Reasons Brands Fail: #6 Nothing Changed Internally

Another reason brands fail is because even though the company said the brand was changing, it never really did. Perhaps your look or message changed. This attracted people, but then no real change took place in the company. Products and services remained the same. The customer experience didn’t improve. Customers who were expecting something new and wonderful from you became disillusioned, sought out another company to provide the product or service they needed, and your branding effort failed. Better to have done no branding work at all in that case, right?

For a branding campaign to succeed, the company must evolve with it to support the brand message. The company values and customer promises must be mirrored in the brand and vice-versa. If the buyer doesn’t see and feel the branding change, they won’t trust the brand. Without that trust, a brand is bound to fail.

Driving Internal Change

For your business operations to align with the new brand, the entire organization must support the new brand efforts. Starting with the CEO and working down the ladder from there, all staff must hold to the branding strategy, driving internal changes and consistent action to align with and sustain the new brand promise and market positioning. Everyone must be held accountable for their individual brand behaviors if the brand is to succeed.

It’s easy to get excited about a brand change, develop lofty ideals and set high expectations. But along with that, you must include concrete actions that actually show buyers what the new promise will look like for them. Concepts must be thought through and then managed to become reality. These changes should be planned out ahead of time to be put into effect immediately prior to brand launch. You can’t launch a brand without backing it up with something real and then expect buyers to believe it. Your people must change the way they do business to reflect and support your new brand. Internal messaging must be as representative of the new branding message as your external messaging in order for the brand change to be successful.

Creating Change

Creating systemic changes like this within an organization is not easy. It can seem overwhelming and many leaders get discouraged before they even try. Ward can help you create the brand-consistent cultural changes you need to protect your brand investment. We can help you develop a branding strategy and then create action items to ensure that your brand promise is delivered and consistently experienced by your customers. Contact us today to learn more about our internal and external branding services and how we can help build value in your brand.