Brandicide – how to kill a brand -2

I want to commiserate with the Tinubu family on the sudden demise of the first son of Jagaban Bola and Senator Remi Tinubu. No doubt this is a tough harvest by the grim reaper. I pray that God will comfort the entire family at this time.

As we concluded last week, what kills a brand are not the factors external to the brand. The most effective way to kill a brand is to create an internal dissonance that attacks the heart of the brand’s congruence. Once there is an internal Babel in the brand, it might as well begin to sing its swan-song. The swan sings only once in its lifetime; when it is about to die!

The architecture of every brand is the skeletal framework on which the entire brand is built and sustained. This consists first of the primary identity of the brand. This has to do with the nomenclature, logo and colours of the brand. Then comes the inherent promise of the brand. The promise is the heart and soul of any brand. This is the real point of distinction in the brand and its Value Proposition. Also inherent in the promise is the Unique Selling Proposition of the brand. It is what actually distinguishes it from similar brands that offer similar value.

The promise of a brand is what sets the market’s expectations from the brand and its consequent relevance factor. Next is the behaviour of the brand in the market which is what delivers an experience, negative or positive, to the market. The type of experience that the customer has is what determines his perception of the brand. Ultimately, it is that perception that determines the survival or sustainability of the brand. A brand attains congruence when its behaviour is in tandem with its promise and identity. This is what accounts for brand integrity and a high level of customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is what generates a positive perception for the brand.

Conversely, a brand is on its way to the grave when it consistently delivers value that falls short of its touted promise.

Brandicide begins with compromising on the promise of the brand. When this happens, the brand simply starts “misbehaving” in the marketplace, creating an inherent confusion that soon becomes evident to the market. When this happens long enough, the customer starts to vote with his purse and soon enough, the brand is buried! Radio Shack was a very popular chain store in the USA for electronic items, even ahead of Circuit City and Best Buy. Over time, its products became expensive even without a corresponding reflection in quality. As a matter of fact, on the quality index, its products went south because of its incorporation of inferior products into its stock. Today, it is doubtful if it has any store profitably open anywhere!

The moment the market experience with a brand is sub-par, it has no chance. Perception they say, is reality.

Furthermore, no brand can afford to be in the news for the wrong reasons. Bad press is deadly for brand equity and survival. Even if the brand creator tries some damage control, it is sometimes too late. A few years ago, a pharmaceutical company went under because its flagship product, a brand of paracetamol syrup, was discovered to have killed some children who used it. As it turned out, a certain toxic chemical had been supplied by its foreign raw materials supplier in place of its main component. The company had used the substitute in some batches of production without doing a proper cross-checking. It did not survive the backlash!

When you hear the word “lion”, what immediately comes to your mind? Carnivore living in a deep forest, capable of killing any animal, no matter the size. Right? After all, isn’t that why it is called king of the jungle? Immediately, you recall images of films or documentaries that you have watched where you saw the lion tear its prey with such clinical precision that you would not want to be alone in the same space with one even if a stuffed one! You have also seen how other animals take off, sometimes in a stampede, scattering in different directions at the sight of a lion. Now imagine a situation where you are taking a walk along a bush path and you see a flock of sheep in a nearby field with a lion in their midst all eating grass! That is a good example of brand incongruence! Worldcom, Arthur Anderson, BCCI, Societe Generale, Intercontinental Bank, Oceanic Bank and many others like them became victims of this type of brand dissonance.

A brand dies when its promise and behaviour are no longer relevant to the market. Products like the vinyl record, the gramophone, the radiogram, the turntable, the cartridge tape, the floppy disk are deeply buried in the recesses of distant memories. Today, the compact disc, bluray disc have sounded the death knell of cassette tapes. Or what shall we say about the video cassettes which are now obsolete?

Anyone in my generation would remember the Swiss watches that ran on balance wheels. The famous brands then were Seiko, Omega and Buller. To own one of those watches was then a status symbol. The watch technology originated from Switzerland. But the Swiss fell into the mistake that many successful brands fall into. Inertia. When a brand becomes too comfortable with its performance, it is on its way to the grave. Incidentally, the technology for the digital watch that buried the balance wheel-driven watch also originated from Switzerland but it was ignored and actually never given a chance for survival. The Japanese took a long look at the technology, developed it and the rest, as they say, is history! Nothing can be static for too long. The Kodak film and camera are also instructive examples. For so long after the advent of digital photography, Kodak refused to get on the train because it felt that the technology had no future. But today, we know who did not make it to that future.

Today, the whole world practically converges on cyberspace. What that means is that most people would get news first hand online! By the time any major news makes it into print, it has gone viral online. This means that any newspaper that insists on publishing only in the tabloid form may soon be on its way out.

Brand creators must understand that when the rules change, the game also changes! In an age of severe and sometimes hostile competition where technology is evolving faster than it can be fully deployed, only the paranoid survive, to quote the title of a book by Andrew Grove, former CEO of Intels Corporation, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of computer processor chips. In the race for survival in the marketplace, timing is of essence.

If you wait too long to embrace the realities emerging in your field and adjust your relevance level accordingly, your brand may become a dinosaur sooner than you think!

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!