Brand Extinguisher

Brand Extinguisher

 
Emotions and Politics

Branding — communication of value proposition — is the bedrock of all corporate success. Quality relationships, whether business or personal, are impossible to create and maintain without crystal-clear communication.

Each company must exit and forever avoid the white-noise zone of poor communication — and, instead, enter and remain in the unique-standout zone. Alas, that does not happen very often.

About 95% of companies are in the white noise, indistinguishable from each other, saddled with needlessly escalated costs of sales.

If this is all so logical, why do companies consistently end up in the white noise? It’s simple. Logic is absent. Emotions and politics abound. They’d rather blend than brand.

In his alarming book about the decay of America, The New Road to Serfdom, Daniel Hannan, British member of the European Parliament, opined (emphasis mine) about blending:

One by one, the differences are being ironed out. The US is Europeanizing its health system, tax take, daycare, welfare rules, approach to global warming, foreign policy, federal structure, unemployment rate. Perhaps Americans are keen to fit in. Perhaps they feel awkward about being the odd man out.

 
Dwell in the White Noise

It seems each company stows a brand extinguisher in its boardroom. Accordingly, it will find five ways to extinguish its brand — apathy, insularity, arrogance, legacy, and ambiguity — and dwell in the white noise, unable to amass GutShare™, as the figure below depicts.
 

 

The Brand Extinguisher’s Five Toxic Ingredients

  • Apathy: The antithesis of urgency. Belief that branding is a low priority, a postscript, an afterthought, a superficial activity to cut in a recession.

  • Insularity: Inward focus on products, technologies, and organizational structures — instead of on customers’ lives and problems.

  • Arrogance: Belief that you know better than your customers what they want and need — which will lead to irrelevant, inaccurate, or insulting messaging.

  • Legacy: Living in the past. Epitome of resting on your brand’s laurels — Our firm has been around a long time, customers already know us, and what we’ve done in prior years will always work. Such nostalgia begets shoddy branding and lost customers.

  • Ambiguity: Exists when customers can’t fathom your homepage in 15 seconds. White noise. Your unwillingness to fix it — as soon as possible — will spike your cost of sales.

 

Be Unique or Be Ignored™