By: mila
Crisis ALWAYS Comes….Is Your Brand Ready?
Every company is one employee mistake away from a brand crisis. Individuals or companies will eventually do something wrong – either on purpose or accidentally. Failure, even when intentional, isn’t the death nail – how you handle it is.
Brand plays a massive role in recovery. If you have a strong brand – your recovery is shorter. Why? People KNOW who you are or what your company really is and are loyal. When you haven’t shared WHY you do what you do, haven’t trained employees on this, don’t use brand values as a filter daily and haven’t used social media to share your position – then, recovery is longer if ever.
Individuals or companies.
-Have brand values that act as filter for all you do – Every.single.day.
-Train your employees so that they can use the filter words – Every.single.day.
-Build brand through storytelling.
-Know what people think RIGHT now – before a crisis.
-Have a brand guide – this is your north star.
United Airlines brand crisis shows us what NOT to do. A passenger is dragged off of a plane – the CEO releases a statement defending the actions and protocol taken by the flight crew and apologized for having had to ‘re-accommodate these passengers.’
Within 24 hours of the incident, United Continental had lost $800 million in total value. WHY? Brand wasn’t strong, values not in place and a filter that was broken.
Tylenol on the other hand has become the poster child for how to win in a brand crisis. They could have tried to save money, but instead, risked it all by removing Tylenol from all shelves, told people NOT to take it and became a company we can trust. By using their credo as their guide (This is the brand statement, mission, WHY they do what they do), they won by doing the RIGHT thing even when it was the HARD thing.
DO YOU HAVE A CREDO? WHY STATEMENT? BRAND VALUES? BRAND CORE VALUE STATEMENTS? If not, your employees don’t have a North Star and you are operating blindly. Brand drives everything. Especially in a crisis.
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