Okay, so when I set off for the Supermarket at the weekend Club Biscuits were not on the shopping list; but you know how it is, retailers are very clever at putting stuff at the end of an aisle to attract your attention, and for me, the lure of 6 Mint Club biscuits PLUS 2 free for just a £1 was too much!
I could already here that jingle in my head as I headed to the check-out “If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our club” ….so, imagine my disappointment when I got home, made a cuppa and set about unwrapping said biscuits to find that there was virtually no chocolate on them at all?!!
Now, in the interests of fairness, at the point of sale in the shop there were no speakers playing that jingle, that was just in my head, but what it shows is the true power of a successful brand. I hadn’t bought Club biscuits for 20 years, but on seeing them I instantly recalled the brand values they had promoted all those years ago…really great marketing.
Perhaps surprisingly, the producers of Club Biscuits do still promote their core brand value even today http://www.mcvities.co.uk/products/club , but the reality is they don’t in fact deliver on it. The consumer experience – me being the consumer – was extremely disappointing.
It leads to a great point. If you are going to use strong brand attributes to promote your products and services, then you absolutely must deliver on them. Offering great products and great service to induce customers to buy from you – and failing to meet their expectations – is a sure-fire way of damaging your business reputation, and ultimately your business full stop.
If you look at our industry. who has the most enduring brand reputation? There are many great companies in the industry promoting their goods and services as the corner stone of their brand identity, and they continue to deliver on them. Even through the worst excesses of recessions or tough market trading conditions they have never wavered, and they should be congratulated.
If you look beyond our industry and utter the words ‘Vorsprung Durch Tecnik’ – am I the only one who has no idea what it means? – it conjures up a simple phrase in everyone’s mind ‘German Engineering’, and that phrase has become a brand in itself which is associated with words such as ‘reliability, quality, technical superiority, innovation’ to name just a few.
The brand value of German Engineering is seemingly indestructible, and you have a sense that anytime you buy a German car you will get exactly what you are expecting. That’s brand value at its best and again, congratulations are due! It is the model we should all aspire to.
So, back to my biscuits, whatever your brand values are you must ensure that your products and services match up to what you are promoting – and if that says that you are going to put a lot of chocolate on your biscuit then you should do exactly that!