You can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
Again and again, companies tell their employees what to do… but they do don’t do it. Why? Your company makes it impossible.
The underpinnings of a company are the culture, conditions and compensation a company provides for its employees.
- culture– firm’s culture embodies the brand, and vice versa
- conditions– employees have the tools to deliver brand promises
- compensation– employees are rewarded for delivering Brand promises
Unless these three synch with your brand, no amount of advertising can create a brand that resonates with customers. These factors also have traditionally been far outside the purview of the marketers and agencies that manage brands… which is why they often contradict a firm’s public image.
It’s time to ask a simple but potentially painful question: what’s the reality under your brand?
- Do you advertise your commitment to customers, but pay your sales force to sell, sell, sell?
- Do you crow about “satisfaction guaranteed”, but burden your customer service teams with outdated systems and little if any flexibility to resolve customer complaints?
- Do you tell your business and functional units to work as a team, but pay them to compete with each other?
Your enemies aren’t your competitors; they are the contradictions inside your company, and the unfair burdens you place on your employees.
It gets worse.
There may be another problem lurking right under your BRAND PROMISE.
Above all else, the core qualities of a modern brand must be flexibility, responsiveness and intelligence. Our economy is migrating from a “make and sell” model to a “sense and respond” approach. Customers routinely expect customization. Product life cycles are shortening. Data is everywhere. Your company has to behave in a manner that customers perceive as intelligent.
Brands have always been about the whole customer experience, but lately customer experience is dramatically more dependent on those factors that dwell under your brand promise. One reason why is that customers used to be happy receiving the same product and service that millions of other customers receive.
No more. It’s time to take on your true enemy, and defeat it.
