Big companies & how they kill their own brands

I get on my soap box from time to time, and this is one of them.

This post is about “How to screw up your Brand Power”. We have several companies here in Australia that deal in electronics, whitegoods, furniture – so they are the bare bones of retail if you will. These companies obviously push their brand heavily in the traditional media such as TV, papers and mail drops.

Now there is nothing at all wrong with this (all businesses need to push their brand in areas that give them that brand recall over a competitor), however it is the way they do it.

Let me give you an example. Harvey Norman is one of these large companies that run loads and loads of ads in prime time TV spots, I think they offset the cost in the ad placement by producing the worst ads possible . The ads they put on have to be some of the cheapest and most annoying. Now before anyone says “ah ha – but see you’re talking about them in your blog so it must be effective”……..  keep reading. Bad publicity is not always good publicity.

So these ads are basic primary colours with incredibly cheap graphics and VERY loud screaming about how you MUST go and buy from them. (It’s kind of like when your parents would yell at you I guess) . So we have Loud, Ugly and Offensive.

Now in this house (my home) these ads get muted and we all talk to each other (quite nice really). No one in the family engage these ads. I have 3 kids 15, 10 and 7 and they hate these ads (if you’re not sure on the implications of upsetting this lot then read this post – Your market in 2014

These ads are so disliked that I know I never bother with the company when I need anything and I know my kids (their future market) think they are worthless and don’t relate to them at all.  On top of that – this generation  really network. And one of the most talked about topics by this generation is ….. anything that is cool (check out Tumblr if you want to see a young generation micro and reblogging ) You could say that this is the “Wisdom of the gen Y crowd”. They all listen to each other and their opinions of, and about each other matter incredibly.

OK so that is the TV – as for the mail drops there is another interesting area. The graphics ! They’re ugly and again with the primary colours blah blah – but also not a hint of green (as in environmental). Not recycled paper, or commitment to helping anybody but themselves. This doesn’t go down well with the next gen.

They are not happy we have been screwing the planet up and they DO relate to companies that show a commitment to helping fix the balance.

I talk with and watch how my 15 year interacts with her friends and what I find incredible is that if they like the way a company does business they actually back it. Of course this is subjective, however that’s the point – if your business is targeting the next gen that are environmentally conscious (and there are loads of them) then think about how you can improve in this area. If they are tech savvy then how do you do this so they want to talk about you.

By the way – these are not easy areas that you can fake – they smell that a mile away. Start by making the changes now, bit by bit and you will find a very loyal following and strong client base in the years to come.

Just a quick hats off (so I’m not all negative) to Target for one of their latest ads. Beautifully shot stop motion techniques with fantastic colours utilising bed sheets and products that look almost like a real life animation. As a result – that target ad  was discussed lots by my daughter and friends and the company has become one step closer to becoming cooler in my 15 year old eyes.

{steps down off the soap box and packs it away}