Common Brand Mistakes transcript

Common brand mistakes

By Fiona Boyd |

This post is a transcription of the videopost Common Brand Mistakes featuring Michel Hogan, founder and principal of Brandology talking to Fiona Boyd, co-author of Niche Content Millionaire about common things companies get wrong when it comes to their brand.

Fiona: Joining me today to talk about all things brand is the founder and principal of Brandology Michel Hogan. Welcome Michel.

Michel: Thanks Fiona.

Fiona: I thought today maybe we could discuss what glaring errors are commonly made with a company’s brand, because this is what you’re called in to sort out from time to time so maybe you could start off by outlining what the most obvious errors are that are made that you see all the time…

Michel: There’s a bunch and they’re just about as long, how long’s a piece of string? As many different companies as there are there seem to be that many errors that people make. And I don’t really call them errors or mistakes so much because people don’t go into it with wrong intention. But I think that probably the number one thing I think people don’t do or mistake that they make is that they’re not consistent. That’s certainly the biggest thing, because when you’re trying to build a connection between who you are and your marketplace and your audience and your customers, they’ll pick up on stuff that has, seems to be really insignificant, that seems to be really not important at all, and that’s the stuff that they see and go, well hang on a minute, that doesn’t feel right, that doesn’t seem right, that doesn’t sit right. So this idea of actually, what do you say, what do you do and how do you think? And making sure that those three things, as much as is practical, are actually in alignment, is – and not doing that is actually the biggest mistake I see people make. Now that manifests itself in lots of different ways.

Fiona: What are they?

Michel: Some of the classics are talking about how important customer service is to you and then…

Fiona:…and then not delivering…

Michel: …well not delivering but even making it really hard for people to get in touch with you, you know, really simple stuff, no phone number…

Fiona: Yes! No phone number on your website. How common is that?

Michel: Yes, or buried so deeply that you can’t even find it. So immediately if you talk about how important customer service is to you, that makes me go, well clearly it’s not that important to you that you want to actually make it easy for me to get in touch with you. Not backing up your products and services with warranties and guarantees. If you have confidence in their quality and what they deliver, there is absolutely no reason to do that and yet so many people don’t. They look at as if people would take advantage of it…

Is your brand out of alignment with what you do and what you say you're about?

Fiona: …how many would take advantage? There’s a small percentage of the population but it’s not a general trend.

Michel: No. Most won’t. Really most won’t. And, you know, the trade off, of the very few who do is just enormous. I think another mistake that people make, a really big one, and we talk, I think we’ve talked about this in a past interview we did, is overfocusing on, is focusing way too much on the look and the feel and the outward style at the expense of bringing a real understanding inside the organisation.

Fiona: Too funky, slick, sexy…

Michel: And worrying that it’s not exactly right, getting really caught up in all the look and the feel side of it, to the point where, well, if it’s not exactly that blue every single time, it’s just not going to work, it won’t be right. And that’s just rubbish actually because you know, for the most part, the general population doesn’t notice and couldn’t care less. They really couldn’t.

Fiona: Fascinating, isn’t it? But they do get a sense, that you mentioned earlier, that, if things are inconsistent, don’t they…so if the messages are not in alignment, they do pick up on that, correct?

Michel: Oh, all the time. And I think that’s the biggest one. I mean that really is. If you’re saying it over here, and doing something completely different over there, you’re done before you start. I mean there is absolutely no way you can build a strong brand or maintain a strong brand if that’s the way you operate. Just doesn’t happen. Um. And people live in la la land. They really do. It’s funny. I’m working with an organisation at the moment and we’re doing some investigating, and I’ve been asking, talking to different people in the company and I’ve been asking, you know, what are the most important things that you think people should know about your company? Across the board people are giving me these answers and I don’t know whether I’ve had the same answer twice…

Fiona: Really?

Michel: And the other question…

Fiona: Because it goes to what you say about core values – shouldn’t they all…

Michel: They should…

Fiona: …have an understanding of the core values of the company, therefore the same thing should be coming up?

Michel: They should. I mean, it’s not that it’s out of this world disparate, but there is a fair bit of play in there. But the second question I ask them really shows the la la land piece of it, because I sort of said to them, well how well overall do you think everyone in the organisation understands you know what you stand for and what’s important. “Oh, yeah, it’s really good, across the board, everybody has a great idea…”

Fiona: And you found otherwise?

