Author: Tenet Admin

Online reviews are becoming a crucial part of the customer experience, but are they causing us to miss out on the best of what a brand might have to offer?

Since moving to New York City a little under a year ago, I have to admit: I have become addicted to reviews.

To be clear, when I use the term reviews, I’m referring to the 5-out-of-5 stars, “leave-your-review-and-help-others-learn-about-great-local-businesses” reviews.

While many can attest to all the good that can be gleaned from these reviews, I’ve also started to notice some of the cons that come with being too reliant on them.

A few months ago, I shared an Amazon link with my friend for some yoga mat flip-flops I first spotted during a trip to Hawaii. Upon opening the link, my friend’s response was, “Wow, those have really good reviews.”

It was then that I realized it didn’t matter what the sandals looked like, what they cost, or whether or not I should even be buying the flip-flops in the first place. Because the flip-flops had such a good rating online, my friend and I had both almost reflexively decided they were worth purchasing.

Another similar instance occurred when my friends and I decided we were craving Thai food one evening. After opening my Seamless app, we quickly sorted all of the nearby Thai restaurants by Ranking, and then placed our order at the top-ranked restaurant without a second thought.

You might be thinking, “Of course! Who wouldn’t order their Pad See Ew from the best-ranked restaurant within a 5 square mile radius?” But the way I see it, for as much time and hassle as these rankings and reviews are saving us, they’ve also started to preclude us from making our own choices.

I remember a time, not too long ago, when I felt comfortable making online purchases and going to restaurants without second-guessing my decisions. Fast-forward to 2016 and I find myself constantly questioning my choices—even sorting through Sephora products by “Top Rated” rather than trusting myself to know my own skincare needs.

Relying solely on ratings and rankings may also lead to the assumption that there is a perfect option out there. Barry Schwartz, author of the book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, refers to people who think this way as “Maximizers.” According to Schwartz, Maximizers tend to suffer from decision fatigue, and feeling like there is always something better out there. This mindset plagues present-day society, and New Yorkers in particular, when anything you could ever want is just a few swipes on a smart phone away.

But according to Schwartz, those who learn to settle for “good enough” (and whom he refers to as “Satisficers”) tend to feel happier about their life choices, and are not held back by their ultimate quest for the best.

Brand reviews are becoming an unavoidable fact of life. Gone are the days when businesses could continue to flourish in spite of negative customer experiences. Thanks to social media and crowd-sourced review sites like Yelp, a single customer experience can quickly devolve into a viral issue over night, and the stakes are too high for brands to disregard the possible impact.

But as a customer, relying solely on these ratings to avoid the possible chance of disappointment, I believe we’re missing out on a great deal of new experiences and opportunities—perhaps our next favorite brand or product—that shouldn’t be overlooked just because of another’s negative experience.

As for me, I don’t expect myself to stop consulting these reviews and ratings altogether. But just being aware of how limited my options become by relying on these rankings alone has already inspired me to challenge the belief that only the best is good enough.

MASB, the Marketing Accountability Standards Board recently announced the publication of its newest book, Accountable Marketing: Linking Marketing Actions to Financial Performance (Routledge 2016).

The book sets the stage for new working relations between Finance and Marketing and relates how fundamental change was initiated in the business community through collaboration across industry lines. Topics include marketing science and governance, brand preference, brand valuation, the long-term effects of advertising, social media and the Marketing/Finance interface.

Jim Gregory, Tenet Partners Chairman, serves as an Advisory Council member to MASB and authored the chapter: Measuring the Value of Corporate Brands. We recently sat down with him to discuss the challenges of measuring the corporate brand as an intangible asset, and more importantly, how marketers can better understand and leverage the value of their brands on an ongoing basis.

In the chapter you authored, you discuss how corporate brands are business assets, which can – and should be managed just like any other business asset. Yet, the CFO and the accounting world have been slow to adopt reporting methods that recognize brands as valuable assets. Why?

According to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) internally grown intangible assets such as brands cannot be reported on the balance sheet, however, the dramatic growth of intangibles leaves a huge hole of unaccountable value. This creates a quandary for investors who are left to wonder whether brand-building activities such as marketing are working or whether they are a complete waste of money by the company making the investment. It also causes problems for the internal management of companies because the CFO is unlikely to support marketing budgets if there is no apparent value being created. It is a dichotomy that should have been solved decades ago, but it is priority number one for organizations like MASB.

