167: Happy Holidays! How To Massacre Your Brand Promise

<p>Happy Holidays!  How To Massacre Your Brand Promise</p> <p> </p> <p>The end of year holiday season is a time of great retail commercial activity around the world.  Brands work well because they bring with them a promise of reliability and trust.  We buy the brands over the non-brands to reduce risk and increase our certainty that our buying decision is a good one.  The issue for firms is how to protect the brand image during the provision of service component of the brand promise.   Those at the top in the executive suites and those deep in the guts of the organisation, in the marketing department in particular, are really “on brand” no doubt.  What about the rest of the organisation?  There are lessons here for all of us in sales, when the big boys and girls get it wrong.</p> <p> </p> <p>Many years ago, on holiday, I bought a very nice watch in the Versace Piazza di Spagna store in Rome.  I have been quite a Versace fan over the years and have a lot of gear from them.  The leather band broke a few years ago and through the good offices of the store here in Tokyo, it was sent off to the headquarters to be repaired.  Recently, the same thing happened with the leather band again, but the outcome this time was a brand destroying, rather than brand enhancing experience.</p> <p> </p> <p>I took my watch to the main Versace store in Ginza, to have the leather band replaced.  The staff member told me that they don’t have that type of leather band in stock, so get lost.  I persevered and asked about the possibility of sending it to the headquarters to repair it there. A few minutes later, the shop manager informs me that they can’t do that, because the operator of the Versace store in Japan is a different company to the one in Italy, same brand but a different store ownership structure.  As the buyer this is puzzling.  We buy the brand, we don’t care about the inner workings of the company providing the service or about their rules and procedures.  The store manager in effect tells me to buzz off.</p> <p> </p> <p>Subse