According to the now accepted story, the concept of the brand manager was invented in the early 1930s by a young Harvard Graduate by the name of Neil McElroy when at Procter and Gamble. The core of his approach was that clearly focused attention should be given to individual ‘brands’. There should be a nominated person who would take charge of the brand, and to go with this there would be a team of people devoted to thinking about all aspects of the marketing of that brand. This dedicated group should attend to one brand and one brand only. The concern of these managers would be the brand, which would be marketed as if it were a separate business. In this way the qualities of every brand would be distinguished from those of every other brand in the business.
An interesting history lesson certainly, but is there something here to take on board today? In today’s shopping centre world there appear to be a plethora of individuals taking on any number of roles – advertising and promotion, asset management, leasing, development, operations, to name a few as well, as the centre managers themselves. In fact we seem to have a veritable number of people in any number of committees and working groups all ‘working on the shopping centre’. If we assume that the shopping centre is a ‘brand’ and I am sure I can find enough people who will tell me that indeed it is, the logical question is where is the brand manager?
Is it for instance the asset manager, since he or she invariably has a role to play in the product mix? Possibly, but they often have no role in the day-to-day running of the centre itself and in these current times act very much in a business to business sales function rather than getting close to end consumers.
So is it the centre manager? Possibly, but they conversely don’t always have personal responsibility for the marketing of the centre, which is certainly a core function of the brand manager, and that role usually sits quite logically with the marketing manager.
So is it the marketing manager? Possibly, but they are often the junior member of the team and have to defer to either the centre manager or the asset manager on many matters.
We could also argue that the architects and the development team have a brand management role since they are often the ones who design the centre in the first place but who after a successful launch, somewhat like a midwife hands their newborn over to the centre management team.
Now I’m not saying that this is a problem but some of the most successful marketing organisations in the world have used the brand management model to this day, and whilst the brand manager is nearly 80 years old I still think there is life in there for many years to come. So the question for shopping centre owners is ‘could you learn something from the model and would it help your schemes to become real brands if indeed that is what you are really trying to build?’
Posted by Paul Latimer 
