Firing Up Your Brand
Your customer universe encompasses much more than the people who buy your product or service; it means everyone that comes into contact with your brand and your company. The power has shifted to the consumer, writes Anthony Ryman

The world of public relations can be fraught with a lot of hot air, misguided notions and, above all, column inches. As Lord Leverhulme, founder of Unilever, once said, “half the money on advertising I spend is wasted, the problem is I don’t know which half.” Can the same be also said about PR?

It is important to understand that the “public” is not just your customer. Let me rephrase: your customer universe encompasses much more than the people who buy your product or service. When companies talk about audiences, they usually mean the customer.

When we talk about audiences, we mean everyone that comes into contact with your brand and your company, and this includes investors, customers, suppliers, employees (and their families!), opinion leaders, influencers and the general public.

Your reputation is everything. Quality products and services, high integrity and transparency are the keys to success.

Company as a brand
Your company is your brand. Your brand is your reputation. PR focuses on maintaining and communicating and protecting your reputation.

You may remember there was a scare about eight years ago in Belgium when people got sick after drinking Coca-Cola and there were rumours of a toxic batch. Coca-Cola, at first, denied there were any impurities in its product – denial is often the first manifestation of refusing to acknowledge a fundamental truth: ostrich in the sand mentality! “For 113 years, our success has been based on the trust that consumers have in that quality. That trust is sacred to us,” responded the then Coca-Cola CEO Ivester.

His statement came after four European countries – Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – started taking Coca-Cola drinks off their shelves. But with Belgium banning, Coca-Cola, the company changed its tune and its crisis management machinery kicked in: Coca-Cola ‘regretted’ the incident and acknowledged that the company’s Antwerp factory had used the wrong type of carbon dioxide gas that gives Coca-Cola its fizz, making the drink taste bad, and that a fungicide had caused some contamination at its factory in northern France. You can imagine how fast Coca-Cola’s shares plummeted. This reinforces the truth that what you communicate about your company and your brand must be not only compelling, but believable and most importantly, true for you to gain a positioning and differentiation that sets you apart from your competitors. Also, if you fool the public or make them an offer that is unacceptable, they will walk away in droves.

The real power of successful brands is that they meet the expectations of those that buy them, i.e., they represent a promise kept. A brand is a contract between a seller and a buyer: if the seller keeps to its side of the bargain, the buyer will be satisfied; if not, the buyer will look elsewhere. A strong brand creates strong positioning and differentiation.

People remember strong brands and great customer experiences. The strength of your brand is key to your earnings potential and your market share.

Asset value of brands
“In the twenty-first century, branding ultimately will be the only unique differentiator between companies. Brand equity is now a key asset”. (Source: Fortune)

The asset value of brands is now on the balance sheet. Brands generate high-quality earnings that directly affect the performance of the business and thus influence the share price. The stock market value of Coca-Cola in 2002 was $136 billion, yet the book value (the net asset value) was only US$10.5 billion. So the business value or “brand value” was US$125 billion. Maintaining this value depends on your customers’ continuing confidence and experience of your brand and your ability to manage these profitably. (Source: Interbrand)

Another disastrous PR affair was the case of Dasani, a bottled ‘pure’ water brand. Coca-Cola launched Dasani, positioning it as a pure, clean mineral water. However, consumers soon discovered it was tap water bottled not far from London! The brand was taken off the shelves a few months after launch to great public and media outcry. Naturally, this did not help Coca-Cola’s brand image! Believe me I am not against Coca-Cola in any way, but these two incidents highlight how important it is to maintain brand integrity with all your customer dealings – both internally and externally.

The latest hullabaloo in bad public relations and not keeping your finger on the pulse of consumer is the logo for the London Olympics 2012.*

Here, there was no crisis management scenario and hence no one knew really what to do when public outcry reached epidemic proportions. What is clear, however, is that both LOCOG and to a degree, in their brand advisors Wolff Olins, were so far removed from the urban myth, that is the London ‘street cred’, that presented us with an identity which was very obviously ‘now’ but one that had no relationship to the pride and heritage that is the very essence of London and its citizens. This was another example of not speaking the truth, in this case not representing the soul or DNA of London and its people. Hence, the uproar that has, in PR terms, turned into a fiasco and surely heads will roll.

THE LATEST HULLABALOO in bad public relations and not keeping your finger on
the pulse of consumer engagement is the logo for the London olympics 2012

ANOTHER DISASTROUS Pr affair was the case of dasani, a bottled ‘pure’ water
brand. Coca Cola launched dasani which was positioned as a pure, clean mineral water. Consumers then discovered it was tap water bottled not far from London! The brand was taken off the shelves a few months after launch to
great public and media outcry

The big idea
All communications must come from a central core, the essence or soul of your organisation. We call this the “BIG IDEA”. Its what sets you apart from your competitors. It defines who you are, what you stand for. It gives you a voice, an attitude, a reason to ‘be’. It gives customers and staff a reason to believe, to belong to your brand, your ‘tribe’. It is authentic, transparent and true. Communicating your “BIG IDEA” consistently gives direction, motivation and clarity to your staff and customers and this leads to increased market share, growing new business with less effort and less cost, and most importantly happy staff and customers.

One cannot underestimate the power of your staff as brand ambassadors to endorse and buy into your company, adding value to your offer and building the brand, or ‘tribe’. Likewise, one cannot underestimate the power of your customers to endorse and become advocates of your company or tell everyone how bad you are. In these days of blogs, vlogs, podcasts and texts, not to mention the social networking phenomenon that is Myspace or Facebook, the power has shifted to the consumer. It is no longer acceptable to communicate with your customer from a transaction-led perspective. Now, companies must work together with their increasingly vocal and brand-aware audiences, to listen to their needs and aspirations and then provide them with the service or product they are looking for. We live in interesting times. PR is as much more about listening and engaging than it is about talking, for as the wise man once said “credibility is very much like virginity. Once you lose it, it is impossible to regain.”

*The London 2012 Olympic Games logo has been widely criticized. The critics have slated the £400,000 cost of researching, developing and designing the logo and described the result variously as “a broken swastika” and “gobbledygook”.

Anthony Ryman is Managing Director of grow, a Doha-based creative, full-service communications agency.

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