How does a corporate brand create value for consumers and investors in ways that are different from individual product brands?

Product branding is when you are trying to reach one consumer with a message that will motivate them to purchase your products or services. Corporate branding is managing the company’s brand to create enterprise capital and future cash flows. Both contribute value to the company and can be measured and managed to evaluate their performance.

What’s the first step a company should take to determine its brand value?

Benchmark tracking how knowledgeable people feel about your brand on a consistent basis will reveal many important insights into how your brand is competing against peers. Data gathering will lead to crafting models for valuing the brand. We benchmark track 1000 major companies across 50 industries so if your company is sizeable there is a good chance they are included in our study. Our approach is fundamentally different from discounted cash flow models that use subjective guesses about the role of the brand.

The purpose of building a corporate or product brand is to gain and sustain competitive advantage – and ensuring customers have a positive experience with you company or product is crucial. What are the key ingredients of creating and managing an exceptional customer experience program?

Consistency. Consistency in what you say and do. Consistency in your company’s vision and mission. Consistency in your business and manufacturing process. And, always consistency in your culture and how you treat people.

MASB is an independent forum that works to build greater accountability standards tied to marketing and financial performance. What is your role at the organization?

I am on the Improving Financial Reporting committee of MASB. In that role I’m continuously trying to communicate with the financial community about the difficult bind that marketers face when the brand value should be accounted for in some manner – pharmaceutical companies account for drugs in the pipeline by listing R&D in the MD&A notes of annual reports, likewise petroleum companies list proven reserves in the MD&A notes. Why not put the corporate and product brand value in the MD&A notes? It would change everything without having to change GAAP standards.

Accountable Marketing: Linking Marketing Actions to Financial Performance is available for purchase from Routledge. Order your copy today.

SEE ALSO: Jim Gregory Talks Powerhouse: The Secret of Corporate Branding on School for Startups Radio

I watched one of the most recent TV ads for Sprint the other day and something seemed a little off. All right, the fact that Paul, the “can you hear me now?” guy from Verizon was pitching Sprint was odd, but that’s not it. It was the message he was carrying.

He started off by saying, “Hey, it’s 2016 and every cellular network is great.” Really? If you say so…

He continues to explain that they are all so good that now Sprint’s reliability is within one percent of Verizon. Kind of indicating, “We’re about as good as we’re going to get, deal with it”. He then goes on to explain the difference in price and how Sprint is half the price of other carriers like Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. The commercial then hits a high note with the tagline “Don’t let a one percent difference cost you twice as much”.

That’s all well and good, but it left me thinking, “If a one percent difference isn’t a big deal, why not be one or even two percent better”. I guess at the end of the day, a giant telecom company telling me that they don’t have the best network but it’s not a big deal, kind of falls flat. Does this speak to reduced expectations across our society in general? Perhaps. Actually, I think with social media as an easy way of communicating brand performance over a broad population, expectations are higher than ever. Social media can either make or break a brand. To me, Sprint is taking a huge risk with this new messaging strategy.

So, this leads to the question of just how Sprint’s brand compares to the competitors that it names in its ad. What would lead them to use this tactic in their messaging? I examined Sprint’s BrandPower score, which is a measure of a brand’s Familiarity and Favorability (as measured by Overall Reputation, Perception of Management and Investment Potential) produced from interviews conducted by Tenet Partners. Our system measures nearly 1,000 brands across more than 50 industries and serves as a way to determine the strength and vitality of brands. BrandPower is measured on a 100-point scale and can be used as a means to compare one brand to another or a group of brands, or as a historical measure of the brand’s trend.

Sure enough, Sprint’s brand ranked the lowest across all four carriers mentioned in the ad. Given the weaker brand stature in comparison to competitors, does it really make sense for their communication to focus on them not having the most reliable network, too? I understand that they are trying to communicate a pricing message in a very complicated and crowed marketplace, but for me the message that came across was, “We’re one percent worse than the competition, and we really don’t care”.

If I worked for Sprint, I’d be very concerned as the trailing brand that the message received will be:

1. We acknowledge having a less reliable network;
2. It’s only one percent less reliable, which we think isn’t a big deal;
3. We are not willing to go the extra mile to close the one percent reliability gap.

