Organizations today that believe in branding themselves do so with the notion that a branding dollar invested today cuts down incremental cost of sales tomorrow. This investment is intended to establish the brand firmly in the consumer’s mind and trigger top-of-mind recall. Often businesses go wrong in getting this right although they start out with the right intention.
What you see is what you reject. Brand managers can never underestimate the power of on-ground brand experience which can either propel a brand to dizzying heights or completely obliterate it. Take the example of a leading computer manufacturer that was doing great in sales growth year after year. A breakup of their top line however, revealed that although the number of first time buyers was no doubt on the ascendant, repeat sales were tapering off. What was happening on the ground was that the after-sales experience of the first time buyers was not meeting even hygiene levels, let alone industry standards. Most customers with hardware or system software related issues were getting frustrated with the huge delays in issue resolution or the below par technical know-how of many of the local support teams in major markets. As a consequence, consumers by the thousands were swearing off the brand.
There’s a thick line between information and blabber. The danger of over-communicating is that you can confuse your consumer with bumper-to-bumper messaging. Ever noticed how no one single automobile in traffic snarls on freeways ever gets a free way ahead? Well, you get the idea. Your branding messages are like those cars, trying to reach the consumer’s mind in the most uncomplicated way possible. Cram in too many of those, and you run the risk of none of them reaching their intended target. Or worse, they all reach, but in a “damaged” form. This can be especially excruciating in the case of internal branding by merged firms where your employees are your internal customers.
Inconsistent messaging. Imagine a restaurant that promises to serve you a sumptuous vegetarian meal. You walk in and order, expecting nothing less than that, a sumptuous and fulfilling vegetarian meal. The maitre d arrives with a flourish and sets before you in the finest silverware green shoots, swollen roots and raw carrot juice. Would you grin and swallow or just mutter under your breath for being taken for a ride? You may not be so lucky if your clients are dissatisfied – disgruntled customers are known to sue at the drop of a hat. It is easier, and wiser, to put just the sandwich on the menu and throw in some garlic bread and ketchup while serving than the other way around, which is what the computer maker earlier did. While they had done a good job of building a great product and backing it up with above-the-line marketing that promised the world, their after-sales support had just failed to keep up, killing repeat sales and in the process driving the brand into the ground. Unhappy customers could just not relate with the sugary ads which had enticed them into purchasing in the first place.
Underestimating the true value of your brand. A nation-wide electronics retailer lost a fourth of its market share purely due to a wrong assessment of its own brand equity. Local franchisees of the retailer had stocked products from all kinds of vendors and manufacturers. Many of the products on display had no appeal or pedigree and their parent companies had dubious histories. The retailer’s corporate team failed to realize the debilitating impact this was having on their company’s reputation since they had not formally measured their brand’s value in the market and had wrongly presumed that whatever the distribution channels were pumping into their outlets did not detract from the retailer’s brand image. Assuming your brand is a lemon is the biggest disfavor you can do to yourself.
Brand management may seem intuitive at ten thousand feet but becomes surprisingly not so from a worm’s eyeview. And investment into your brand, like all other investments, needs the magnifying glass with daily and quarterly rigor, failing which it is the proverbial good money after the bad.
Stay tuned for the next in the series, which will address tested ways of quantifying the above with a view to improve brand health.
