Instead of trying to preserve or protect your brand, make it your goal to live your brand instead.
An organization I was working with was planning a series of radio station remotes at its various locations. It sent a document to participating stations that listed the things its personnel were prohibited from doing during the remote. Most of the rules restricted the station's access to the "brand's customers." Unfortunately, this also restricted the station's impact.
The brand took these steps because it wanted to protect its brand image and it was afraid that the radio staff's interactions with customers might not reinforce (or could even conflict) with the image it wanted to portray. They reasoned that patrons already had a fixed brand image in their minds and that contact with the radio people only risked screwing it up. This approach missed an opportunity to reinforce the brand and also made the radio people feel like second class citizens.
In reality, brand images are never fixed. They are dynamic and evolve with each and every brand contact. Trying to create a particular brand image and then preserve it by preventing further change is futile since it would require, among other things, that your customers have no further contact with the brand!
Instead, why not try to reinforce an appropriate brand image at every opportunity by actively living your brand?
Rather than hiding the radio people from its customers, this organization should have taught the radio people how to properly represent the brand. It should have taught them how the brand values its customers. It should have trained them the way it trained its own employees. This would have taken extra effort, but it would have allowed the radio people to further reinforce the brand's true image while also making them better brand evangelists by convincing them of the company's commitment to its customers.
Are you trying to protect your brand? What would it mean to live it instead? Spread the fire. GS
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