To me, this is an example that illustrates the importance of carefully crafting and managing your brand message. It will be interesting to watch how Sprint’s BrandPower will change over time (sneak preview, its BrandPower is down a smidge in the 1Q 2016 data). It will be interesting to examine if it will have an impact, positive or negative, and which elements of the brand will be most impacted by the messaging.

If you’d like to learn more about BrandPower and what it might look like in other industries, please look for our upcoming Top 100 Most Powerful Brands report or check out the CoreBrand Analytics section of our website.

Apparently I’m middle aged. I don’t feel like it. I don’t think I look it. But when I make cultural references, those around me often look at me like I’m from another planet. Most recently I’ve been asked the following, “Billy Joel recorded an album in Russia?” “What are Stan Smiths?” And perhaps the most painful, “Fame is like High School Musical?”

So when companies reinvigorate the brands of my youth, I get excited. And apparently, I’m not the only one. Enter Pokémon Go. Admittedly I had just graduated college when Nintendo released the original game (okay, maybe I am middle aged) in 1995, but the reminiscence of the Nintendo Game Boy, the platform for which Pokémon was first developed, takes me back. And it is this appeal I’m certain the company was counting on the help reinvigorate the brand with its historical audience.

And to help reinforce the brand with a broader, younger audience, Nintendo smartly looked toward collaboration with game developer, Niantic. A Google-spinoff, Niantic had been known for its augmented reality capabilities. By integrating the Nintendo digital characters with a real-world view that uses our phone’s location tracking and camera capabilities, Nintendo has managed to extend the success of Pokémon into a second decade with Pokémon Go.

Impact on brand

With a regular spot on Tenet’s Top 100 Most Powerful Brands – this year at number 94 – there are three factors that portend a jump in Nintendo’s spot on the Top 100 list next year. Keep in mind, the company’s BrandPower score is determined by its Familiarity and Favorability.

From a Familiarity perspective, there have been reports that in two weeks Pokémon Go has more players than Tinder and possibly even Twitter have users, expanding the base of those familiar with both Pokémon and Nintendo exponentially.

From a Favorability perspective, Nintendo has seen consistently rising Overall Reputation scores over the last five years with more than a 13% aggregate increase. I’d venture that Pokémon Go’s success will only contribute to that steady increase in Overall Reputation.

And from a financial perspective, Nintendo’s stock has increased more than 50% in the United States as of July 15, adding around $12 billion to the company’s market capitalization. The gaming company that was previously chasing the Sony Playstation and Microsoft Xbox has now established an entirely new category and positioned the organization as the brand to beat. If Nintendo can maintain the increased stock price and convert analysts, its Investment Potential –a key piece of Favorability – will remain quite positive.

In the meantime, seeing the success Nintendo has had over the last few weeks, it seems wise to break down its two primary strategies to determine if Nintendo’s success can be sustained and how it may be replicable for other brands.

Cultural renaissance

Clearly the world was ready for a virtual reality Pokémon experience. Can Nintendo bring back its other beloved games with a similar approach or is this a one-hit-wonder? Do we want to see Donkey Kong climbing real construction sites or Luigi and Mario collecting coins, bricks and yellow super mushrooms while walking down 53rd Street? I don’t see why not, but game quality, pacing of releases, varying the approach and breaking down the walls of what is possible must continue. Other brands have certainly succeeded by looking backward to continue moving forward.

Take for example Columbia Pictures; the Sony Pictures distribution house has become known for remaking retro films and television shows originally popular with my generation: The Smurfs, Karate Kid, 21 Jump Street, and most recently, Ghostbusters. Most of the adapted films have proven consistent revenue generators with The Smurfs and 21 Jump Street spawning ongoing series. The appeal lies with both the original audience, as well as the children of those now parents.

Adidas is also thriving by appealing to its heritage. The company’s first quarter sales are up 31%, its stock is performing at a rate of +31.54%YTD and ten equities research analysts have given it a “buy” rating. Having recently purchased a pair of the same Stan Smith’s I had in high school, I can confirm that the renaissance of adidas’ vintage styles is alive and well. Take your pick between Stan Smiths, slides, Gazelles or Superstars. All four styles are on feet old and young, in cities and in suburbs. adidas is the coolest brand in sports and on the streets right now. Understanding and leveraging its heritage is a big part of that success.

