Failure of a brand is a common occurrence in an ever-growing world of expanding brands. New companies replace old companies, turning the business marketplace into a first-class representation of natural selection: only the strongest brands survive. A failed brand manifests itself in many ways.
Failed brands are considered outdated, they start to slowly lose relevance in the market. The loss of relevance leads to consumers lack of trust and faith in the brand. In a moment of desperation companies that feel their brand slipping away, along with their clientele`s trust start copying out successful competitors in order to stay afloat.
In the 21st century, the century of innovation in the business world, the only way to copy a successful competitors’ strategy is if your final outcome exceeds theirs, and your price point matches those of a satisfied customer base. Otherwise, your brand will fall behind a long line of copycats, and such a title will never elevate your brand. In fact it will sink your brand in further failure.
Lack of authenticity is perhaps the most common factor as to why a brand fails. Once a brand is rendered unauthentic, it slowly loses creativity, trust, support, reliability, and profitability.
The extremity of authenticity, is also a fatal reason as to why a brand may fail. In a quest to demonstrate full authenticity, brands continuously change their positioning, their message and brand definition. This phenomenon also leads to loss of trust and reliability from the customer`s perspective.
Often enough brand exposure is also a top reason as to why brands lose equity. Overly exposing your brand and underexposing your brand through brand advertising is a main cause of brand failure. Cutting costs to eliminate brand advertising leads to underexposure of brand positioning and brand message. This is a choice very common amongst companies that prefer to cut costs in the marketing and advertising department, often enough result fatal for a business.
Overexposing a brand is sometimes a difficult path to follow because your brand`s advertising-creative team must be indeed very creative, or else your brand risks becoming boring, uncool. It is important to remember that a brand is not ruined overnight. It is a lengthy process, and it is never sudden- the internal part of a business always feels and notices through their daily changes of perception, that something is going wrong within the business organization.
After having listed a series of factors that could negatively impact your business it is important to enable businesses with five major areas where failure originates from within an organization.
The first sphere where failure can manifest itself is: Weak Competitive Analysis.
Underestimating competitors, overlooking the efforts, strategies and investments of competitors allows companies to stray their brand away from the marketplace`s focus. An old saying goes as follow: Keep your friends close and enemies closer. Meaning that an enemy/competitor must always be closely monitored.
The second sphere is: Rearview Mirror Syndrome. Similarly, to people, brands can also be stuck in their comfort to the point where they are scared to step outside and challenge themselves. Nowadays, standing out is closely related with challenging oneself and setting up a challenge for your entire industry. This is perhaps one of the best ways to push your boundaries and catch your customer`s attention.
The third sphere is : Complacency. Brand innovation is often based on complacency. Similarly to overlooking competitors, complacency calls for brands looking in the wrong areas or wrong business for competitor analysis. When monitoring the market to base off brand development its crucial to monitor not simply existing “threats” but also possible emerging “threats” such as startups.
The fourth sphere of failure manifestation is : Failure to Innovate. Innovation is the headline of our business world, and what sets businesses apart. As long as, there is innovation there will always be demand. Lack of innovation pushes clients to search for it elsewhere, thus inducing loss, failure and lack of profitability.
Last but not least : Failure to Monitor the Brand. Monitoring is performed through what marketers call brand metrics measures. The most important brand metrics are the following:
· Brand awareness
· Consumer trust and confidence
· Customer loyalty and engagement
· Brand ranking in the marketplace
Monitoring the above mentioned brand metrics is heavily important to maintain a powerful brand, steer away from failure and ensure customer satisfaction.
Keywords : brand, brand failure, brand development, brand in marketplace, customer loyalty, competitor analysis, trust, brand engagement, brand strategy, brand exposure, brand equity, brand awareness, brand perception, monitoring marketplace, brand authenticity, brand risks, brand innovation, startups
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