Minding Your Own Brand

Is it better to give or receive?

By Dave Lubelczyk

“It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas every where your go,” and “all the Whos in Whoville” are taking advantage of the “tremendous holiday savings throughout” the stores, buying up “the absolute best deals” on lead-painted products they can find. In companies throughout the land, the Grinch is telling his sales force to forget the holiday parties and get out there and make that final end-of-the-year sale in order to meet this quarter’s quota. As the holidays approach, the Scrooges have been padding the bottom-line with massive layoffs as well as trying to squeeze the last penny of productivity and savings out of their company by shipping more and more aspects of their business overseas.

The holiday season is here yet most of us have forgotten the lesson we learned long ago that “it is better to give than receive,” and because of that most of us have developed brand relationships that are very selfish. Companies think little of their customers, employees, and vendors and only focus on the bottom-line. Customers in turn have a jaded view of most brands and will switch their loyalty for a few pennies. So as the New Year approaches, what can we all do to get our brand relationships back on track?

First of all, companies need to stop focusing on just their bottom line. I am not advocating irresponsible fiscal behavior, but I am encouraging companies to build extraordinary companies that produce a healthy bottom line. Instead of sucking the life out of your organization by demanding higher profits at all costs, companies should instead focus on building an internal brand culture which creates internal advocates who believe in the organization, want to do right by the company, and help it generate a healthy bottom line.

Profit-for-profit sake only weakens the value of the brand and therefore all major financial decisions should be examined to determine how they will affect the brand long-term. What seems good for profits today may negatively affect the brand tomorrow. In contrast, a company may give up a portion of its profitability today only to receive increased brand strength in the form of customer and employee advocacy. This small act of giving will reward the company long-term and its effect is often cumulative.

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