And consider one of the big movers on this year’s Top 100 Most Powerful Brands list, Whirlpool. Maytag is a Whirlpool brand. In 1967 the Maytag Repairman was introduced as the “loneliest man in town” because the appliances never broke. In 2014, Whirlpool reinvigorated and reintroduced the Maytag Man as the star of a new campaign that not only appears on television, but also includes a broad-scale digital component. With more than 50-years of awareness in the character, who stands for dependability and is highly associated with the brand, Whirlpool has found a way to leverage its familiar heritage to differentiate in an industry that is known for a war of features. And according to its steady rise up the Top 100 ranking, it’s feasible that looking backward to move forward has been a successful strategy for Whirlpool.

Collaboration

Nintendo has a history of collaboration. The Pokémon Company is a joint investment by Nintendo and two other companies, Game Freak and Creatures. Pokémon Go was developed in collaboration with Niantic, a spin-off from Google in which Nintendo also made an investment. But the net out remains, Nintendo owns the brand rights to Pokémon. With those rights, the organization saw a way to extend the life of the brand to new audiences and through new mediums. In essence, Nintendo understood its core strengths and looked to other organizations to help augment its strengths. Collaborative innovation has proven a successful model.

Looking again to adidas, that company has done the same. By partnering with Palace Skateboards, fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto, R&B icons Kanye West and Pharrell, adidas has extended its brand into untapped vertical markets with valuable, long-term partnerships. In the case of adidas, such partnerships have also established a halo effect of “coolness” that is extending the brand to new markets with new potential buyers. For adidas, collaboration is less about innovation and more about reputation. However, we can project that both companies will see an impact on their bottom-line performance.

Lastly, looking at this year’s Top 100 Most Powerful Brands list, Google seems like the obvious collaboration story. With a five-point rise into the top-ten, Google epitomizes the partnership strategy. Look at the healthcare space alone. Whether through Google Lifesciences or Calico, the company has formed partnerships with major pharma players, including AbbieVie, Novartis, Sanofi and Biogen, as well as with key institutions like Duke and Stanford medical schools, and consumer brands like ancestry.com. While the partnerships are primarily intended to help find big answers, like cures for diabetes, cancer and even death – the overall Google brand is skyrocketing. Through a strategic reorganization and focused partnerships, Google, like Nintendo, is driving future brand innovation.

Morgan Stanley – The Steady Riser

It’s 2008; I’m living in Canary Wharf, London’s version of Wall Street. One morning, on my way to work, I walked past Lehman Brothers. On the streets I saw men standing, boxes in hand, people turning, staring. What had they done? It must be bad; we’d never seen the bankers look helpless before. The usual image of the financiers spilling out of the bars as the sun begins to set over the imposing buildings; beers in hand, raucous laughter and bravado seeping into every spare patch of pavement, was gone. Perhaps it was a trade that went wrong or a harassment case that bit back. I kept walking and by the time I reached the Tube, my curious thoughts had dissipated. ‘It’s likely nothing’ I thought… Little did I know that the world had changed forever.

The crisis

The financial crisis hit causing recessions in countries the world over. However, after the initial shock and falter and the record-breaking bailouts, the dust settled and order resumed. Unfortunately, the bankers were skating on a much thinner sheet of ice than before. And the finance world knew it. Something had to change. The banks had to figure out how to regain the trust of the public.

Changing perceptions

Today, I call Manhattan home. Having spent many years working in London’s finance capital, I feel I at least have some insight into what life must have been like on Wall Street pre-2008. The same brash confidence of top dollar earners; the ability to hold more liquor than one should be able; the late nights; early mornings; calls at 3 am because somewhere in the world someone wanted to make some money. But here in the US much like in London, due to legislation, government initiatives, advertising campaigns and more, the mood is now different. The ‘Big Banks’ have changed public perception, and they’re getting stronger each day.

Time Magazine tells us, “The financial crisis and its aftermath have dramatically changed investor perceptions, particularly with respect to the soundness of our financial system. In response, big financial firms are changing, but few firms have changed more than Morgan Stanley.”

