Dead brand walking

The business graveyard is filled with brands that have gone from the lofty heights of recognition, stature and profitability to flagging relevance and, ultimately, complete extinction. For every long-standing, legacy brand that continues to thrive (think Kraft or Coca-Cola) there is a former high flier that is now gone (think Borders or Oldsmobile).

Sometimes companies are hit by a largely unexpected exogenous force that sends them reeling. More often than not, the company’s ultimate demise surprises no one.

For some of us–investors or potential employees, for example–the key is to separate out the walking dead from the exciting turnaround story or the metaphorical Phoenix.

For business leaders, the obvious implication is to become aware of the early warning signs of decreasing brand relevance, accept the need to change and take the requisite actions. The obvious question, of course, is why are there so very many strategy meltdowns?

In my experience, brands go from healthy to critical in one or more of three ways.

First, you can’t fix a problem you aren’t aware you have. Many dead or dying brands lacked a fundamental level of customer insight. So not only did they not appreciate their vulnerability early enough, they didn’t focus on the important things quickly enough.

Second, just because you know something, doesn’t mean you accept it as the new reality. When I was a senior executive at Sears–the poster child for dead brands walking–we had tons of evidence that clearly showed our weakening relevance and declining profitability in our core home improvement and appliance businesses. Did those that could have changed Sears’ destiny truly accept that without aggressively attacking these issues it would eventually be game over? Sadly, then, as it is now, the answer is “no.”

More recently, when I ran strategy and multi-channel marketing at Neiman Marcus, we had plenty of customer research and analytics that our strategy of narrowing our assortments and pushing prices ever higher was losing us valuable customers to Nordstrom (among others). Did we accept that it constrained our growth and made us increasingly vulnerable in an economic downturn? Fortunately the harsh lesson of the recent recession–and a new CEO–“forced” Neiman’s to address these problems before they became crippling.

Lastly, even with keen awareness and complete acceptance of new realities, we regularly fail to take the (often radical) action needed. This is mostly about fear. Fear of being wrong. Fear of looking stupid. Fear of getting fired. Fear of risking one’s legacy or resume value.

In fact, history teaches us that it’s far more common to see executives holding on to a mediocre status quo rather than risk competing with one’s self or making a big bet on that new technology or innovative business model that is ultimately used against them by an upstart competitor.

Frankly, if your inability or unwillingness to act on saving your brand is rooted in fear, don’t hire McKinsey or Bain (or me for that matter) to help you with your strategy. My advice would be to get yourself a new management team and/or go see a therapist. It’s far cheaper and more likely to work. And do this before your Board figures it out.

Dead brands almost never die by accident. They die by leaders failing to see the signs of terminal illness while there’s still time to save them. And they die by management teams’ inability or unwillingness to take the necessary and decisive action before it’s too late.

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