We recently helped one of our clients as they developed their brand proposition and key messaging, aligning this with their strategic direction. It’s what we do.
These kinds of projects are always a valuable reminder of the need to stay focused on the core elements of a brand and the values that support it. Continually stressing the importance of this focus in each and every meeting becomes a critical part of a successful brand strategy – yet clearly some organisations appear to lose that focus, often very suddenly and with dire consequences.
While doing this exercise we saw a new report by “Which? Magazine” on the best and worst of UK retailers. What struck a chord in this survey was how many organisations, even traditionally great ones, can so easily lose their way and devalue the brand they have spent many years building. Practical, real life experience over the last few days has strongly reinforced this.
We make no claims to be retail experts but we do think we are pretty good at strategic marketing and reputation management. The core rules apply to almost any industry or sector.
The winners in that survey, organisations like Richer Sounds and Lakeland, have a clear strategic direction, values staff happily live and breathe, and a focus on customer benefits that bring their brands to life in a way that adds value to them and to the people who enjoy the buying experience with them.
Unfortunately the same cannot be said of all big name retailers.
The Which? report had W H Smith bottom of the league table for customer satisfaction. Quoting some of the survey participants, this seemed to boil down to a sense of a business that has lost its strategic direction and the values that have underpinned many decades of success. “It is just not the same any more” one respondent said and this seemed to sum it all up for everyone.
Once upon a time W H Smith was the place to go for books, newspapers, magazines, music, and stationery. But today, if you look at the core product categories that Smith’s are focusing on, (assuming you can find your way through the stack it high, sell it cheap(-ish) shop layouts that are endemic now across the Smith’s retail network) then in every category somebody else does it better.
With books they are blown away by Waterstones; Ryman wins the stationery war easily; HMV has the better of them on music, film and gaming. And the family friendly Smith’s of old is now one of the biggest retailers of soft porn and tobacco products in the country – though it could be argued that it is rational to shift away from a family orientation if the rest of the country has!
So if they are not the best in category, are they the best for service? Regrettably, no.
The same day, at different ends of the country, we experienced the same, sad deterioration in staff attitude and customer service. In Gatwick Airport a shop assistant took apparent delight in telling a patient queue that she wasn’t paid enough to worry about complaining customers (he wasn’t complaining, he was asking a reasonable question which if dealt with properly would have enhanced his, and our, opinion of W H Smith.)
Same day, same company, same poor service, but this time in Liverpool – and a refusal to go and find a bag for a customer who was spending a significant amount of money. Once again, this alienated a whole queue of people who saw this as the way they were going to be treated when it came to their turn.
In contrast, on the same day as our dire Smith’s experience, we were positively engaged in a discussion with a sales person in Waterstones who was knowledgeable, helpful, and saw it as his role to inform and share his knowledge with customers – core values of the brand were epitomised in that one transaction.
Are Waterstones more expensive than Smith’s? We don’t really care anymore, but not when you compare their special offers, and certainly not expensive enough to make the Smith‘s experience tolerable or acceptable. In fact, on DVDs, all that can be said is that there is very rarely a price advantage at WH Smith and there is limited range. Even Tescos now can compete sharply on price for blockbusters that you may have missed first time around.
The point of all of this is not to have a go at W H Smith but to show how a business that loses its way strategically and loses the involvement of its staff can very rapidly lose its reputation – and sees plummeting brand value as a consequence. Unfortunately W H Smith seems to have forgotten all the basics we learn as young marketers. They seem to be drifting inexorably down the same commercial route as Woolworth, another great company that lost its brand focus and couldn’t recover it in time to avoid oblivion. Indeed, one has a sneaking suspicion that someone somewhere, as the credit crunch unfolded, thought that here was a gap in the market to be filled and forgot that recessions are relatively short term compared to reputations.
Any branding expert will tell you that your people are your brand; the way you behave and the way you treat your customer is your brand; and your brand equity is a critical part of your business value.
So be clear about what you do, how you do it and what you value. If your strategy is to be a cut price operator that doesn’t mean you have to cut service levels, quite the opposite in fact. But if you keep your brand values and your core proposition constantly at the forefront of your thinking and doing, then you will prosper and grow – lose it and a slow painful demise is almost guaranteed, certainly probable.
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