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Act in unison with your parent Brand.
Congratulations to Tim Hortons. For the third year in a row, they’ve
been recognized in a survey of 1,000 executives from across Canada
as this country’s best-managed Brand. Tim’s understands
that to be a strong Brand, their 2,651 stores have to act like a
single unit.
Sheraton? Not so much.
Last September, I gave a talk on Branding to a conference of 500
Financial Advisors in Niagara Falls. When I talk to a big audience
– one I’ve been told will be Brand skeptics – I might
get just a wee case of the butterflies. So to prevent any other
issues from getting in the way of a memorable presentation, I hired
a car to whisk me calmly from Toronto to the Sheraton on the Falls
where the gathering was being held. Beautiful.
The driver knew exactly where the Sheraton on the Falls was –
or so he thought. But when he left me at the hotel with a few minutes
to spare, there was no trace of my audience. Inquiring at the front
desk, the put-out "Guest Services" rep clearly considered
me a blithering moron for being, as it turns out, at the wrong hotel.
I wasn’t at the "Sheraton at the Falls," but rather
at the "Sheraton on Fallsview." She flung me a poorly
photocopied strip of paper with a map to the right hotel. Obviously
there had been other morons.
Did I mention my nerves? Did I mention the car had left?
And have you ever talked to Bell Mobility on the phone about a special
offer only to have the Bell store tell you that just isn’t
the way it is? Same issue as Sheraton.
What does the Brand Coach coach?
 Hey
folks: You can’t have it both ways. If you want your business
to enjoy the benefits of a strong parent Brand, then you have to
act in unison with that strong parent Brand. Either you’re
in the Sheraton brotherhood or you shouldn’t be. Either you’re
in the Bell sisterhood or you shouldn’t be. A Brand is what
people think of you - and with membership in a parent Brand you’re
banking that people will think you’re part of something bigger
and better than just your lonesome. So when you act independently
of the parent by not thinking through what people are actually experiencing,
you undermine, bad experience by bad experience, the very benefit
you’re trying to leverage.
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