Michel: Well the first question I asked showed it to be true. I mean the fact that I – you know, what two things? And I didn’t get the same two things twice. So, you know, it’s one of those…companies…it’s really easy to get tied into your own stuff and not stand back and look and say, well, is this really what’s happening? And companies spend – again it goes back to the overfocus on the external stuff, they get so tied up in what that should be that they forget to actually communicate it back down into the organisation or make sure that what they’re communicating is in sync, you know, with the organisation.

Fiona: Now, returning to an external focus, what is the biggest brand mistake that you’ve ever seen or noticed?

Michel: That’s a really good question because there’s so many that jump up and spring to mind. I’ll limit it back down to the last twelve months. I think one of the classics that I noticed was actually something Qantas did, where after their little air problem over Western Australia where, you know, a huge big hole in the fuselage and the plane dropped two kilometres in the air or whatever it was, and the entire, you know, everybody hit the ceiling, and heaps of people injured, and all the rest of it. When it came to actually giving those people compensation, Qantas’s decision was to give compensation based on seating class…

Fiona: Oooh!

Michel: Because of course, people in First Class were so much more scared than anybody in Economy. I mean, surely…

Fiona: Were they more injured? Probably not…

Michel: Exactly. I mean there was a who range of things here. I mean, we’re not talking about giving them another ticket, you know, which of course everyone on the plane got and that’s fair enough, if you get compensated with a ticket, you know, the same ticket that you bought…

Fiona: …because that flight was unsuccessful…

Michel: …yeah, the one that you bought. But this was compensation for fear and pain and suffering and…

Fiona: …injury…

Michel: …and injury, and, I was just like, okay, there’s something really wrong with that. And that one really, that one really struck me. I mean I’m not sure it qualifies as the biggest brand mistake that’s happened in the last twelve months.

Fiona: But it jumped out at you?

Michel: But it really jumped out at me because it was just so fundamentally unjust, to me, really spoke fundamentally to where Qantas’s head is at in terms of how it views its business. I mean that was really frightening to me.

Fiona: Given a mistake like that and how you view it, and many others, you know, when we have an insight, we’re likely… there’s a thousand people behind us having the same one…

Michel: Without question.

Fiona: How easy is it to correct when you start making those mistakes? Or is this just a whole area of misperception they’ve got into now.

Michel: I think you can…you can certainly correct things. I think the misnomer is that you can just turn it around on a dime. Because typically those type of mistakes and any type of behaviours that lead to those decisions are somewhat endemic, so they’re not something that’s just jumped out of nowhere, they’ve evolved over a period of time, it’s generally a slow erosion, it’s an incremental shift…

Michel: You know, this decision was made, so the next one that was made sort of was a little bit further, just over time…

Fiona: In a sense, Michel, if it’s glaring it’s probably better, because it’s obvious to many people within the organisation, and therefore it can be corrected.

Michel: It can be, it certainly is something that can be, perhaps, noticed, Jim Collins wrote, came out with a new book last year called How the Mighty Fall, and a lot of that was talking about, even though it was talking about business and the decisions that businesses make, really it has a lot of lessons in it that are around brand mistakes as well, because that’s the way brand stuff happens too, the progression that he talks about in that book. And so typically, by the time you get to stage five where, you know, it’s extremely obvious to everybody that everything’s falling apart at the seams, there’s been a long period to get…

Fiona: …of erosion…

Michel: …of erosion to get to that point. And so, to your question how do you turn it around, unlike, his assessment of businesses that get to level five, where they’re pretty much done, there’s not much you can do with them, I think brands can be turned around, but again, it’s got to be done from the inside out, it’s got to be done slowly and with attention to the things that led to the erosion. Basically it’s about fixing the erosion.

Fiona: Michel thank you for your time today.

Michel: My pleasure, thanks Fiona.

Fiona: I’ve been talking to Michel Hogan, who’s the founder of Brandology, and we’ll join you again in a few weeks for more discussion around brand matters.

Photo: flickr Wootangi01

Michel Hogan is a brand advocate who helps companies get their brand into alignment with what they do. She has a weekly blog on Smart Company called Brand Matters and writes a regular blog at her site www.brandalignment.com. Fiona Boyd is the co-founder of Arts Hub and co-author of Niche Content Millionaire.

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites.

Buy Niche Content Millionaire Now