Telling consumers to think in a certain way could spell trouble, says Digital Drums’ Steve Dunne
As a young marketing student back at the start of my career, I was given an interesting definition of a customer by my college lecturer. “Never forget,” he said, “that your customer is the person who indirectly pays for all your holidays, hobbies and homes, and gives you the opportunity to truly be yourself.”
If that is indeed a definition of a customer, then surely any right-thinking company leader, director or brand manager would consider it plain crazy to insult, slight or denigrate them, wouldn’t they?
And yet recently, across a wide range of marketing sectors, from consumer to charity, we have witnessed, almost daily, brands and company leaders doing just that.
It was reported that staff on ITV’s This Morning programme refer to their viewers as ‘Tower Block Traceys’, while leading DIY store Wickes allegedly had a board director describe a large chunk of British consumers as either thick, bigots or both. Rather alarmingly for his shareholders, one would imagine, he even stated they were not welcome in his stores.
Many other brands, ranging from Bud Light to Oxfam, have decided to move beyond their remit of selling beer or raising funds to fight poverty, and instead have ventured into activism, aggressively driving forward messages somewhat beyond their marketing brief.
Brand damage
The common denominator for all these brands has been consistent: it rarely ends well for them. Instead of forwarding the cause they are espousing, they simply damage the brand, leading to boycotts, step-downs and public apologies.
So far, to my knowledge, this has yet to happen in the travel sector. But that doesn’t mean it can’t.
Brands do of course have a wider role to play in society than just selling products and services. Responsibility to society for a brand doesn’t, and shouldn’t, end at the factory gate. But it’s when a brand muddles up leading by example with telling people how to live their lives and what to think that things start to go awry.
The travel sector, for me, has always been a leader in areas such as diversity, equality and inclusion. It has encouraged people, staff and customers alike to experience new cultures and embrace new ways of thinking. Long may it stay that way. But the temptation for those passionate travel leaders and their brands to move beyond leading by example towards telling consumers to think in a certain way is where real danger to a brand’s reputation lies.
Customer alienation
The same goes for junior staff. Often one finds that a brand’s social media channels are managed by young, idealistic professionals who have fantastic knowledge of how to use the incredible reach and power of the medium to promote messages, but less understanding of brand personality, image and reputation.
The result can be the brand failing to “stay in its lane” and inadvertently driving its customers away.
All this, of course, may get dismissed by those who will say that the Oxfam, Bud Light, Wickes and ITV incidents are just storms in tea cups; that apart from a bit of turbulence and short-term bottom line losses, no serious damage was done.
But that would be a mistake, as those incidents are rarely forgotten and are sure to be brought up again when the brand hits bad times.
And, in certain situations, telling customers how to think, or worse, insulting them, can kill a brand for good. Just ask Gerald Ratner, once the omnipresent giant of the high street jewellery world who, in a mad moment he was to regret forever, described his own product as “crap”. His powerful brand never recovered and pretty soon afterwards didn’t exist.
So, when it comes to trying to change a customer’s wider approach to life, tread carefully. Show them the way but, for the good of your brand, never tell them the way.