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!”