Jens Martin Skibsted and Rasmus Bech Hansen of the Harvard Business Review say that brands are becoming ever more important and valuable as digital disrupts additional marketplaces.

According to Skibsted and Hansen, consumers instantly know the difference between what a company says and what it does in our hyper-transparent digital world.

"Organizations can no longer draw clear lines between marketing and product development, between communications and services. Brand builders must embed themselves across the customer value chain," said Skibsted and Hansen. "Products and services must be able to tell a story and communicate value without an extra advertising layer on top. As information is more and more available and the importance of brands increases, the ability to tell a meaningful story through actions and products, not words, is the only way to win."

Rambus CMO Jerome Nadel expressed similar sentiments.

"Branding and strategy are inextricably intertwined," Nadel told Rambus Press during a recent interview in Sunnyvale. "As such, it is important for marketers to be intimately connected to both - especially in the semiconductor space - which has traditionally shied away from a consumer-oriented marketing approach."

As in the consumer market, says Nadel, semiconductor-branding initiatives cannot realistically succeed if they do not faithfully reflect company strategy and actions. Indeed, companies frequently fail to understand that collaborative engagement, hiring practices and corporate behavior - both internally and externally - are just as fundamental as the brand itself.

"Upon joining Rambus in 2012, I was asked to update the corporate brand. However, I felt we needed to demonstrate, with actions, not just words, that we had discarded our storied past for a more collaborative future," he continued. "We clearly have become what we aspired to be and our comprehensive brand refresh - which includes a major website revamp - reflects this achievement."

According to Nadel, the Rambus of 2015 is characterized by cooperation with the general semiconductor industry and expansion of the company's portfolio - beyond IP - with the recently launched RB26 R+ DDR4 server memory chipset for RDIMMs and LRDIMMs.

"Rambus is well known for its extensive history of innovation and expertise in high-speed memory interface design," he added. "The introduction of the new chipset is a natural progression for the Rambus brand that enables us to deliver maximum value to the industry."

distributed by