CIO
—
Reader ROI
Learn how IT contributes to the building of famous brands
See how very lean IT groups stay small
Get tips for doing more with fewer people on staff
It was 8:40 on an August morning, about three blocks from Frank Hood’s office in Winston-Salem, N.C., but it could have been any time of year. Two young girls in T-shirts and shorts pressed their noses up against a room-length plate glass window, hypnotized by a doughnut-making ma-chine at work in Krispy Kreme Doughnut’s flagship shop. The girls’ father, a local clothing store owner dressed in a comfortable gray summer suit, stood next to them. Beside him stood a commercial real estate broker, another customer who had paused to see a process that he’s witnessed perhaps 100 times before. Together they watched doughy circles dive into hot oil, flip over and trundle up a conveyor before finally parading through a grand sugar-glazing waterfall.
As anyone who has bitten into one of the 3 million doughnuts the company makes every day can tell you, these airy confections (with no formal advertising) have made Krispy Kreme one of the country’s most beloved brands. And it’s part of Frank Hood’s job, as vice president of Krispy Kreme in-formation services, to keep it that way.
Lisa Bell, Mike Freeman and Lisa Dumas can empathize with Hood. All of them are entrusted with upholding the status of some of the United States’ best-known brands by directing the technology works for Tabasco sauce maker McIlhenny Co., WD-40 and U-shaped bike lock maker Kryptonite, respectively. Their companies aren’t the nation’s most enormous brands or top revenue generators, nor are they on technology’s bleeding edge. But they also don’t work under the shadow of a corporate conglomerate. Each company has a specialty and employs a passionate group of workers to help turn out its well-respected consumer products. They also share another noteworthy trait: They all use technology in creative and judicious ways because their IS staffs are all surprisingly, even shockingly, small.
The Power Behind the Brand
Trusted, beloved brands don’t just happen. They are the result of effective planning and execution, not just by marketing departments but by everyone in the company—the IT side included. What’s often overlooked in producing a memorable brand is the support for internal employees, says Sheryl Goldstein, a marketing strategist at Luminant Worldwide, an Internet professional services company in New York City. "You can spend a lot of money to convince your customers that you’re everything that you say, but if your own people don’t buy it, then those internal customers will project a bad image," Goldstein explains. "People don’t pay enough attention to how the brand experience is [presented], not just to your own audience and consumer, but to your own people because they’re the walking and talking entities of your brand."
