key piece of advice to dealer group directors from former Vodafone marketing chief Daryl Fielding at a recent meeting of the AM Executive Breakfast Club.

“Branding is about everything you do. Take the organisation from thinking that the brand is about the adverts, to really understanding that it is a business asset that will add intangible  value to your business, and that everything that is done is contributing to that,” she said.

Fielding said the brand should influence the people being hired in the showroom, influence its layout, influence advertising, in fact influence every approach the business takes.

“A terrific brand strategy should be one you can explain to a mate down the pub” Daryl Fielding

For a start, dealers should write down who the target audience is – what’s their market position, their USP and their five-year objectives for the company.

The next steps are:

■ Figure out who you’re targeting and get a deep insight into those consumers. Vodafone’s insight was dependency – it discovered areas of the human brain related to love and compassion are triggered when people use their smartphone. By then understanding that human insight, companies can start to consider how their customers would like to be treated.

■ Consider the current cultural context – what is going on in the wider world and how customers feel about that. An example is how consumers have been let down by big institutions, such as by the horse meat scandal at major supermarkets and the cover-up of Jimmy Saville’s abuses.

■ Determine what is your ‘right to win’, or USP.

■ Look at how you are a differentiated brand.

Vodafone did this, determined it was a brand of strength and substance, and came up with a strategy to “support the customer’s bolder life” and enable them to do more and see more now they have their network connectivity to support that.

“A terrific brand strategy should be one you can explain to a mate down the pub. If you can’t make it intelligible to the average person, it won’t connect with your customers,” said Fielding.

To ensure the brand strategy percolates through the company, leaders must take all their staff through it. Use it in recruitment, and present the brand strategy to new recruits at induction. Change the way you operate to better reflect it if necessary.

Fielding recommends monitoring brand consideration very closely, as businesses can do a lot of damage to their brand through their decisions. Every single customer interaction with the brand is forming an impression that will drive their choice.

She brought this expertise to bear during her two years in the mobile phone industry, and drew some parallels with the UK’s motor retail sector. The mobile phone market is only 30 years old, but it has reached saturation point in the past three or four years. The immediate reaction of the industry members to reaching saturation was to discount in order to grow market share – its senior management had been used to double-digit growth each year and had no familiarity with dealing with saturation by adding value to the brand, innovating and differentiating. The UK now has the lowest-margin telecommunications market in the world.

“It struck me as especially stupid because we had just got to the place where people cannot live without their smartphones, and we had the best technology we’ve ever had with 4G,” said Fielding.

In the past couple of years the mobile phone companies have identified that a market repair is needed, particularly given the investment required to provide 4G. The challenge is whether it commoditises or whether those organisations figure out how to differentiate, innovate and grow their brands, she said.

The four mobile phone networks provide critical infrastructure for the UK in an extremely competitive yet regulated market. Gaining the licence to operate is a major overhead for each provider.

Although the retailing side of mobile phone operations is high-profile, it is not particularly profitable because the networks buy handsets to give away to consumers to incentivise them to buy their service. It’s a business model that enables the mobile phone companies to avoid the dangers of the Consumer Credit Act, as customers don’t have to finance a purchase of a £600 handset, however it is a model that’s unique to the UK. Many other countries offer the tariff and handset separately.