Tarnished Brands: Rehab or Dump?

It happens.  Brands get crippled by unimaginable disasters.  Ethical blunders, market collapses, oil spills of mammoth porportions in the Gulf.  For the latter, the cleanup will take years and maybe decades, and that is just for the oil.  And what about the brand cleanup?  Can the BP brand be turned around?  Is it worth rehabilitation or is it better to dump it and move on... a more than 1 million dollar question.

In years past, the question might have a different answer.  Years ago, British Petroleum could have considered a switch to the Amoco brand, at least in the U.S., replacing the green and yellow BP logo with the red, white, and blue colors of that historic Amoco brand, which has been in the same stable as BP since 1998.   A switch to the Amoco brand might look good to some of the stakeholders such as the retail businesses that distribute BP branded product to a suddenly reluctant consumer.  And taking the notion even further, BP marketers could aspire to play up the original Amoco name - American Oil Company - and try to make long term marketing gains with it, at least here in the U.S.  But, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

In today's era of social media, things are not that simple.  Today, such a strategy is highly risky and would likely land BP in a larger mess than it already has, if that is possible.  Because, today, with all of the communications tools available to consumers, transparency is required.  Yep, good old fashioned honesty and humility. 

And there really isn't another strategy, because today's consumer is too informed, and would not be fooled by the slight-of-hand of a brand switch to a subsidiary brand.  Even if the consumer does not connect Amoco with BP today, it wouldn't take long.  The speed of social media would simply serve to drag the equity of an untarnished Amoco brand into the slurry along with BP, thus killing the equity in two assets instead of just one.  And it would all be for naught, as the enlightened customer could just as quickly boycott the Amoco brand as the BP brand.

Brand Dormancy... A Growing Epidemic

Strong brand perceptions have historically been built by great products, people, and service(s) - along with the orchestration of smart marketing strategies.  But in today's world where marketing communications are more fragmented, multi-channeled, and involve higher levels of client engagement, brand creation is more challenging.  This has caused many companies to pull back on their efforts.

Meanwhile, other companies have given up on developing their brand because they have decided that mere survival is job one in these economic times.  They are not going to (or feel they cannot?) build their brand during the most opportune time - when it is likely their competition could be sleeping.  

This combination of increased complexity and a survival mentality is clearly leading to less brand-building activity.  And Brand Dormancy is on the rise.

Take a simple test - ask your customers, colleagues, friends and neighbors about your brand and listen to their responses.  See if you can determine when their primary perceptions of your brand were formed.  Try to determine if your brand is evolving with the times.  This exercise and the resultant learning may lead marketers to seek continuous, quantitative market research to measure the strength and audience relevance of their brands.

I recently asked some marketing colleagues for their perceptions of the Land O' Lakes brand (a wonderfully enduring brand). They delved into stories of the Indian Princess (last "modernized" in 1939) and how as youths they had folded the butter container boxes to change the look of the picture into something only an adolescent would find interesting. The point is the core perceptions of the brand seem to be formed in the past; in this case, way in the past.  They had no recent statement on the brand, what it stood for, how it was delivering on its promises or how it was living up to the new marketing meritocracy, the green movement, or a more health-conscious consumer - raising questions regarding the balance between the enduring imagery and the evolution of the brand, as well as whether the Land O’ Lakes brand is inching towards a potentially precarious future. 

Brands are complex compilations of inputs that are stored in our customer’s minds where they are summarized and stored for future use.  Each in a series of new inputs can create changes in perceptions of these brands.  Once a brand becomes dormant, the company is living on equity established in years gone by.

The problem with the dormancy strategy is that the world keeps changing. Consumers keep changing. Technology keeps advancing. The brand equity built up in the past will erode and lose relevance because of these changes.  Each brand has its own story, and some, like Sears, K-Mart, Oldsmobile, IBM, and Polaroid, once behemoths, have not fared well during long periods of relative dormancy. The brand, the strategy, and other pieces of the business model did not evolve with the times and led to unfathomable declines.

And like any equity, brand equity does not pay dividends forever without repositioning, revitalization, and reinvestment.
Can you say “shake it like a Polaroid picture!”

