Taking a Stand With Your Brand - is it Worth Risking Your Reputation?
In the business of actively managing risk, reputation is a key component, and it’s often said that reputation is hard won and easily lost. So why is it that some brands, both personal and organizational, can suffer the kind of publicity that should destroy them yet they not only survive but they actually thrive?
The relationship between awareness, loyalty, risk, and reputation is more complex than simple aphorisms would lead us to believe. Do you understand when your brand can take risks and when it should batten down and consolidate? How do innovative brands use reputation to create space to take risks? Let’s see if we can explore that landscape a little.
To paraphrase author Stacey Kehoe, “what you say to others is advertising - what they say to their friends, is reputation. Businesses should be seeking advocates of their brand at all times.” This is certainly true. As Kehoe implies reputation builds or declines when you’re not in the room, and this reputation can be either in the glare of its own reputation or in the vulnerable shadow of someone else’s. Here are some examples of how co-branding ventures can have seriously good and bad consequences for brands.
Nike Dream Crazy
Nike is known as having a provocative brand image through the Just Do It tagline. So Nike supporting the Black Lives Matter #BLM movement by bringing in former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, (recently released by his team for taking a knee during the national anthem), could seem risky. Kaepernick’s refusal to compromise ended his career. Nike had a brand built on elite sports and commitment to change in performance and fitness. By supporting Kaepernick, although potentially polarizing, they were right on message.Following these ads, social media was awash with outraged white men burning their Nike shoes, but instead of fomenting an attack on the brand, these sports arsonists were roundly mocked for destroying something they had already paid for. Nike’s sales performance actually improved.
Gillette takes a Social Stand
Gillette had the same experience when they parodied their own strap of “The best a man can get” with a focus on toxic masculinity in a campaign called “We believe; the best men can be”, encouraging men to challenge toxicity in their own friendship groups. Their campaign was also strongly criticized coming off the back of the #MeToo movement but which showed Gillette taking a social stand for the first time. The backlash was mostly through mainstream media yet wasn’t followed by a call for a sales ban and the campaign resonated more than it jarred. Sales did take a short-term dive but bounced back very quickly. Gillette followed on with a transgender supportive campaign in 2019, and with Made of What Matters in 2020, supported black English Premiership footballer Raheem Sterling in calling out racism from the terraces during matches.
In both these cases there was sufficient support for the brands that they could actively court controversy and thrive. It was a contained, if bold, risk.
Business risk is all around us and events could mean missteps aren’t always predictable. How can our brand reputation help when we get it wrong? The real risk of creating brand damage might serve to limit ambition by a corporation that doesn’t really grasp their relationship to their brand supporters but playing it safe creates its own landmines both fiscally and for brands.
Seth Godin once said, “A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.” yet few consumers consider a brand in the round and a single misstep can blight a brand forever, regardless of previous performance, if the brand relationship isn’t well developed. It isn’t the screw-up itself but what what you do next that matters, turning adversity into loyalty. Nowhere is this more evident than in the airline industry.
Plotting Reputation with the Brand Relationship Arc
Dr Eric Solomon’s Brand Relationship Arc is a very helpful tool to plot the maturity and durability of a brand on its journey:
Dr Eric Solomon's Brand Relationship Arc
When a brand first emerges into a butterfly of consciousness, it generally exists only for their users, and broader brand awareness is limited. After a period, several brands take on deeper meaning for their market, becoming known for something, or even known for something their market cares about. Continuing the climb up the steep Relationship Arc sees users beginning to incorporate these brands deeper into their lives as something that shapes or defines them. At this point the brand becomes aspirational. The rarified atmosphere beyond this point is open to few brands, where people will forgive that brand almost any transgression, or even defend that brand at the cost of their own reputation. This is the world of the fan[boy/girl]. Of course, this is also a space that a brand really doesn’t want to consciously test! Fan brands can be fickle especially as they are emotionally tightly coupled to their admirers and any kind of failure feels like a break-up.
The Relationship Arc is very slippery in the other direction too so breaking the brand relationship though inauthentic behaviors or through mismanaging crises can mean an accelerating descent, when swift and decisive action is needed to put the brakes on that free-fall.
Understanding where you are on the curve with your product and corporate brands gives you an appreciation of brand tolerance for risk, and might even give you some space to innovate in. Failing to understand this relationship can result in hard lessons and hard landings.
