BRANDUS INTERRUPTUS: WHEN GOOD BRANDS GO BAD
BRANDUS INTERRUPTUS: WHEN GOOD BRANDS GO BAD
Monday, 02 October 2006 07:51
You wake up with a brilliant idea, a new concept no one has thought of before. You develop a flawless marketing plan over morning coffee, word gets out and by noon, the best teams of specialists all call you. All these world-class designers, marketing consultants, media planners and brand management professionals offer you their services free, just to be part of your breakthrough concept. By 3:00 p.m., four major global corporations have had their legal departments fax over contracts to form co-branding efforts....
Hey, let's get real. If it were this easy, there wouldn't be brand development and image management firms, nor all the activities (not to mention all the books on the market) designed to develop and manage brands. So until it gets this easy, brands either do well, so-so, or poorly-depending on how well they are conceived and maintained. If it's going well, good. If not, then you're suffering needlessly from a dreaded affliction: Brandus Interruptus.
The Symptoms of Brandus InterruptusA brand exists for one key purpose: to be the bridge that connects a product's or service's promise (e.g., "To help you become a world-class athlete") with the consumer's desire (e.g., "Just do it"). So how do you tell whether your brand is living up to its potential or giving you the short end of the stick (i.e., Brandus Interruptus)? There are symptoms. Trying to be like another company is one (violating every basic premise of positioning). Trying to be everything to everybody is another. Having no or random design consistency is yet another. Identifying the branding objective is the key step in preventing or halting the dreaded Brandus Interruptus and its accompanying symptoms. Is it to reposition an ailing brand? Is it to invent a category that no one has claimed yet? Or is it to handle a real oversight where the brand has lost its relevance?
Below, you'll find the qualities necessary in creating and managing a world-class brand, a clarification on the differences between brand strategies and brand tactics, and why we hear so much about brands reinventing themselves (and what problem this is really solving and how to avoid this pitfall in the first place).
A Category of OneThe grandest objective and ultimate dream-come-true would be becoming-and sustaining-a category of one. Being best in a category is admirable, but being in a category of one is truly the prize trophy.Recently, an installment in the Wall Street Journal's branding series featured David S. Pottruck, Co-CEO of the Charles Schwab Corporation. In this interview, he states, "We're not trying to become the traditional model of a full-service firm. We're establishing the new model. That's a very challenging brand position to build because people want to pigeonhole you. Oh, you're like this firm or, You're like those guys. Well, what we want is to be unlike anyone else. In other words, a category of one."
Maintaining Brand StaminaSo let's say you've had the good fortune to develop a sound brand. How do you manage it so it doesn't suffer from "Brandus Interruptus"? The following scale shows the qualities that a brand has, as well as the qualities that reflect how it is managed. The qualities on the left, by their very nature, detect and prevent "Brandus Interruptus." Conversely, the qualities on the right are not only the warning signs of a troubled brand, but are also the very demons to be found in a brand skating on thin ice.
