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Ten Important Questions Brand Owners Need To Ask Overview
In our work with clients, we typically find that once we start workingwith them very few actually proactively manage their reputation andeven less understand the implications of not doing so. This papersets out to challenge the thinking of those responsible for consumerbrands and demonstrate successful case studies with a view toincreasing the attention given to this important aspect of brandmanagement and how this fits within an overall marketing strategy.
What do we mean by reputation?
Brand reputation is what consumers and customers say about thebrand, rather than what the brand owner says about it. Brand realityis based entirely on how people perceive the brand and can makethe difference between brand success and brand failure.
Why does brand reputation matter?
Reputation management is growing in its importance. The rapid risein social media has led to substantial increase in consumergenerated content. Any consumer is now an opinion former.Unfortunately for brand owners, a large amount of this contentcontains misleading information which damages the perception of the brand held by others. Worse still, technology enables thismisleading information to spread quickly and once in the publicdomain, it is a considerable challenge for brand owners to changethese perceptions or to successfully communicate accurateinformation to balance the viewpoint. Additionally traditional mediafrequently now pick up and report these inaccuracies to largeaudiences.A lot of the work undertaken by Brand Reputation is focused onhelping Marketing Directors improve what their consumers andcustomers say about their brand. We often start by challengingthem by asking them to answer the following ten questions:
How large is the difference between what you communicateabout your brand & what consumers believe about it?
We find that few brand owners are able to answer this question. Notthat many even know why consumers don’t believe theirmessaging. For example an electrical retailer that had a reputation
© Brand Reputation Ltd 2009. All rights reserved. The intellectual property of this article is retainedby Brand Reputation Ltd and no part of this document may be published or shared without priorpermission.
18 Soho Square, London. W1D 3QLwww.brandrep.co.uk
 
for very poor customer service (aggressive sales staff, lots of products out of stock, unreliable own label products). The companydid not recognise their poor reputation and that customers werebecoming increasingly disappointed with their brand experience.Instead the retailer spent approximately £2million on advertisingwhat a great customer experience they were providing (as analternative to competing on price).All this advertising did was remind customers that the brandprovided poor customer service which drove sales away to theircompetitors. Once the brand realised the mistake of the campaignmessage, their market share had fallen by nearly 7%. This cost thecompany around £4million in lost profit. What efforts has yourcompany made in this area? Do you really know what yourcustomers think and say about you?
What percentage of sentiment towards your brand ispositive versus negative?
Few brand owners measure sentiment. We believe this is mainlybecause they don’t know what to do to increase the level of positivesentiment or how to easily access this information. We’ve foundthat not enough Marketing Directors track changes in perceptionover the long term and map this against the various activities thebusiness undertakes.Brand Reputation worked with a financial services client last yearthat had experienced a three year decline in positive sentimentregarding value for money amongst private banking customers. Thecompany had increased current account charges by 60% over thesame time period. As a result these high value customers expressedan increasingly level of frustration. The company lost sales of muchmore profitable products to the same customers due to thisfrustration.We worked with the company to develop and implement ageographically discrete pilot where current account charges werereduced back to 2005 levels. During the pilot, the company saw a12% gain in positive brand sentiment and increased participation innew investment products, which improved profitability in the pilotarea by 8%. The company has now rolled this strategy out to all itsprivate banking customers and tracks sentiment levels on a monthlybasis to ensure this highly valuable segment of their customer baseremain satisfied. Are you measuring sentiment? If not, why not?
Is your brand as transparent, ethical and responsible as itcould be?
© Brand Reputation Ltd 2009. All rights reserved. The intellectual property of this article is retainedby Brand Reputation Ltd and no part of this document may be published or shared without priorpermission.
18 Soho Square, London. W1D 3QLwww.brandrep.co.uk
 
Brand Reputation was approached at the start of 2009 by a luxuryfood retail chain who were becoming increasingly concerned thatthe brand was vulnerable to criticism regarding their procurementpolicies.We undertook an audit of customer attitudes towards the brand anda behavioural study to ascertain what proportion of their customerswere influenced by their perception of the ethical stature andconduct of the company. The results were used to develop acorporate responsibility policy and statement of future intent. Thispolicy and statement (together with details of a partnership BrandReputation established for our client with a trade body) areprominently communicated in-store. The awareness of thisinitiative amongst loyal customers has increased average visitfrequency by more than 4%. Do you consider corporateresponsibility as part of your brand plan?
Have you calculated the value of sales you have lost due toyour reputation?
In our work we nearly always see a direct correlation between saleslevels and reputation levels, but not all the boards we work withhave historically measured this.A hotel group that had seen an 8% decline in sales retained BrandReputation to develop a new marketing strategy to reverse thedecline. At the initial development phase we conducted areputation audit to ascertain what lapsed and active customersperceived about the brand. We discovered that the brandcommunication was not the main problem but that the hotels wereproviding an inconsistent service and that was affecting thereputation and sales through word of mouth.We worked with the board of the business to develop and implementa training programme to drive up service levels and consistency of delivery. This improved the reputation of the brand, which in turndrove sales back up to the previous level. Have you calculated theopportunity cost of not optimising your reputation?
How do you plan to change or improve consumer perceptionof your brand?
If few Marketing Directors fully understand the perception of theirbrand, then even fewer actively work at strengthening perception asmost are focused on delivering their annual plan, managing theirteam and their budget and delivering their sales week by week.
© Brand Reputation Ltd 2009. All rights reserved. The intellectual property of this article is retainedby Brand Reputation Ltd and no part of this document may be published or shared without priorpermission.
18 Soho Square, London. W1D 3QLwww.brandrep.co.uk
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