Measuring impact

Morgan Stanley, like most financial institutions, got negative press following the 2008 Crash, and it’s taken many initiatives to slowly improve perceptions of their brand. And there’s no better way to measure that improvement than by looking at the strength of their corporate brand, or as we call it – “BrandPower.”

BrandPower, as identified in Tenet Partners’ annual Top 100 Most Powerful Brands Report, is a measure of brand strength through two key metrics, familiarity and favorability. The index measures factors such as the perception of an organization’s management, the perceived investment potential of their business, and the familiarity of their brand to the general public.

Like other financial institutions featured in this year’s Top 100, such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Capital One, which have all seen an increase in their BrandPower this year, Morgan Stanley is on the rise. Their multi-faceted approach to changing perceptions has resulted is a consistent upturn in the power of their brand.

Moving the brand needle

Since 2011, Morgan Stanley’s BrandPower has jumped up 37 places to the 58th most powerful brand in America according to Tenet Partners’ data. This hasn’t happened overnight. The bank had to concentrate its efforts on giving the public a view into the real people and real activities of their institution.

An alternative path

Morgan Stanley’s CEO, James Gorman, who unlike most previous heads of the bank, does not have a background in investment banking, has worked to change the bank’s brand. It has changed its course not, as Time Magazine tells us, completely away from its investment banking roots, but more towards a brokerage model advising clients which stocks and shares to buy and sell, as opposed to investment banking. The difference in approach has made wide impacts on the perception of Morgan Stanley, contributing to it being seen as more of a trusted advisor than a grasping moneymaker.

Marketing to new perceptions

To support their new path, according to Advertising Age, Lisa Manganello, Head of integrated brand marketing at Morgan Stanley says “their marketing efforts have focused on highlighting the firm’s “real human” benefits.” And Skyword reiterates with, “a new content-heavy campaign tells the story of Morgan Stanley’s brand in a different way—by presenting the company as a driver of positive human change around the world.”

Not only have Morgan Stanley’s marketing efforts been revamped, but to support their changing business model, their internal performance management process is also getting a makeover.

Changing the face of performance

Morgan Stanley is changing its employee performance management style, dispelling of the traditional annual appraisal process and adopting a fresher approach.

As Larry Oakner, Senior Partner in Employee Engagement at Tenet Partners says, “how [employees] demonstrate their brand through their behaviour has a huge impact on the successful integration of the brand into the organization.”

An article in the New York Times about Morgan Stanley’s new approach states, “The aim is to give more direct feedback and better steer staff members toward areas of improvement.” Employees will be evaluated on their overall contributions to the firm, not only the money they bring in.

On the rise

Elevating the power of a brand is a multi-layered initiative that encompasses all business activities, and Morgan Stanley is a bank that shows it knows how to do it. It’s been a long road for them since the 2008 financial crisis, and, like any organization, they’ve had their ups and downs. But with their varied efforts and a BrandPower ranking that’s consistently rising, it seems that their battle-tested CEO, James Gorman, is doing something right to reinvent the image for their institution.

I have been a Hilton HHonors Rewards member for several years now and was just recently notified that I earned Gold status. It has taken me so long to earn this elevated status because it is not that I am so much brand loyal, but rather place more of an importance on price and location when it comes to selecting a hotel. Granted, I do have a list of “acceptable” hotel brands that are always part of my consideration set when exploring options for both business and leisure travel. These tend to be the usual suspects — Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Starwood. Note: I am a Rewards member for each of these brands because they make it so easy to join and earn points. However, these Rewards programs are not enough to make me brand loyal. It’s plain and simple, the brand that best delivers against my core requirements will get my business and, in return, I will accrue points, albeit slowly.

Sure my elevation to Hilton HHonors Gold status has brought with it a few “nice to have” perks. “Nice to have” means just that; they may or may not be memorable and are not considered important enough to trump price and location over brand loyalty. However, my Hilton brand experience has been brought to an entirely new level when I recently downloaded the Hilton app.

This app has changed my life (when it comes to travel) and has increased my affinity for the Hilton brand. How? Simply put, it has made the user experience across the hotel segment of my customer journey memorable and even delightful. Across my entire customer journey (well, almost my entire journey) from property selection to registration and from pre-check-in, check-in and throughout the duration of my stay, Hilton has delighted and even surprised me on occasion. Unbeknownst to me, Hilton was the first hospitality company to enable room selection and customization via its mobile and web-based floor plans.

