Protect your brand

Why Protecting Brand Equity is Everyone’s Job

Practical Do’s and Don’t Tips to Protect Your Brand

A strong brand is invaluable. It is one of its most important assets for any business, often a culmination of years of effort, investment, and dedication.

Unfortunately, brand reputation can be shattered in an instant. Protecting brand equity is not solely the responsibility of the marketing department. Every employee, from the CEO to the frontline staff, plays a crucial role in upholding the brand’s integrity.

Your brand is your promise to your customers. Protecting it ensures that promise is kept, fostering trust and loyalty in the long run.

What keeps the marketing team up at night?

A peek inside the marketing curtains.

Being a marketer goes well beyond cool campaigns, creating pretty brochures, and playing with new artificial intelligence tools. Protecting brands is a major responsibility and can be a heavy burden at times. Here’s a sampling of the many thoughts that permeate our marketing brains.

“If we respond too slowly on social media, customers fault the brand for not caring enough.”

 

“Remarketing and email automation technology helps my team perform better, but what is the right balance to avoid alienating prospective clients?”

 

“If we don’t make a statement about what’s happening within our community, prospects assume we’ve done nothing.”

 

“How can we ensure the ethical use of AI in our marketing without inadvertently perpetuating biases or discriminatory practices?”

 

It’s amazing we marketers get anything done, let alone deliver ROI on our marketing activities.

Tip #1. Know The Fundamentals of Public Relations

Keeping brands out of the news. Expect the worst. Prepare for the best.

An investigative journalist group informed me that in 48 hours they were releasing an exposé story on a supplier that produced one of my medical devices. This group claimed the supplier illegally manufactured the device. You can imagine the gravity of the situation and potential scenarios racing through my head. Consumers panicking, hospitals threatening to discontinue our medical device, concerned employees and senior leadership questioning the value of a long-term supplier. All of this was on my shoulders. The next 48 hours were intense with many, many meetings and crisis communications plans developed and implemented. The news story was released, but there were no merit to the accusations. Fortunately, it did not get wide press and my brand was not mentioned. In this situation, the best publicity was no publicity. But I was prepared and had prepared detailed processes and procedures. In today’s viral world of social media, you must be ready – with technology –  to help you listen and respond to keep your brand strong and safe.

Tip #2. Even the most mundane details can impact brands.

You must sweat the small stuff with your brand. Really.

Being faced with massive PR situations comes with the job. But it’s the little things that can destroy brand equity. I managed a #1 market share position thanks to shelf space at Home Depot. I was overseeing a packaging redesign and signed off on the design for printing. Fast-forward to a call from Home Depot’s buyer that the UPC bar code was ringing up incorrectly – at a lower price. Consumers paid less, but Home Depot got shortchanged on each sale. Not only did I have to make them whole on the margin loss, the entire inventory also had to be reworked. During the lengthy package review process, I manually proofed the UPC on each revision, except the last proof. It was correct in all previous versions. What could possibly go wrong?! It was a costly error to my brand and negatively impacted the relationship with my customer. I should have heeded carpentry wisdom of “measure twice, cut once.”

Tip #3. Don’t let your brand be ruined in a single moment.

Everyone can lend a hand in brand safety.

We all are brand ambassadors and play a role in protecting brand equity even if we’re not in the marketing department. In today’s digital world, mistakes whether unintentional or not, can have an even more detrimental effect when hitting ‘send’. Errors, like misspellings, incorrect grammar, tone, or language that may offend, can be devastating. Having an extra set of eyes is golden. Of course, most companies don’t have the luxury of a dedicated team member to proof every piece of content or social media post. Then ask someone from another department to proof – even reading from the bottom up can catch mistakes. You’ll be amazed how many inaccuracies can be found by someone who isn’t familiar with our “marketing speak.” It is better to send a campaign out late than dealing with the internal and external repercussions of slip-ups. Trust me, I know. I’ve been there. I once deployed an email campaign to 5,000 users with a misspelled product name – even after many cross-functional reviews. Gulp!

Mistakes happen – whether we are decades into our career or just venturing out. That is how we learn and continuously improve. My hope is you work for an organization that truly embraces learning from failures. We want customers to have real, authentic experiences with our brands on social media, but not at the expense of brand denigration.

Two simple brand safety questions to ask yourself:

(1) Would you still do “XYZ” if negative publicity was splashed on the front page of a media outlet?

(2) Would you say “XYZ” out loud to your grandma? If not, then don’t say or do it at all.

Brand Mistakes: Lessons Learned

Share your brand blunder stories

What is your most embarrassing brand blunder? What would you have done differently? What brand actions will you continue doing – or not – in the future?

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