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3: Chains Hold You Hostage: Change Can Set You Free

"Business as usual" is a dangerous mentality in a changing environment. The things that you have done in the past that worked may no longer be productive, and may even be damaging if perpetuated in a market that has evolved.

Chains that Hold a Brand Hostage

There are different causes and consequences for personal and business brands that remain steadfastly chained to the past. The author considers them separately:

For person brands, ego is a major factor - a successful person feels they can do no wrong, or feels that others are responsible for anything that doesn't go as planned. This is fed by sycophants who support their self-image and accept the blame to protect their idols. They do things out of habit or convenience, ignoring the possibility of the consequences even in the face of proof.

Business brands may suffer from much of the same, when the business is led by an executive with a strong personality. Additionally, there may be instances in which leaders are afraid of the consequences of taking risks inherent in doing things differently, both individually or as a brand. They also deny the problem exists or place blame on others or circumstances beyond their control (how many blame "the economy" for their failure to adapt?). There is also organizational politics: a person may not be empowered to make a change on their own, and groups tend to ostracize those who rock the boat. Also, businesses are focused on the short-term benefits and ignore the long-term consequences.

Whatever the motivations for avoiding change, what happens is that a good brand slips into mediocrity, and if they remain inert for too long, they get into trouble - and will resist the suggestion of change until the situation has become a crisis.

Damaged Brands Need Change

A brand is damaged when people outside the organization perceive it as being damaged. It isn't always the consequence of something the firm has done or failed to do (though these are the most common causes), but that people have changed their minds or perceptions of the brand over time. (EN: probably the easiest example to grasp is a brand that is considered "old fashioned" by the market - there has been no dramatic event, and the firm may be doing the same thing as well as they ever did, but it has over time fallen out of step with the industry and the market.)

Regardless of the cause, even a firm that steadfastly denies that it has done anything to damage its brand cannot long escape accepting the fact - whatever the reason, their brand is damaged.

The author looks to ValuJet, a discount carrier with an aging fleet of planes that were in less-than-new condition when they got them. This perpetuated until the 1996 crash in Florida, which killed 110 passengers. After that, the company literally could not get people to fly when they gave away tickets. The brand "became the poster child for all the things you don't want to think about with respect to air travel." In this instance, the company abandoned the brand completely: they purchased a smaller company (AirTran) and adopted its name, effectively giving customers the perception that ValueJet had gone under and been replaced by a completely different firm. This was not done in secret, and many customers were aware it was just a name change, the negative opinion of the old brand didn't carry over.

What It Takes to Create Real Change

When a brand becomes damaged, it's seldom easily repaired: the PR problem it suffers stems from choices the firm has made, and effecting a lasting improvement requires making real changes, not just token efforts.

Said another way, damage to brand occurs when a problem is exposed. If you focus on the negative exposure, you will have temporary and limited success - it is only a matter of time before it is exposed again. Solve the problem, and there's no longer anything that can be exposed.

(EN: The author discusses the resistance to change, but it's very brief and general, and much more is to be said on the topic than he has to offer here. Entire books are written on the topic of change management, so the few paragraphs provided here don't do the topic justice. He does, however, hit the nail on the head: people are comfortable in a situation they perceive to be stable, and fear that change will make them less comfortable that they presently are. When they are confident that a change will make them happier and the effort to change is worth the reward, they are more open to, and even eager for, change to occur.)

When a Rising Star Falls

The author considers the speed at which a person's fate can change, and not always for the worse: consider the example of Susan Boyle, who was anonymous until a YouTube video of her singing performance at a talent show in Britain went viral and, within months, she had record-setting CD sales and sellout concert tours around the globe.

The author looks to Robert Downey, Jr., an actor whose fame as risen and fallen repeatedly, from a talented actor with a solid work to a drug addict that couldn't be counted on to turn up on the set. The author details a few of the cycles, and stresses that the actor is not back on top, but time will tell if the wheel of fortune turns again.

Perhaps one of the reasons Downey has been able to regain his footing is in his willingness to eat crow: to admit his problems and accept responsibility, to earnestly take action to pull himself out of a nosedive. While the media is often out for blood, there is a great deal of admiration for someone who can turn themselves around, even after repeated failures.

No Place Is Immune

Another example looks at the city of Detroit, which was the capital of American industry in 1950 and an industrial wasteland by the year 2000. Between the loss of industry to overseas carmakers, race riots, rampant crime and drug issues, political corruption, and more, the city became the epitome of every negative stereotype of an urban environment.

Elected in 2011, Mayor Dave Bing has publicly accepted a herculean task: to bring back the city. "I thought I knew what was going on," he stated "but I got here and found out that things are way worse than I ever imagined." Moreover, a brand as big as a city is more than a one-man job: it requires many stakeholders to participate in a coordinated effort. And that seems to be happening:

Since this is recent, it's early to predict, but there are positive signs: there's less negative press, more conventions are coming to town, tourism is on the rise for both individual vacationers and organizations who seek attractive destinations for major meetings, fewer residents are leaving the area, and so on. It's deemed a "recovery in progress."

A list of "key points":

When Organizations Need to Change

In most instances, a destination brand or personal brand cannot merely be abandoned, but its image must be improved - it is far easier to simply abandon an organizational brand and start over under a different name, but this often tosses out the baby with the bathwater. The first decision of a firm with a damaged brand is whether there is enough goodwill left to be worth salvaging - and if so, to revive rather than abandon its brand. Many have done so, and quite successfully.

Consider the example of Xerox, a small firm that began in 1906 and became so synonymous with its product that it nearly lost its trademark - people didn't make photocopies, they made Xeroxes, whatever brand of photocopier was actually used. While this distressed the firm's counsel, it's a sign of the strongest brand successes.

Unfortunately the brand's effort to remind the market that there were other brands of photocopier worked too well - people learned that there were other brands, and bought them instead. Add to that the firm was caught in a number of accounting fraud scandals between 1997 and 2002 that got it in trouble with the media and the SEC, not to mention disgruntled employees going on shooting sprees in their corporate offices, the outlook was grim: the firm was near bankruptcy and its shares plummeted to penny-stock prices.

(EN: The author describes the changes at Xerox, but from what I am reading, this has more to do with restructuring the organization for greater efficiency, improving financial performance, and has little to do with the brand's reputation in the market. Of course, for a B2B brand, financial performance is a key factor, as it suggests the financial stability of a partner: no-one wants to buy equipment from a supplier on the brink of collapse. However, I don't see lessons to be learned here from a brand perspective.)

Change Is Inevitable

The author returns to the notion of change, and that a brand that attempts to cling to the things that made it successful then will find that it falls behind, and inertia will generate crises. In many instances, a leader who must turn around a brand is simply doing the things that should have been done long before the situation came to a head.

Some of the common themes for brands that have successfully rebounded are:

Ultimately, dealing with a brand crisis means realizing that you're going to have to "take a pounding, then get back to work."

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