Image: Gerber Gear

Corporate Challenge: Your competitor moved their factory overseas, and will significantly drop their product price as a result.

Ironbound Strategy:  Maintain your status as a great brand by creating value for customers, employees, and society. Establishing a factory overseas can create value for society when it is done right.

Ironbound Action: Gerber did not close down their USA factory, and instead opened a second factory in China. Providing low cost survival gear to price sensitive customers created value for society while growing the Gerber brand in low cost markets. Maintaining the USA factory allowed Gerber to keep their employees happy.  “Made In USA” Gerber gear are over 4 times the price, yet their demand is so high they always sell out.  Focusing on customers, employees, and society always makes a brand more powerful.

Image: Jose Cuervo Luxury Launches

Corporate Challenge: Finding ways to improve environmental impacts that also help reduce
material costs. 
 
Ironbound Strategy: Powerful brands grow because they holistically align creating value for customers, employees, and society. Creating value requires thinking outside the box and finding new relationships that
generate solutions.
  
Ironbound Action: The world’s leading car manufacturer Ford Motor Company and the World’s Number 1-selling Tequila Jose Cuervo announced a joint initiative to develop sustainable bioplastics using agave plant byproducts. Ford cars on average have about 400 pounds of plastic. The shift to green composite helps the planet, reduces costs, and can potentially increase efficiency from lighter than traditional petrochemical plastics.  Since 2000, Ford has been shifting towards sustainable materials such as soy foam, caster oil, wheat straw, kenaf fiber, cellulose, wood, coconut fiber, and rice hulls. Concentrating on innovative ways to create value for society inspires employees, attracts customers, and has a positive impact across industries.

Image: Matthew McConaughey at Wild Turkey

Corporate Challenge: Your competitor invested in a celebrity spokesperson. Should you make a
similar investment?

Ironbound Strategy:  Celebrity endorsements are worthwhile to a brand when they create value for customers, employees, and society.

Ironbound Action: Executives at Jell-O and Subway might warn you about investing in a celebrity since brands can falter when the celebrity’s social standing collapses. The best endorsements happen when a celebrity creates or magnifies the value that the brand creates for employees, and society.  Matthew Mcconaughey recently joined Wild Turkey.  In his role he shares Wild Turkey’s employee value as a family centric business steeped in tradition.  Jim Beam chose Mila Kunis as their spokesperson, and are enjoying the benefits that Mila creates for society, as she draws in millennials to the brand by showcasing Kentucky pride to a larger audience. The return on investment is higher when celebrities use their influence to showcase how your brand values employees, and society.

Image: Campari America Headquarters

Corporate Challenge: You suspect that your company is over paying for acquisitions.

Ironbound Strategy:  Creating value for customers, employees, and society builds a powerful brand that makes an attractive company for great deal making. 

Ironbound Action: California based Campari America  is a house of brands that is focused on growing its own brand while acquiring others.  When Campari America built their new headquarters at Levi’s Plaza in San Francisco, they created a work environment that enriched employee value by using office designs to make Campari an exciting place to work. Each design was selected to translate their brand’s values of teamwork, strength, and to grow as a leader into the future.  Companies that are being acquired by Campari have stronger assurances that their brand will be valued by their new parent company when they step into their future headquarters. Image means a lot in acquisition negotiation, and often the attractiveness of the office itself shows confidence and prowess that helps build the deal.