As a registered guest, I received a “Welcome to Hilton” message via both e-mail and the app one day or so prior to my arrival. This “welcome” then prompted me to select a room of my choice. Mind you that Hilton had already pre-selected a room for me based on my personal profile, and that room selection was perfect I might add. However, I was given the option to switch and even upgrade my room (for additional $’s) from the hotel floor plan, if desired. This is similar to the process of selecting seats on an airplane. I have to say that this was pretty impressive for a hotel chain.

But wait, there’s more. I was then asked if I would like to select from an extensive list of amenities and have these items waiting for me in my room upon arrival. This included snacks, beverages and/or toiletry items such as shampoo, toothpaste, etc. just in case I did not want the hassle of traveling with these items since many fall within strict FAA regulations at airport check-in.

Then the ultimate delight in my user experience happened when the app prompted me to sign up for the Hilton Digital Key program. Apparently, Hilton announced that guests will be able to use their smartphone as their room key in a majority of hotel rooms by the end of 2016, but I must have missed this announcement and was pleasantly surprised to learn more about this user experience through the Hilton app. Signing up for and activating the Digital Key is easy; you simply use the app to confirm your arrival date and indicate an expected time of arrival. The Digital Key is then activated via your smartphone once your room is ready upon the date of your arrival. Once my digital key was activated, I followed the prompts, holding my phone in front of my room entry device and the phone unlocked the door. Throughout most of my entire journey, I did not come in contact with one Hilton employee except for the parking lot attendant. Don’t worry; I am sure that this interaction will soon be alleviated as well with self-driving and self-parking cars.

This customer experience has certainly helped to elevate the Hilton brand for me with Hilton brand loyalty now top-of-mind. The personalization of the Hilton brand experience starting with the ability to select my own room and ensure that certain amenities are waiting for me upon arrival along with the innovative Digital Key technology all make the Hilton brand experience more personal, delightful, memorable and, most importantly, convenient. It is no wonder that Hilton ranks # 44 in Tenet’s Top 100 Most Powerful Brands 2016. In fact, Hilton’s ranking improved six points versus its #50 ranking in 2015. I am sure that innovation, disruption and the entire customer experience have contributed to this brand’s improved ranking. Other than Marriott, which ranks #81, there were no other hotel chains in Tenet’s Top 100 Most Powerful Brands Report. So Hilton must be doing something right to strengthen the power of its brand.

With such a positive customer experience, you may be wondering why the title of my blog is Why Hilton had me captivated until good-bye. The one area where my customer experience did not come full circle was when it was time for me to checkout, which was quite early in the morning I might add. Upon leaving my hotel room, I opened the Hilton app and kept looking for the checkout option, searching under various topics, but found nothing related to checking out. I finally had to go to the front desk where I was told that this feature does not yet exist. I am not sure if the app checkout capability was not available for this particular location or if it has not been implemented in general. But what started as a delightful customer experience ended somewhat on a disappointing note. If I had known that I had to go to the front desk to checkout, I would have checked out the old-fashioned way – via my television. This actually would have been better than finding out that I did not have the ability to checkout via the app, which had become my trusted personal assistant throughout my entire business travel.

Remember, when it comes to creating a memorable brand experience, every touchpoint throughout the customer journey is crucial. As we recently wrote about in our latest Take 5 series, mapping the journey across touchpoints is one of the many ways marketers can visualize the entire customer experience, and use it to effectively address shortcomings and seize new opportunities to foster customer loyalty.

Have you had any recent customer experiences that have changed your brand perception even prompting you to consider becoming brand loyal as a result of that experience?

Tenet Partners makes strategic investment in Verv Innovation, LLC.

Tenet Partners was built on the belief that creating exceptional brand experiences requires a multidisciplinary approach that brings together research, strategy, design, and digital. We believe the way forward to look at the world through the eyes of the customer and build brands holistically, fusing digital and real-world interactions and experiences to deliver greater value to businesses and their customers.

By 2020, estimates suggest 25 billion Internet connected products will exist. The success of these products will be contingent on a company’s ability to drive transformational growth across the enterprise, integrating customer insights, business strategy, design and digital capabilities into products, services and experiences that people love.