Brand Control over Customer Tom?

I listened intently as a well-respected marketing professional, presenting high-technology marketing programs, explained that marketers "no longer have control" over their brands.  This, he went on, was because of the fragmentation of traditional media and the advent of the new social media.

That spoken misconception regarding control sent my thoughts off to further consideration of the statement, which I had heard before.

Brands have never been under anyone's "control."  Brands are the perceptions of the name, logo, products, people, and actions of a company, that are held in the mind of the customer, prospect or other stakeholder.  Any two people that experience identical messages and company experiences will still likely have differing perceptions of that brand.  The real world divergence of experiences that customers actually have, then, makes the idea of  having "control" over brand perceptions nearly unimaginable.

To be clear, brand perceptions can be influenced utilizing a good corporate platform and all of the tools within the marketing function. But, control...?  So, I went on to consider the relevent point the speaker was making.

We are indeed on a new frontier of marketing and building brand equity.  Old methods of marketing to customers held reach and frequency levels as keys, where the goal was to maximize messages aimed at target demographics to build awareness and ultimately, preference.  Today's approach targets customer "communities" and strives for customer engagement.  Today's approach includes two-way conversations as brands are more susceptible to broadcast customer feedback - both positive and negative.  Emerging social media methods make it easy for customers to advocate, or challenge, the actions of a company... while others listen.

The new level of transparency required in today's world is beginning to take hold.  Opaque companies who still try to use spin to craft their image are beginning to be punished in the world of social media.  Those companies who are transparent and honest with their communications are beginning to be rewarded, even when they make mistakes!  Finally!

Some marketers wish to ignore the new realities and hang on to the idea that they can "control" their brand's equity, yet true brand champions have embraced the changes and are looking for leverage.

When I was a brand marketing manager at the Toro Company, the industry standard warranty on lawn mowers was a 2-year limited warranty.  Our dialog with customers revealed that they wanted more life, so we engineered products that performed well past that minimum hurdle.  It cost more, so our price points were slightly higher than the competition and our sales were suffering.  It was challenging to communicate the detailed benefits of a more durable product through a 5-year full warranty.  We finally did it, and our sales rose nicely, but what I would have given to have the social media/customer engagement vehicles of today!  The same customers that we listened to when we designed the products could have helped us get the word out!

No, marketers have never been in control over their customers' brand perceptions.  But in this new era of media and communications there is an opportunity for marketers to exert an increased level of influence over their brands development - by getting constant real time feedback from the ultimate boss, the customer… and listening.

Brand, Brand, Brand... Whose Is It Anyway?

The term "brand" is bandied about the hallways and conference rooms of our offices all day long, and rolls off the tongue of the intern like he was born to say it.   But, never has a word that is so important to a company's success been so poorly understood.

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as "a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."  Sounds a little like the definition for cattle brands to me.    Wikipedia defines brand as "the identity of a specific product, service, or business."  Hmmmm, too simplified, but begins to touch on the true concept of brand.

Other sources define brands as names, logos, icons, colors, taglines, jingles and a whole host of things that I call identifiers.  These things help us identify a company, product, or service, but they aren't "the brand."

We cannot effectively define brand without including the customer (which for these purposes includes actual customers, target customers, future customers, and other stakeholders), for they are critical to its existence.

A brand is not a name or a logo or jingle, etc. - it is the impression of the name, logo, jingle - that is held in the mind of the customer.  Brands then, are complex compilations of inputs that are stored in each of our customer's  brains where they are summarized and stored for future use.  Each new input received regarding a product/service/company, if deemed meaningful, can change the customers impression of that brand and therefore their likelihood of buying it.

In today's message-cluttered world, it is more difficult to send meaningful inputs that will be received, considered, cataloged and stored into a customers brand perception.  What's more is that social media has created a platform that allows for meaningful inputs to be received from viral public response to products, services, company activity, and events. 

That, in essence, has put the customer in partial control of both sides of the brand equation - in forming their own perceptions regarding a brand, and now in broadly messaging and influencing others regarding their perceptions of a brand. 

But there are still plenty of opportunities for brand champions to guide their brands, a challenge that is easier achieved with a deep understanding of the concept.