Brands, like children, need parenting
Brands require parenting similar to children to grow and succeed in this competitive world. The brand values and personality are shaped by its parents (the brand owner and the brand manager), the school (the agency) and the immediate family (other functions in the organization). The difference between a successful brand and a failed brand is its parenting.
How do parents approach parenting? What are the similarities with brand parenting?
1. A happy and stable family: Imagine the plight of children brought up in a dysfunctional family, those brought up by single parent or those who grow up with step parents. The child's emotional security is ensured only when the father and mother are in a stable and happy relationship and have a shared responsibility and vision for the child's future. Further, the parents need to have the financial capacity to support the child through the good and the rough times.
Similarly, it's important for the brand owner and the brand manager to have a cordial relationship and a common vision for the brand. Brands do suffer the same trauma when they are managed by different brand managers at different times, when the ownership changes hands and when there is frequent school changes. Each tend to take away more than what they leave behind.
2. What's good for me is good for the child too? Intuitive parents bring up the child the same way they were brought up by their parents. Hence the parenting style is rooted deep in the past. Since parents believe that what was good for them is good for the child too, they tend to impose their past on the child despite the need for a different approach befitting the time that the child has come into. Children brought up in the ways of the past often feel lost in the present and do take time to adjust to the present.
The brand managers too tend to impose their personal beliefs and learning on the brand irrespective of what is good for the brand. Its worse when the brand managers change frequently. Brands tend to loose their true identity when they are forced to take on an identity that is not theirs.
3. Blinded by love: Parents and brand managers love the child and the brand so much that they are blind to reality. Blind love prevents them from acknowledging any problem and hence they are often too late to realize the need for change and support.
4. My child is the best: Parents and brand managers believe that their child is the best and their ambitions for the child always exceed the child's own. To realize their ambitions they put the child through a rigorous routine on every possible task to develop a well rounded personality and skill sets. The child might end up being a jack of many trades and a master of none. The focus is on the number of skills the child possesses and not on mastering the few essential skills.
Parents also believe that they know their child better and never listen anything to the contrary even if it’s from well wishers. This is the reason why many brand managers are not research friendly and even if they do research they ignore the findings when the same does not confirm to their understanding of the child.
5. Love the child to death: Good or bad, parents love the child . So do brand managers even when they are responsible for the downfall of the brand.
6. Schooling: After parents, schools play the most important role in the child’s development. Choice of school is therefore a very important decision that the parents have to make. A good school will build a strong foundation and instill good values in the child whereas a poor school could undermine the child’s intrinsic abilities.
Advertising agencies play a very similar role in supporting the brand manager in developing the brand. Like children do not change schools frequently, it helps if the agency doesn’t change frequently. Unlearning and relearning will only set the brand back rather than take it forward. It should be remembered that the school and the agency only have a contractual agreement and hence their involvement with the child and the brand will definitely not be as high as the parents’. Parental supervision therefore is mandatory.
7. Support of the immediate family: Grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins form a very crucial support system for the child. A brand too requires the support of the other functions in the organization. For example, its success is equally dependent on the kind of support it gets from the sales function and the customer care function.
Originally posted on my blog The Naive Marketer and Consumer on 8th Nov, 2008.