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13 May 2009/

Branding for services

by Wally Olins at 11:14 am 13 May 2009
Filed under: Branding

Statistics in most western countries show a relative decline in manufacturing and a growth in services from the mid 1970’s onwards. In the 1990s service businesses went into explosive growth thanks to the internet and deregulation. Service businesses have since become massive brand-builders. Some of the biggest companies in the world are now service companies of one kind or another. Telefonica, Google, Four Seasons, Ryanair, HSBC are all massive brands built around service not products.

Many of the people who are in charge of managing these service brands have been trained in the traditional school of creating great consumer brands – product brands. Their attempt to manage service brands as though they are product brands has created vast problems.

Product brands are about products. Kit Kat, a classic product brand, doesn’t answer back, doesn’t get tired, isn’t anxious, is always ready to perform and always tastes the same. Every experience with a product brand is identical. Service brands aren’t like that. Service brands are about people. People who represent the organisation lose their tempers, get tired and anxious, and sometimes have just had enough that day. Every experience with a service brand is therefore different. For the customer, the person who represents the brand is the brand. If he or she doesn’t perform properly, the relationship between the brand and the customer may collapse.

The implication of this, of course, is that service-based organisations have to focus on their internal audience to a far greater extent than product-based organisations. And this is what the new breed of brand manager is starting to learn. Brand managers like most managers are pretty conservative, they hate change and they cling on to outdated mantras like the belief that the most important audience for the brand is the customer. And it shows – on hold in call centers for hours, putting up with rude airline staff, all that petty harassment which comes from badly managed service brands is now part of our daily life.

Creating happy customers by educating and involving staff in the brand is not rocket science. Unfortunately too many big service brands still aren’t getting it right. It doesn’t have to be that way though. Examples like Vueling show that if internal audiences are taken seriously and time is invested in educating them on what their brand stands for, employees will realise that everything they do reflects on the brand. They will begin to feel brand ownership and do their best to contribute to its success – each in their own capacity.