Proud of your brand?

Worked a lot on those Brand attributes? Words like transparency, consistency, smooth, aspirational. You know, the ones that you come back to every few years. Get an agency to run a workshop. Then argue about the semantics of words for two days.

Brand attributes are the promises a company attempts to inspire consumers with. A sort of guideline for characteristics. Although not mentioned directly to the consumer, the brand attempts to deliver these through brand behaviour. Alluding to them in advertising, marketing and through a products design, function and interaction. At least that is what’s meant to happen.

Brand attributes tend to dissolve pretty quick when the customer wants to leave. All of a sudden, where there was clarity, there is now avoidance. Where there was transparency, there is fog. Where there was honesty, there is now mis-direction.

Some brands are realising they have to do better with their brand at the end. Certainly they realise that bad endings will shatter brand equity, and limit customer engagement to one sales-cycle.

Customers will realise how hard it is to end the relationship with a brand. They will think twice about being a customer again. The companies brand attributes now become - entrapment, mis-direction and denial. Your departing customers will see this with clarity, anger and mistrust.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Some of the companies I have written about in the Endineering book have embraced their brand attributes to create better off-boarding experiences for their customers. The end of the consumer lifecycle can be an enormous benefit for a companies brand equity. It can solidify brand attributes with the customer at the most meaningful time. The end can be your brands greatest moment.