Getty ImagesBy Shoumyan Biswas
In the technology world, “Tech Debt” is an often-used concept. When coders write, they can save time by taking short-cuts and writing code that is easy to implement. Eventually, however, one needs to do the hard drill and pay the debt back with interest. This makes sense in the short term, but turns into a disaster if the debt is left unaddressed.
Another lesser understood concept is Brand Debt. If you are representing your brand’s product or service and have the responsibility to design or deliver its experience to customers, you risk accumulating Brand Debt. Anything that is “not on brand” adds to this debt. While “irrelevance” and “insipidity” has eroded many brands, “inconsistency” directly impacts brand trust. Debts incurred on account of trust erosion are much harder to pay off and can grind businesses to bankruptcy. Often, this death comes fast. And unannounced.
How and when do brands accumulate Brand Debt?
In the early days, a brand’s strategy is shaped by the personality of the founder(s). But with time, as the organisation grows bigger, there are many voices that impact a brand’s choices. If not monitored well, this can quickly snowball into an incoherent and schizophrenic appearance for the brand to its customers. Lack of a clear brand strategy document (or the importance attached to its adoption) to outline what is on the brand and what is not aggravates this possibility.
Obsession with vanity metrics, instant gratification of results, lead teams to wrong prioritization - “Deadlines” over “Quality”, for instance. Remember the instances where you had to approve a sub-par creative or a launch or a policy change simply because you had no time to wait for deeper diligence. And like “Tech Debt”, often such choices might be necessary, but one needs to account for the Debt these compromises result in.
Advertising today is filled with desperate “grab the attention” messaging that might guarantee the sales for this weekend but fail to tell the actual “Brand story”. They succeed in manipulating customers to buy the product but do not inspire a shift in behaviour. The hamming and histrionics that these ads offer, help them to break the clutter, but one incurs heavy debt, as consumers remember only the creative and the immediate incentives but not the brand. You see this trend, more with early stage start-ups, where only the next quarter’s numbers matter.
In today’s tech-enabled world, the number of customer touch points are increasing manifold and often a consistent solve across all of them requires longer timelines and deeper problem solving.
How to manage Brand Debt?
A little Brand Debt is not fatal. Most brands have a certain amount of elasticity which allows room for flexibility and experimentation. But if the quality slips too much or the incongruence is too apparent, the brand image gets diluted.
Organisations can do many things to control and manage Brand Debt – for instance having marketing, product and customer care teams work in very close proximity, create and follow strong set of brand guidelines and using technology to ensure that the larger teams can instantly access those guidelines while creating content or designing features.
However effective control and management of Brand Debt necessarily requires two things. First is a shift in mindset. The responsibility for building and enhancing the image of a brand is not a marketing charter alone. Rather it belongs to every leader in the organisation. Designing a landing page that artificially boosts conversion rates at the expense of customer experience is an example of Brand Debt. Your brand is not your ATL campaign, it is the reputation of your firm that is getting built or destroyed at every customer touch point. Inconsistency anywhere at the hand of anyone is just as damaging and must be avoided.
Secondly, brand building is a combination of both arts and science – it is a process where craftsmanship marries intelligence. Brands that realise the above, set a very high bar on quality and an unwavering focus on consistency. Such brands can forego the cocaine shots of today’s metrics in favour of the vitamin boosts for tomorrow. By always keeping consistent brand quality over speed and quantity of execution, such brands successfully avoid Brand Debt.
(The author is an independent business consultant. Views expressed are personal.)
In the technology world, “Tech Debt” is an often-used concept. When coders write, they can save time by taking short-cuts and writing code that is easy to implement. Eventually, however, one needs to do the hard drill and pay the debt back with interest. This makes sense in the short term, but turns into a disaster if the debt is left unaddressed.
Another lesser understood concept is Brand Debt. If you are representing your brand’s product or service and have the responsibility to design or deliver its experience to customers, you risk accumulating Brand Debt. Anything that is “not on brand” adds to this debt. While “irrelevance” and “insipidity” has eroded many brands, “inconsistency” directly impacts brand trust. Debts incurred on account of trust erosion are much harder to pay off and can grind businesses to bankruptcy. Often, this death comes fast. And unannounced.
How and when do brands accumulate Brand Debt?
In the early days, a brand’s strategy is shaped by the personality of the founder(s). But with time, as the organisation grows bigger, there are many voices that impact a brand’s choices. If not monitored well, this can quickly snowball into an incoherent and schizophrenic appearance for the brand to its customers. Lack of a clear brand strategy document (or the importance attached to its adoption) to outline what is on the brand and what is not aggravates this possibility.
Obsession with vanity metrics, instant gratification of results, lead teams to wrong prioritization - “Deadlines” over “Quality”, for instance. Remember the instances where you had to approve a sub-par creative or a launch or a policy change simply because you had no time to wait for deeper diligence. And like “Tech Debt”, often such choices might be necessary, but one needs to account for the Debt these compromises result in.
Advertising today is filled with desperate “grab the attention” messaging that might guarantee the sales for this weekend but fail to tell the actual “Brand story”. They succeed in manipulating customers to buy the product but do not inspire a shift in behaviour. The hamming and histrionics that these ads offer, help them to break the clutter, but one incurs heavy debt, as consumers remember only the creative and the immediate incentives but not the brand. You see this trend, more with early stage start-ups, where only the next quarter’s numbers matter.
In today’s tech-enabled world, the number of customer touch points are increasing manifold and often a consistent solve across all of them requires longer timelines and deeper problem solving.
How to manage Brand Debt?
A little Brand Debt is not fatal. Most brands have a certain amount of elasticity which allows room for flexibility and experimentation. But if the quality slips too much or the incongruence is too apparent, the brand image gets diluted.
Organisations can do many things to control and manage Brand Debt – for instance having marketing, product and customer care teams work in very close proximity, create and follow strong set of brand guidelines and using technology to ensure that the larger teams can instantly access those guidelines while creating content or designing features.
However effective control and management of Brand Debt necessarily requires two things. First is a shift in mindset. The responsibility for building and enhancing the image of a brand is not a marketing charter alone. Rather it belongs to every leader in the organisation. Designing a landing page that artificially boosts conversion rates at the expense of customer experience is an example of Brand Debt. Your brand is not your ATL campaign, it is the reputation of your firm that is getting built or destroyed at every customer touch point. Inconsistency anywhere at the hand of anyone is just as damaging and must be avoided.
Secondly, brand building is a combination of both arts and science – it is a process where craftsmanship marries intelligence. Brands that realise the above, set a very high bar on quality and an unwavering focus on consistency. Such brands can forego the cocaine shots of today’s metrics in favour of the vitamin boosts for tomorrow. By always keeping consistent brand quality over speed and quantity of execution, such brands successfully avoid Brand Debt.
(The author is an independent business consultant. Views expressed are personal.)
