December 2009 - Branding
Branding and how you manage the on-going process can add enormous bottom line value to businesses. Conversely it can seriously harm a business.
Here are four elements for small and large businesses to be wary of
CONTAGION is the dark side of synergy.
Just as customer loyalty can spread quickly through brand linkages, so can bad news. If one brand has a problem, the rest of the brands in the business can become infected too. For example, a number of years ago, 60 MINUTES aired a story in the USA about a particular model of motor car that apparently had a tendency toward “sudden acceleration”. This was an untrue claim that spread like wildfire. It ruined the reputation of the car and affected the reputation of all the other models from that manufacturer. It took years for years for the company to restore its previous “good reputation” to its brand.
CONFUSION isn’t as dramatic as contagion, but it’s much more common.
It happens when companies extend their brands past the boundaries their customers draw for them. A customer may love a particular manufacturer’s toothpaste. But if the manufacturer keeps introducing new varieties of toothpaste, it’s unclear what the brand means anymore. Rather than analyse their confusion, the customer may simply reach for another less diversified manufacturer—at least they know what it stands for. Customers want choice, but they want it AMONG brands, not WITHIN them.
CONTRADICTION can occur when a company tries to extend a brand globally.
Customers, not companies, define brands. Customers in one culture may have a different view of a product or company than customers in another culture. The Disney brand, for example, may signify “wholesome entertainment” in one culture, “American entertainment” in another culture, and “cultural imperialism” in yet another. By relentlessly extending its brand portfolio geographically, Disney could risk cultural backlash from contradictory meanings.
The last danger is COMPLEXITY.
As a brand portfolio grows, what began as a way to simplify the brand-building process often ends up complicating it. Complexity within brands can easily create an overgrown, hard-to-manage, inefficient brand portfolio. While the human mind is better at addition than subtraction, subtraction is the key to building strong brand portfolios—pruning back brands and sub-brands that don’t support your branding and communication strategy.
At the end of the day no matter how hard we work at “branding our products and services”, we must always remember to listen to their customers.
And is not what we say it is it’s what they say it is!
December 2009 - Branding
