Maintaining the Brand’s Core Value

By recognizing which aspects of their brands are particularly valued by consumers, marketers have invested and protected these attributes, sustaining their value and maintaining consumer loyalty. Any pressures from accountants or factory managers to cut support for these core values have been strenuously resisted.

Over time consumers learn to appreciate the core values of brands and remain loyal to their favorite brands since they represent bastions of stability, enabling consumers confidently to anticipate their performance. It therefore behaves companies to have a statement of their brand’s values which is given to any manager working on the brand, whether internal or external to the firm, in addition to all of the most senior management team. There needs to be a mechanism in place whereby any marketing plans for the brand are carefully considered against the statement of core values to ensure that none of the core values are adversely affected by any planned activity.

Having a statement of core brand values ensures that changes in advertising agencies, aimed at breathing new creative life into the brand, will be in a direction consistent with the brand’s heritage. It can also act as a ‘go-no-go’ decision gate when managers are faced with the need to respond to an increasingly hostile commercial environment. In the first half of the 1990s Lever’s brand of washing powder, Persil, faced increasing challenges from Procter & Gamble’s brands, such as Ariel. Little innovation was evident until Lever’s research laboratory developed a revised formulation for Persil with manganese accelerator. Up until this innovation, one of Persil’s values was that of a caring brand, caring about whiteness, skin, washing machines and mothers’ reputations. One might question whether this technological enhancement reinforced the caring value, but faced with an aggressive competitor Lever decided to change Persil’s formulation. To get Persil Power to market as quickly as possible, only very limited field trials were undertaken. Alas, problems were discovered with Persil Power, which Ariel used to their advantage. Lever pulled back from Persil Power and with New Generation Persil it returned to its core values. Clearly managers have to respond to short term threats, but referring back to the statement of brand values should help identify strategies which build, rather than diminish the brand’s core values.

A further advantage of having a statement of brand values is that it enables managers to check their interpretation of the brand against the agreed view. By so doing they can then evaluate the appropriateness of their planned actions. Managers wisely concentrate on matching their target market’s needs and are rightly concerned about not letting their brand fall against competitive actions or changing consumer needs. However, what is often overlooked is the question do all of the brand’s team have the same views about the brand’s values?’ Brands don’t just die because of the external environment their life can be shortened by a lack of consistent views amongst a brand’s team. In a study amongst the senior management firms operating in financial services markets de Chernatony and Took found that amongst the twelve firms interviewed, while there were many managers in each team sharing similar views about the nature of their brand, in all of the firms there were managers had idiosyncratic views about particular aspects of their brand. Bearing in mind that these interviews were undertaken with senior managers responsible for staff and significant resources, idiosyncratic views could result in different departments almost pulling against each other as they separately enact the brand’s strategy. Not only is it worth having a widely circulated statement of brand values, but on an annual basis, when brand plans are being prepared, an independent party should audit all members of the brand team about their interpretation of their brand’s values. Where individuals have diverse views about aspects of the brand, these should be pointed out and through discussions any issues resolved.

Any plans to cut back on investments affecting the core values of the brand should be strenuously opposed by strong-willed marketers. By ensuring that everyone working on a particular brand is regularly reminded of the brand’s values, an integrated, committed approach can be adopted, so that the correct balance of resources is consistently applied. Checks need to be undertaken to ensure that any frills which do not support the brand’ values are eliminated and that regular consumer value analysis exercises, rather than naive cost- cutting programmers, are undertaken to ensure the brand’s values are being correctly delivered to consumers.