Building Brand Values - Page 3

Lancia, the Italian car maker, pulled out of the UK market after years of defensive marketing, trying to overturn the damage caused by the appalling rust problems
endemic in its range of cars of the 1980s.

Perrier, the Frenchmineral water importer, has still to fully recover its ‘pure’ credentials after the scandal of contaminated water from a decade ago. Consumers, like elephants, have long memories.

More recently, global giants such as Coca-Cola and Proctor & Gamble have tarnished their UK brand reputation and product range through launching supposedly healthier products like Dasani bottled water (Coca-Cola) and orange drink Sunny Delight (Procter & Gamble), which upon examination, proved to be less than pure.

In the case of Dasani, it was alleged the product could actually increase the risk of cancer in some circumstances. A perfect example of how even the strongest brand won’t hide a flawed product.

CURING UNDERLYING PROBLEMS

Alternatively, re-branding a poor business, if you do not address the fundamental problems, is like plastering over the cracks. It looks better for a while but the underlying problems overwhelm the deceptive camouflage.

In most cases branding is simply a mirror of business, not a mask. Witness BMC = British Leyland = Rover Group = MG Rover. Outcome, confusion, devalued branding and weakened reputation.

Consumers can be fooled once by ‘new’ flashy packaging and ‘distraction marketing’ but if the product is still poor, they don’t come back for a second bite.

Another example of image failure is when an organisation attempts to ‘pull’ the business in a new strategic direction through image alone. Take the case of British Airways and the now notorious tail fin debacle of the late 1990s.

Intellectually the decision to present the airline as a global, cosmopolitan airline was a statement of fact but it failed to embrace the emotive issues surrounding why people choose to fly with national carriers.

The then boss of BA, Bob Ayling, said: “Perhaps we need to lose some of our old fashioned Britishness”, but in reality ‘flying the flag’ was exactly what
punters wanted, whether they were from Brighton, Brisbane or Barcelona.

By the time BA announced the final demise of the ‘ethical’ brand approach in 2001, Virgin had simply stolen the ground by adding the Union Flag to its fleet of
aircraft. BA is now adding Union Flags to all of its tail fins to regain its ‘Britishness’, having gifted this core brand value to Virgin.