The International Brand & Reputation Community (INBREC) – a dedicated non-profit forum exclusively for senior brand and reputation managers facilitated by Branding-Institute’s managing partners – will open two new country branches in 2015. Currently, there are country branches in Germany, Switzerland and Great Britain. Branches in the Netherlands and Austria will start in early 2015. Other country or regional chapters like Japan, India, Turkey, Scandinavia or pan-Africa are currently under discussion.

Participating companies are major global company and product brands, such as ABB, Allianz, Bayer, Bosch, Diageo, ING Group, Lloyds Banking Group, Mercedes, Nivea, Novartis, Rolls-Royce, Shell or Siemens. They all share the notion that systematic and consistent (corporate) branding leads to a strong, healthy and resistant reputation of their respective companies or organizations and, as a causal outcome, to better business results.

Sharing expertise among peers – for the mutual benefit of participants
Participants meet several times a year in order to exchange participant experiences in a non-competitive peer-to-peer networking environment. The INBREC team serves as organizers and facilitators and, if necessary, arranges for renowned speakers to address the meeting. The motto of the community is “sharing expertise among peers – for the mutual benefit of participants”. Its ultimate goal is to further improve the quality of Brand & Reputation Management, to learn from best practice as well as from worst case scenarios to enable participants to be better heard and involved at the strategic level of senior management, and last but not least to demonstrably contribute to the business success of the international corporations and organizations participants they work for.

High qualification standards for participants
INBREC seeks to create an environment where senior level Brand & Reputation Management executives feel able to openly discuss their experiences and learn from each other. Speakers from vendors or consultants are generally not allowed and participants have the right to veto the participation of companies in the same country and line of business as themselves. To qualify for participation of INBREC, a company has to be headquartered in the respective country where it applies and to meet at least two of the following requirements:

• Internationally operating Blue Chip company – listed in a major stock index – or a major private-owned corporation;
• Owner of a valuable brand – but not as a subsidiary of an overseas parent;
• Annual turnover above one billion USD.

Moreover, brand and reputation management in these companies:

• has to be executed as an important and actively supported part within the corporate strategy;
• should not be understood and applied as a purely tactical and operative communication tool;
• has to be perceived as a demanding and sophisticated management role and should strive for selective advances and improvements at the interface of Strategy, Finance, Human Resources, Public Affairs, Risk Management, IT, Legal and Governance.

For more information on INBREC, country chapters, participants, previous summits, mission and history, please visit www.inbrec.org or contact us by e-mail.