Leadership coaching at the intersection of brand and investment
COPE Private Equity (manages RM500 million) had achieved massive financial success through its investment strategy hinged on meticulous due diligence. However, a brand blindspot existed that had the potential to turn otherwise lucrative investments sour.
The challenge
“Long-established” is a hard-won qualifier for private equity firms. Cope PE, a private equity firm with investments focused in the South East Asia (SEA) region, would tell you it owes its lengthy establishment to a tried-and-true investment strategy, and a healthy helping of due diligence. As a believer in “idea meritocracy” COPE PE analysts are known to test, retest, and test once more an investment thesis and structure until its perfect.
Though their ethic of investment had led to lucrative rewards, some senior managers had noticed a troubling trend. In some investments - generally involving a mature company in a turnaround situation - analysts and investment managers had under accounted for the impact of the target company’s brand (or lack thereof).
As a company’s brand is closely linked to its financial success, COPE PE leaders knew they had to increase their analysts’ and managers’ brand acumen. They looked to our team for help.
The insight
As a strategic and creative partner at a brand consulting firm, I knew that educating COPE PE investment managers on the financial impact of brand was important. However, that education would count for nothing if those investment managers could not get the leadership of their investments on board with strategic brand changes.
In other words, it would not be enough to teach a course in brand strategy. The student investment managers would also have to become the brand teachers of c-suites with little brand knowledge if they were to influence the trajectory of an investment’s brand.
As there is no better way to learn than through experience, I pitched to the COPE PE team that I would coach an investment manager through an existing turnaround situation stuck in branding purgatory. They agreed - and if the coaching was successful, more training and coaching opportunities would come.
The solve
I began by developing a curriculum of key knowledge and relevant use cases. Prior to beginning our coaching sessions, I needed to provide a conceptual understanding of how to analyze a company’s brand. We used the use cases to demonstrate both effective and ineffective branding strategy; how brand strategy decisions (such as brand architecture) could be used to deliver on strategic goals; and different approaches to understanding the value of a brand.
With the brief curriculum completed, I worked with the investment manager to apply a brand lens to each strategic decision he was involved in during the turnaround planning process. Importantly, I made sure he not only understood the brand implications, but could also speak persuasively to them. The process involved acting out board meetings, and making sure he could field any brand strategy question that came his way in a convincing manner.
A particularly nuanced hurdle that he faced was convincing the investee of creating and filling a CMO role, a position they had yet to embrace in the company. My coaching helped to convince the company’s board to create the role, and provided direction on candidate qualifications and an effective outbound hiring strategy.
By the end of the coaching, the investment manager was educating the investment’s leadership team on important branding strategy. Perhaps the best mark of success was receiving word that he was pitching the company’s entire marketing team to receive similar training - and wanted my team involved in the process of working with their marketing team to develop and deliver a SEA wide marketing strategy.
