Character Determines Fate; Branding Shapes Future: Soy-n-Joy Organic-Tofu Vegan “Ice Cream” |
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Copyright © 2007 Soy-n-Joy® All Rights Reserved. Character Determines Fate; Branding Shapes Future: Soy-n-Joy Organic-Tofu Vegan "Ice Cream". Individuals are born from parents, making up families. Then family upbringing, school education, entertainment and recreation, clubs and associations, the workplace, friends and colleagues, the publication and electronic media, government, and society together shape your values, beliefs, assumptions, and habits; your values, beliefs, assumptions, and habits shape your character; your character determines what choices you make; and your choices determine your fate, in terms of your career development, your social relationships, your level of happiness, and the state of your wellness. The worst place to be in is where you cannot exercise your freedom of choice, because that means other people, not you, are determining your fate. Similarly, brands are born from brand ideas. The brand manager relies on differentiated product/service characteristics, market analysis, competitive information, and consumer insights to design the brand promise and positioning that shape the branding strategy; the branding strategy determines what kinds of brand signals are generated; the brand signals shape customer perception; and the customer's perception shapes his/her decisions and behaviors. Collectively, the customers' decisions and behaviors determine the market acceptance and future prospects of your offerings, irrespective whether they are your products, services, yourself, your family, or your country. One commonality is that your character shows through your observable behaviors which reflect your choices, and which shape your personal brand image in public eyes. Likewise, what your brand stands for shows through your chosen brand signals, which shape customer or public perception, and which in turn fix your brand image in people's minds. Brand power is soft power. It attracts customers by trust, through brand experiences at repeated moments of truth at customer contact points. And because it is based on trust, it is easy to leverage the brand by adding line extensions and expandable platforms, one after another. For example, Soy-n-Joy has expanded its tasty, organic-tofu "ice cream" choices to 33 vegan non-dairy flavors, added the festive enjoyment of healthy, guilt-free "ice cream" cakes, and supports other wellness platforms like weight-control and diabetic friendliness. Given the right resources, there is little constraint upon Soy-n-Joy to expand its brand appeal, whether through product innovations like soymilk shakes, baked goods, yogurts, puddings, and dressings, or through geographical expansion to other markets of the world. These are value-added and highly-differentiated concepts and products that are increasingly relevant to an expanding health-conscious consumer base, worldwide. For a brand to succeed and sustain its continued success, it is not good enough doing the right things and doing things right most of the time, you have to do the right things and do things right almost to perfection. This is a tall order, but it is also reality. Imagine that you sell wholesome foods 99% of the time; the defective 1% will turn customers off, spread damaging negative word-of-mouth, or threaten people's well-being. From a brand management standpoint, the 99% passing rate is definitely not good enough. In the traditional three-sigma statistical quality-control approach, the acceptable error rate is six in a thousand. In the high-precision six-sigma approach, we aim for almost perfection: an error rate of three in a million. That is the kind of reality in the global competitive arena. Good product quality only gives you the minimal qualification to compete. It takes much more to win an Olympic medal, let alone winning the gold, and winning it consistently. The best approach to quality control is prevention. You design in success before you start. It is always less expensive to prevent than to treat, and sometimes the damage is irreversible. Take smoking for example. Everybody knows that smoking is bad for health. But because in exceptional cases, some smokers live long lives (just like not all speeders get killed), some people assume that bad things cannot happen to them. They may prefer enjoyment to withdrawal, and they are not determined enough to kick the habit. So the damage worsens. The same is true for the overweight and obesity problem. Many people ignore the metabolic syndrome until type-2 diabetes and heart disease strike. But choices are available to individuals for prevention or treatment, if wellness priorities are high enough to trump habitual inertia. You really have a chance to determine your own fate. Managing public perception is no exception. The best, of course, is to always do the right things and do things right. But in the event that we face personal disreputation or product quality failure, the first thing to do is to verify the facts. Then we can overcome all the initial responses in crisis management, including shock, denial, anger, and confusion, and go straight to acceptance, resolution, and follow-up. In a global economy where joint-works and multi-party alliances are commonplace, the worst thing that can happen, when something goes wrong, is for the parties involved to finger-point at one other, especially in public. That gives people the impression that they are focusing on blame rather than solution, and putting their individual interests ahead of public interests. Instead, after verifying the facts, they should have jointly acknowledged the reality and magnitude of the problem, and announced joint corrective actions to assure customers of their best efforts to put things right again. The faster your responsible response, the more decisive you appear to be, and the earlier and the more likely you can rescue your reputation or brand, whether you are dealing with your personal image, branded goods, or commodities you sell. You have a choice to turn