Just like the companies and brands we serve, in order keep pace in today’s digitally driven market, we must also evolve to meet industry demands and customer expectations. To strengthen our company and prepare for our next phase of growth, today we announced our strategic investment in Verv Innovation, LLC.

For nearly 20 years, the Verv team has redefined how to create and deliver successful innovations for products that are used across homes and businesses. Combining deep industrial design and development experience with next-generation co-creation tools, the firm has emerged as a leader in the application of design thinking during one of the most pivotal times of change in business and technology history.

By combining their proven techniques with Tenet’s global experience in business strategy, brand design and digital, we can now connect the customer experience in all channels and define the next generation of customer experience.

Here’s to a future of many memorable brand experiences.

Hampton

One of the industry sectors tracked in the Tenet CoreBrand Index is called ‘Financial’, which encompasses a range of financial services brands, including retail banks in the U.S. In recent years, one of the better performing brands among these retail banks has been Wells Fargo. Looking at Wells Fargo BrandPower relative to 12 peer institutions (large national network banks), it ranks among the top 3 in every quarter from Q1 2013 to the most recent measurement, Q2 2016. Plus, it has realized the largest improvement (24%) in BrandPower among any of those top three institutions over that same period.

Now, Wells Fargo’s performance in the CoreBrand Index comes as no surprise to me because before joining Tenet Partners, I spent several years as Director of Strategic Research at an industry leadership organization for financial services. And in virtually every study I commissioned to assess the performance and quality of large national network banks in the United States, the Wells Fargo brand mirrored what we’ve seen in the CoreBrand BrandPower Index in terms of the brand’s performance being one the best on customer sentiment, loyalty, deposit retention and most notably, in the quality of their lending.

Now, as most recall, in the 2008-2009 economic downturn, sub-prime mortgages and questionable loans were at the center of the housing bubble collapse that drove us to the great recession from which we have only recently started to emerge. However, Wells Fargo stood apart as being one of the few financial services brands NOT tarred by accusations of the questionable lending practices that ultimately doomed some financial services brands, like Wachovia and Countrywide Financial. In fact, in the wake of the much maligned Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP) that bailed out many banks at risk from the collapse of the financial markets, it was the Wells Fargo brand that most thought would emerge from TARP in the best shape.

But oh, how the mighty have fallen!

This past week it was revealed that a large number of Wells Fargo employees secretly created millions of unauthorized bank and credit card accounts –– without their customers knowing it –– since 2011. The resulting furor over the revelation, and the clumsy handling of it by Wells Fargo (which fired 5,300 low to mid level employees responsible while allowing the executive in charge of the troubled unit to retire with a significant financial package) has now cast the bank as the poster child for the same behavior and deceptive practices that were at the center of the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

What is also troubling for Wells Fargo, and really the entire financial services industry, is that the behavior resulting in the Wells Fargo controversy had been going on for sometime with apparently the knowledge of Wells Fargo leadership. Still, little was done to raise an alarm, and those employees that tried to do so were either dismissed or fired for their efforts.

Of course, this is not the only case of a well known, if not iconic brand being tarnished by a crisis largely of their own making; we need only think about Volkswagen and the diesel emissions scandal, and the recent Samsung debacle where their Galaxy smartphones have spontaneously combusted, for reminders.

But the issue with Wells Fargo is different given the recent history of the financial services sector of which they are a part, and the basic tenets of trust and transparency that are needed for stakeholders to engage with these brands. The trust and transparency between the banks and their customers was severely tested in 2008-2009 and in the subsequent recession that roiled people’s lives. And now, just as many felt the lost trust was slowly returning, the Wells Fargo scandal has dashed any of those gains and called the entire industry’s trustworthiness into question.

At the time of this blog’s posting, recent developments reported in the most recent issue of Time indicate that the “Justice Department has reportedly issued subpoenas and begun a criminal probe.” And that “U.S. federal prosecutors are vying for the right to go after the bank, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is weighing penalties for managers.” There have also been limited discussions of “the unlikely prospect that special powers could be triggered, allowing regulators to break up Wells.”

It will be interesting to see if Wells Fargo can survive or, as so many of the formerly well-known brands that were lost in the downturn, Wells Fargo becomes yet another bad memory of a brand that lost its way.

