Yesterday I attended a branding symposium at the University of Oregon Turnbull Center in the White Stag building (the one with the giant Made in Oregon sign on it). The event consisted of a few advertising students, faculty, professionals, and the guests of honors, Scott Bedbury and Stuart Redsun. See their bios below.

These two branding geniuses discussed tons of issues about branding, marketing, and advertising. If you’re like me, you might not understand the differences between these. Luckily, I asked them for their definitions of each of these seemingly intertwined areas of business. Their answer? All three fall within communications; however, marketing is the broadest, followed by branding, then advertising. Marketing is a process, which is used as the catalyst of communication. All branding and advertising messages are marketing messages. Ideas usually start in marketing. Branding is how you want your company or brand to be perceived by users. Your employees design the brand, not marketing efforts. While companies undergo branding efforts, the users have ultimate control over branding. Their perceptions are the reality of your brand. Advertising is the process of sending the message to the targets. It emphasizes storytelling. Advertising is not the communication stage of branding and marketing because they are all communications, but advertising is the most direct, blatant communication form of these. If you’re still confused, you’re not alone. I still don’t completely understand the differences, but at least now I have a base to build from.

Bedbury and Redsun discussed some best practices they’ve picked up during their careers. Some of it sounded like common sense. For instance, a company can’t build a brand until it knows who it is. This ties to the concept of not being able to solve a problem until you understand it. It’s a remarkably simple concept; however, I could see how it might be difficult to execute from an inside perspective. Take some time out to step back and view your company or problem from an outside point of view.

The single most important concept they pushed was corporate social responsibility (CSR). Internet use has made business completely transparent. Therefore, every decision and employee must reflect a philanthropic purpose. If a boss mistreats his or her employees or a business makes a controversial or hypocritical business decision, chances are, it will leak to the public eventually. Keep this in mind while you conduct your business, bad employees and clients drive out good ones.

Here are their bios:

Scott Bedbury

Scott Bedbury is a genius at unleashing brand potential through innovative products, creative positioning, careful distribution, and strategic partnerships. He has served as a brand architect for twenty years and for some of the world’s most dynamic brands, helping make “Just Do It” part of the global lexicon and tall lattes a part of everyday life for millions.

Bedbury graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from University of Oregon in 1980 and took a product management job for a small foods company. He then moved on to work for the largest advertising agency in Seattle at the time, Cole & Weber (and Ogilvy & Mather affiliate).

In 1987, Bedbury left the advertising-agency business. He joined up with Nike, who at the time was a distant number three behind Reebok and Adidas, to be the worldwide advertising director. Under his leadership Nike won every conceivable advertising and marketing award in the US, Europe, and Asia and grew to a $5 billion corporation. In 1994, he left Nike to write, consult and spend time with his two children.

After starting work on his book, he sent samples of chapter to a handful of CEO’s. When Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz received his sample, he immediately called upon Bedbury and asked him to consider joining him as chief marketing officer. Eventually, Bedbury accepted and in 1995, he became CMO of Starbucks. At Starbucks, he managed to help the emerging regional coffee company to grow to several thousand stores while also introducing the brand into new channels of distribution and opening markets overseas. He helped to redesign Starbucks stores, to enter dozens of new markets, to develop Starbucks Ice Cream and bottle Frappuccino for the grocery channel and to establish a global relationship with United Airlines.

In 1997, he signed from Senior VP-marketing to a position he created called senior VP-brand development at Starbucks. He stepped out of the day-to-day marketing duties, and was then charged with mapping the company’s long term branding and marketing strategy and ultimately giving him new rein to develop new forward-thinking, non-traditional marketing directions.

In 1998, his coffee break ended and Bedbury went on to establish Brandstream, a global brand development consultancy in Seattle, WA. Clients include Coca-Cola, Co., Disney, The Limited, and Levi Strauss & Co. Currently, he remains the CEO of Brandstream.

In 2002, he published his book A New Brand World: 8 Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century. In it, he explains how to apply the principles that grew Nike and Starbucks more than fivefold and established their trademarks as leaders in their categories.


Stuart Redsun

Stuart Redsun joined Sony Electronics in July of 2006 as Senior Vice President of Corporate Marketing. At Sony, he is responsible for planning and directing the marketing of all Sony Electronics products (except for PlayStation) in the USA by establishing an overall brand strategy and leading all marketing communications. He and his team also create and manage specific marketing plans for individual product lines across all consumer and business/professional products. In 2007, Sony Electronics launched its largest and most successful unified marketing campaign in the company’s history, HDNA, which was the first time a creative idea spanned multiple product categories across both the consumer and professional divisions.

Redsun’s technology marketing experience also included three years at Motorola, where he served as Worldwide GM of Brand Marketing. At Motorola, he directed all demand creation programs for Motorola's consumer division and was responsible for worldwide advertising, sports marketing/sponsorships, image design and collateral, brand and promotional activities, entertainment marketing and customer marketing materials. Stuart was responsible for the global positioning and creative materials that launched the industry-changing Moto Razr handset, along with leading Motorola’s new Retail Design (shop-in-shop) strategy.

Prior to his position at Motorola, he spent eleven years in various marketing management positions at Nike, Inc. Stuart is credited with creating Nike's Retailer Advertising program (under the mentorship of Scott Bedbury) while also managing numerous award-winning brand advertising campaigns. In 1994 he became the youngest member of Nike's Senior Management team when he was named Director of Retail Resources (Nike's Customer Marketing department). In this role, he directed all integrated marketing efforts including the national development of Nike's Concept Shop program (mini-Niketowns inside of retailers). Then, as Director of International Marketing for Nike Golf, he launched the Golf business outside of the USA, and was responsible for the marketing and brand positioning efforts of Tiger Woods and Nike Golf.

Stuart graduated from the University of Oregon School of Journalism (Advertising) way back when the football team was bad. Posted by: Jeff Kempf at 9:47 AM  |  Permalink