things around, in your favor. Branded goods/services and unbranded commodities trade on different criteria. Branded compete on relevant differentiation and delivering the brand promise, while commodities compete on price. Commodities command slim margins, unless supply is restricted by monopolies or oligopolies. By nature of non-price competition, branded goods reap the most economic benefits. In a simplistic way, and putting aside historical and structural considerations, that grossly explains the sustained wealth of U.S. corporations. They are astute brand managers: U.S. brands make up seven of the world's top ten brands. Their business models pervade the global economy and the brands command admiration by prestige and loyalty by trust. Although recent infrastructural failures in the U.S. have tarnished the "U.S." brand somewhat, its commercial brands, collectively, are still unrivaled. They have won by functional delivery and emotional connection. In other words, they have fulfilled their brand promises, consistently, and sometimes showered customers with delight, by beating expectations. It is not that they don't make mistakes. But if mistakes are committed or misfortunes strike, as long as they are not habitually complacent, arrogant, and ignoring environmental signals, they learn from their mistakes or misfortunes, and are resilient enough to turn problems into opportunities. In doing so, they have frequently referred to their reason for being and reflected on their core values to guide them through the darkest hours, and formulate effective remedial measures. We can all learn something from how Johnson & Johnson handled the Tylenol poisoning scare. When Tylenol was maliciously laced with poison, the company's leaders referred to their core values of putting patients' well-being and medical professionals' trust first, and did the multimillion dollar recall. And they did not stop at the recall. They switched Tylenol to gelcaps and installed tamper-proof packaging, fast. Customer confidence rebounded quickly, because the company acted decisively and responsibly. Today Tylenol is still the number-one brand in analgesics, and therefore immensely profitable. They have, in effect, successfully turned a big problem into an enormous opportunity. Checks and balances are essential to character or brand building. They are like the banks bordering a river, keeping the flow of water within bounds. In a child's development, the parents play the role of the banks, providing guidance, monitoring feedback from schools and friends, managing the influence of peers and the media, and keeping the character-building within accepted boundaries. In a brand's development, the brand manager will rely on research for directional insights and the verification of assumptions, and tracking the actual outcome versus expectations. If things go well, you will want to know how good things are and why; and if things do not go well, you will also want to know how bad things are and why. Then you will want to make effective remedial measures in a timely manner, to restore customer confidence before you lose their trust completely. Otherwise, in case the brand is a country, the country can lose credibility. Even if the country is willing to sell poor-quality goods at very low prices, market economics dictate that a poor-quality product at a lower-than-market price brings nothing but suspicion, and destined failure. Leadership economics dictate that the first and second top brands in a category usually reap over 75% of the profits in that category, with 70% going to the top brand. Moreover, leading retailers will most likely stock only the top one or two national brands, a regional brand, and a store brand. Lower-down brands will struggle merely to survive. The importance of being at the top of the brand hierarchy cannot be overstated. We can choose to invest in brands that will bring the most positive impact in the shortest time frame. Start with consumables than with durables, because the impact of innovation or quality improvement is more readily perceived in goods that are purchased and used more frequently. For example, it is much easier to win customer approval when you are selling innovative, differentiated, relevant, and simple-to-understand low-glycemic, low-calorie, organic soy "ice cream" than to change customer perception when you are selling commodity durables like the air-conditioner or the refrigerator. It is also much easier and more likely, given resources, to occupy the top one or two brand spots in a category that you have created by entrepreneurial innovation. That is a natural law of market economy. If we want to compete in the global arena, we must think like our customers in order to understand their needs and concerns. And every point of customer contact is a "moment of truth." Only time will tell whether a person or a brand can stand up to the promise. The internalized character will show through external expressions, like personal behavior or brand signals. In all cases, integrity is of the essence. Like Abraham Lincoln said in1864: "You can fool all of the people some of the time; You can fool some of the people all of the time; But you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Integrity begets trust. So live it! Reputation consciousness drives quality awareness, just like character drives behavior, and branding strategy drives branding signals. If you want to change things for the better, whether living a more meaningful life or adopting a healthier lifestyle, you must first pay attention to your values, beliefs, assumptions, and habits, and make adjustments where necessary. If you are trying to revive a brand, you will need to identify the problem and verify the facts, examine the brand's continued relevance to customers and the gap of differentiation versus competitors, and take into account of your resources, before you can prescribe the medication. Then you must design quality in, which is the essence of total quality management. Remember, there is always something you can do to influence your own fate or future. The choice is in your hands! |