The problems at ESPN have been well documented. They significantly over paid for the rights to the NFL’s Monday Night Football package, paying in the same ballpark as NBC paid for the league’s premier matchup on Sunday Night Football. This move made it impossible for the network to operate profitably. Initially they laid off 4% of their global workforce, but it was all behind the camera workers, not on air talent. However, over the past year there has been significant drain on their talent.

As you tune in to pre-game NFL coverage and other shows, much of the old familiar talent is gone. As you may know, sports fans are creatures of habit. The customer experience for many of these viewers is being trampled on. It would be one thing if you slowly introduced new talent to these flagship programs, but when you tune into shows like Sunday NFL Countdown and Monday Night Countdown, with 1 or 2 exceptions, the faces are all new. It disrupts the comfort level that fans have in this programming.

This all comes at a very bad time for ESPN. NFL viewership has been down for each of the past 6 Presidential election years, this year it is off more than any other. Many speculate that it is due to the “Trump effect”. People are tuning in to the political media to see what he says next. Their ratings are up 40% while NFL viewership is down 15%.

There is also a much more crowded market place. Gone are the days when you simply tuned into ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN 3, ESPNews, etc. Now, the major networks, pro sports leagues, NCAA conferences and in some cases individual teams have their own networks. The result is that the market for sports news is becoming much more highly specialized. If I’m looking for news about Big 10 football, why sit through an episode of SportsCenter when I can tune in to the Big 10 Network and see exactly what I want? To compound matters, ESPN’s former talent is being sprinkled about the other options. Fox Sports 1 is a prominent example, taking Colin Cowherd’s show, The Herd with Colin Cowherd, directly form ESPN as well as commentator Skip Bayless who is now partnered with Shannon Sharp on their new show, Undisputed. These are two of many prominent personalities have their own brands and they have left ESPN and will take viewers with them. ESPN should have moved heaven and earth to keep their talent, it was one factor that they had that the other players in the market could not duplicate. It was the source of their customer loyalty.

What differentiated ESPN was that their on air talent felt like you were talking about sports with your friends. That was a huge part of their brand. That feel is gone. What they’ve failed to realize is that the ESPN brand is/was made up largely of the sum of the brands of their on air talent. That talent garnered much loyalty from the viewers and drove the customer experience. That customer experience is now gone. They must move quickly to stop the loss of their personalities and improve the customer experience or, in a market with increasingly appealing options, the ESPN brand will fall by the wayside.

ESPN cannot just assume that viewers will turn to them out of loyalty. As viewers abandon the network to view personalities that they enjoy that are now on other networks, they will be exposed to commercials for other programming on those networks that may interest them. The result will be in increasingly distributed sports audience and ESPN will see its share of that market dramatically reduced.

We are honored to capture the top spot on Clutch’s coveted list of the best New York City branding agencies of 2017. The recognition from Clutch, a B2B research firm, illustrates the tremendous talent of our team who have over 40 years of branding experience and a strong track record of delivering high-quality results.

Take a glimpse at what our clients have said on Clutch about our work:

“The quality is on par and best in class compared to all the agencies that I’ve worked with.” — Director of Communications, Eastman

“I don’t know if anyone could have done a better job than they did at learning the business at the speed we required.” — VP of Marketing, Distribution Company

“They’re a very professional and seasoned team.” — VP of Brand Marketing, Nationally Recognized Brand

“They figured out how we were being perceived and helped determine how we would like to be perceived.” — Brand Manager, Manufacturing Company

What Makes Us Stand Out?

Our ability to shape the brand and at the same time connect a company’s purpose to focused innovations and user experiences in its products and services is what makes us different as a firm. We are honored for the recognition from both our clients and Clutch as one of the best agencies in New York City.

How We Were Judged

To land a spot as a top agency on Clutch, we were judged on our ability to distinguish ourselves from competing firms and deliver quality results to our clients. Clutch first measured our market presence and expertise in the branding industry as evidenced by our offered services, established client base, and detailed examples and outcomes of branding projects we completed.

What Makes Clutch Special?

Clutch’s scoring methodology places a considerable amount of weight on the consumer reviews our clients give us. Their platform gives firsthand interviews, conducted by Clutch analysts with our clients, to gain an accurate and deeper understanding of our partnerships. The interviews, which are all converted to written reviews, are accessible through our Clutch profile.

To learn more about how we can help your company create value through the power of brand innovation, contact us today.