‘Living the brand’ is easier said than done

“Brand Manners”
By Hamish Pringle and William Gordon
John Wiley & Sons Ltd.


I checked the balance in my credit card the other day with one of the biggest banks in the world. An answering machine gave me a series of instructions: press one … press two … or wait for the operator. I sighed with the cashier who was nervously waiting for the confirmation: “Is there a way to be free from answering machines? Where have all the telephone receptionists gone?”

Previously, it was my secretary who had been making the request for updating. My first encounter with an impersonal bank was actually serendipitous: I was reading a book, which warns against creating a “corporate distance” between company and customer. And this global bank was actually being distant from one customer it once courted without even trying. The bank is not alone.

Many companies here have joined the bandwagon in installing these answering machines who have effectively alienated them from their customers. And who, may I add, have belied their pronouncements about their customer-friendliness.

The book, interestingly titled “Brand Manners,” is a wake-up call to big – and even small – companies to make sure their organizations truly live up to the promise of the brand, their ads and their public relations positioning.

Sub-titled “how to create the self-confident organization to live the brand,” the book provides valuable advice to CEOs and marketing directors who continue to face the unwanted prospect “over-promising and under-delivering,” to use a phrase that’s been going around pointing to the all-too-familiar failure to deliver on their promises.

The authors – Hamish Pringle (director of Brand Beliefs Ltd) and William Gordon (strategy partner with Accenture, formerly Andersen Consulting) – put together a wealth of concepts and “to-do” guides that will enable corporations behind the brands to make it easy on management and employees to live up to the customer expectations they themselves have created.





The usual way was to install a “command and control” strategy to make sure the entire organization is primed for being “customer-driven.” However, such a strategy, externally applied to pressed from above, depends solely on “cascading” the CEO’s commitment to the customer. And, more often than not, the enthusiasm or passion peters out through layers and layers of the organization.

“No matter how good the work behind brand positioning, marketing and communication, a reputation can be ruined by a poor interaction between a customer and a brand representative,” the authors say.

“What is needed is a self-confident organization,” the book declares, one that has in its corporate culture a desire to please the customer and exceed his/her expectations.

Terry Leahy, CEO of Tesco in the United Kingdom (whose firm is presented as a success story in the book) underscored some fundamentals that, as Robert Fulghum would say, “we learned in kindergarten”: “There can be a huge improvement in business performance by applying the incredibly simple principle that good manners – good conduct, good behaviour – motivate everyone.”

The book offers a treasure trove of tables, illustrations and cartoons that either make the principles easy to understand or make a point unforgettable. Don’t miss this cartoon, titled “Phone Therapy” that provides a reductio ad absurdum some companies’ fetish for answering machines. A distraught caller, phone handset on his left hand hears a voice from the machine which says:

“Hello … This is the Police. If you are being attacked from behind by a mad axe-murderer, press ‘One’…”

The book has promised to deliver key concepts on enabling your organization to live up to its brand promise. It has done its part providing a single-minded approach to equipping your people from to CEO to the front-line employees for such a worthy goal. Your part is to read the book, page by page, illustration by illustration.

Living the brand is easier said than done. This book shows that it can be done – and how!