“What is wrong with us?! But we’ve done everything possible!” — This is an emotional question on the lips of many business owners whose business keeps taking a nosedive.
Earlier on Branditechture Blog, we identified ways in which you can align your brand with your brand strategy in order to circumvent common brand problems. But a lot of brand owners don’t even realise that they are in danger until it is too late.
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In this post, we have highlighted 27 causes of brand failure to help you detect impending danger and raise your awareness;
- Overhyping and underdelivering — Not delivering as communicated in the brand promise.
- Focusing too much on sales promotion at the expense of brand building.
- Trying to be everything to everyone.
- Loss of brand equity due to inattentive brand advertising.
- When there is a disconnect between the brand strategy and the business strategy.
- Confusing brand improvement with logo redesign.
- Wrong partnership
- Frequently changing your brands positioning and message.
- Decreasing the quality of product or service in a bid to reduce operating and overhead costs.
- Increasing the prices of products or services at a rate greater than inflation while still targeting the same low-end market segment.
- Bringing the brand under too much pressure to produce quarter-over-quarter revenue and profit — A common problem among tech startups.
- Persistently refusing a brand strategy audit and sticking fervently to a declining brand strategy with hopes of “better days.”
- Failure to branch the brand into (a) new sub-brand(s) when the main brand keeps showing a decline.
- Using the same brand identity in completely different categories and markets. For example, marketing a real estate business and logistics business under the same brand identity — Dilutes the efficacy of your marketing efforts and confuses your audience.
- Prioritizing personal benefits over customer needs as a reason for creating new brands or sub-brands.
- Launching sub-brands that inadvertently cause a poor public opinion of the parent brand instead of improving the existing brand.
- Failed attempt to extend the brand up to a premium segment or down to a value segment without a fallback strategy.
- Not keeping up with the industry standards on product quality.
- Evading government policies.
- Final decisions that adversely affect the brand are made by executives with very little to no fundamental knowledge of branding.
- Senior staff do not understand the brand values and what the brand stands for.
- A complete absence of a brand champion within the organization.
- Licensing the brand name out to just anyone as long as they meet will pay for it.
- Having no person or department responsible for brand PR, mindshare, supervision, and management.
- Having no brand guidelines, manual, guide or brand book, leading to inconsistent presentation and customer confusion.
- Choosing generic (non-proprietary) brand name especially when you have a very little promotional budget.
- Trying to make too many points in your brand communication rather than focusing on the one or two most compelling points of difference.
Did we miss something? Please drop a comment below.
Branditechture has a strategic brand consultancy focused on Brand Naming, Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education. Shoot us a message to request an (online) appointment.