Public perception of your product and company is paramount to you staying in business. However, how do you regain trust if you lose it? Usually you don't.
Most people operate on a "one strike" rule and if you are seen as being guilty or fail at providing service in a key aspect of your business? You won't be able to win them back. They will go with another option the next time they are looking for someone offering your services.
How do you save a brand from being mired and raise it to relevance again? What is the secret sauce or magic that can make this happen? After all, brands have risen from the ashes before think (Firestone, Reebok, and Ford).
The trick? There isn't one. Rebuilding a brand's reputation takes time, effort and a lot of grunt work. It isn't glamorous, fun or even that exciting. (Thus most brands try and never lose the trust of their customers.)
Here are some steps to get on the road to recovery:
1. Admit you are fallible. This is the best first step to recovery is transparency. Just say you screwed up as a brand and fix the problem. Then immediately work harder to get your company back on the right track (changing the conversation around your brand might not be a bad idea here).
2. Ask for feedback. Your customers are dying to tell you how they feel. Most of them will tell you that you suck but others will give valuable insight into your failings as a brand. It's how you take this advice and move forward with it that will be extremely important.
3. Don't Reinvent Yourself. Branding takes a tremendous amount of work and years and years of thought, insight and positioning. Why throw all that away? Focus on what is wrong and FIX IT. Don't flush your whole model though.
4. Troubleshoot. Sit down, think about what you are doing from both a company and a branding stand point. What allowed this to happen? How can we prevent it from happening again? How can we show that we are different?
5. Be consistent. Fix a key problem? Make sure your service/offerings don't fall apart in the other areas of your company. Any great experience can be erased by a bad one. Just hold tight and fast with what you know you can do.
Are any of these new? No.
Do all of these work? Yes.
Branding should be a thought, not a thesis.
The key is actually implementing and executing on these core concepts when going through a repositioning exercise. Taking a long scale look wouldn't be a bad idea either (Note to Pepsi: Stop firing CMOs every two years...clearly isn't working.)
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tagged as brand awareness, brand community, brand reputation, community branding, regaining brand equity, rejuvenated brands, social media brands, trusting brands
Absolutely right, Most people operate on a "one strike" rule and if you are seen as being guilty or fail at providing service in a key aspect of your business? You won't be able to win them back. They will go with another option the next time they are looking for someone offering your services. http://mortgage-protection-insurance.net/
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