I came across this interesting tale of retailing leviathan Walmart appearing to put the boot into the dear old Girl Scouts of America by selling a direct competitor to the cookies that the Girls sell every year for fundraising. Whilst the author goes a bit ballistic in her criticism of Walmart it raises the interesting point about brand AUTHENTICITY.
Many of you will know that I bang on about brand authenticity all the time but it’s clear that in these constrained times brands have an ever more important role to play in relationships with customers since one of the principal roles of a brand is to tell customers (and prospects) what to EXPECT from the brand.
It is certainly true that customers are drawn more and more to brands that they can believe in and trust. A recent article in the splendid Fast Company magazine reasserts this notion that the brands that consumers connect with are those that they trust the most. As John Grant in The New Marketing Manifesto says “Authenticity is the benchmark against which all brands are now judged” . There are many examples of brands that failed to earn the trust of their customers or simply flushed it away in a moment of corporate madness or wanton sell-out – think Body Shop maybe? Or Coca Cola ‘Classic’? Or even, closer to home ‘Friends Reunited’? It’s easy to think that chasing the ’next big thing’ might be root to growth or stability but in reality, most brand extension (or over-extension) wither on the vine anyway. I see Starbucks have themselves recently admitted that they have grown too much and the very essence of their brand has been lost in the relentless pursuit of growth.
So why do brands continue to believe that they can thrive by misleading customers or by attempting to construct brands that have not earned the RIGHT to be trusted? Well, here’s the punch-line folks : brand trust is EARNED not bought, AND once earned it is a fragile, gossamer asset that must be cherished and nurtured every moment of every single day.
Let’s remember that whilst we try to retain as many faithful customers as we can in these difficult times: we need to earn their trust, and once we have it, we need to maintain it.
