Brands are having their toughest time for many years at the moment and it appears that this isn’t simply because we’re in the depths of recession. The real issue confronting brands, and all that they stand for, is that they have nowhere to hide from their customers in this connected, interactive world. And all too often they fail to live up to the promises made by their marketing messages.
Today everyone is talking to everyone else; consumers chat, staff chat, the media chats and the channels through which they all do so are global, instantaneous and always open. This means that any gap between what consumers have been told to expect from their brand and what is delivered is instantly exposed and can be communicated worldwide.
Imagine United Airlines surprise when the decision of their complaints department not to compensate customer, David Carroll for a damaged guitar resulted in a significant drop in their share price following the ‘complaint song’ he posted on You Tube. His actions meant he didn’t tell 10 people (the average number of people we apparently used to tell following a bad experience). No, as of the 23rd July 2009 he had told a minimum of 3.7 m people on You Tube and countless others via the multitude of TV news programmes the video has been shown on!
Hopefully United Airlines will seek to resolve this gap by helping the complaints department align with the brand rather than take action against any employee. After all their actions will probably have been guided by a policy somewhere that relates more to cost saving than brand (and share price) protection. Smart move? We think not.
The brutal truth is brands must face up to the fact that they have nowhere to hide anymore and realise that, no matter how hard they try, they’ll never be able to prevent the insides of their organisation leaking out. On the contrary in fact, they need to realise that there’s actually a real thrill for people in watching organisations who so obviously love to let their insides leak out. You only have to shop in an Apple store, talk to the Passport Office, phone the banana line at Innocent Drinks, or go to Madame Tussauds to see and feel, see what an aligned brand feels like.
The challenge that every brand faces, every day, is that consumers have stopped listening to the words of an organisation and now simply watch their actions. If the two match then they continue the relationship; if they don’t they go elsewhere, often silently.
As consumers we are totally empowered via our interactive world to seek the opinions of others, give our own opinions, we can even make complex complaints such as David Carroll.
So, what’s the danger to brands that ignore the facts of transparency?
Well, the fact is that brands can no longer get away with being unaligned and therefore apparently paradoxical or worse still, hypocritical. Consumers are able to view brands with total transparency and therefore get a 360 degree view of them and their performance. Recently The Harvard Business Review dedicated an entire issue to the need for organisations to re-build trust with the people they serve. The world of over-spinning and under-delivering is over and brands must seek to rapidly adapt to the new and sometimes brutal realities of the consumer empowered world.
The real answer for brands is to re-build the trust bond with consumers through action and not their historic medium of pure message transmission.
They must be clear that their actions and words are aligned at every one of the myriad of proof points. The people delivering a brand must be clear what is expected of them and their behaviour should be aligned to the brand they deliver.
Any organisation seeking to deliver their consumer promises needs to ensure it has Brand Alignment in its kit of essential tools. Only then can it be sure of reaching both proof points and colleagues to deliver brand messages clearly and consistently.
The Broken Promise
Of the many issues, phrases, claims and counter claims amongst all the political parties, one phrase has been used on a regular basis; the broken promise.
Political parties have talked about others breaking promises and of course their determination not to break the promises that they make. View article >
Out of tune
So; they have got their positioning spot on, I buy into their values and personality whole heartedly, I love their visual imagery and they stand out on the high street. What fantastic retail branding! Totally aligned, I salute thee brand and my custom is your reward. View article >
