We are losing our heritage brands.

We are losing our heritage brands. After the collapse and loss of businesses such as Deane Apparel, Line 7, LWR and in Wellington Radfords the question must be asked why such iconic businesses fail. In the case of Radfords this was a brand that had been in the market for over a century.
Well stand back because there are many more brands of significance on the path to extinction. There are two issues I need to draw attention to; first these failures don’t have to happen and secondly when it does occur the nation is robbed of hugely valuable assets.

We are mis-managing our businesses. Not deliberately but because we are averse to change. It is easy to understand that the science of making stuff and the art of creating a service should be the primary focus of any business. I’m not suggesting this isn’t important but it is rapidly taking a back seat to another business prerequisite 'engaging an audience'; skills and experience more akin to marketing than the legal and financial skills we currently see.
Marketers, advertising and PR people have struggled to find a seat at the board room table mainly because their profession has relied for the most part on creativity and suspect research (not the kind of skill sets needed around a board table).
So for the most part, warming the seats of our board rooms are accountants and lawyers.
Let’s understand why accountants and lawyers on their own can’t run modern businesses (with some notable exceptions).
A lawyers primary reason for being is to protect legally what you own (that assumes you have something worth protecting). A laudable enough idea except you can’t own a brand because it resides in the minds of your customers. Once upon a time when markets and audiences were more static and easily defined legal protection was sensible, but legal protection comes after you have built the business.
Accountants view businesses through a rear vision mirror (they have a forensic approach). Their job is to study where you have travelled and predict where you might head and ensure you have the right measurement and assessment tools in place. They base their predictions on past activity. Again a long time ago when markets performed in the same old ways year in and year out this was a very sensible and effective approach but now no longer enough.
Neither of these groups have skill sets required to tackle markets that are at best chaotic, now global, and in constant and rapid change.

The marketing view is about understanding markets today and how they will trend based on how consumers might behave tomorrow so that you can manoeuvre into the right place at the right time. Most marketers have been trained in the old world practises and are unlikely to understand the new chaotic commercial environments. They still have a penchant to call in the advertising agency as their solution to growing the business.

The new path forward will come from understanding the science of branding and brand building
With the assistance of neuroscientists and psychologists we can now make far more accurate predictions about purchasing and decision making behaviour than we could have even a decade ago; many of these advances have occurred in only the last five years.
Brand building (the science) is a skill set required at an executive and board level if businesses are to survive let alone thrive. These new skills are unlikely to be found in traditional advertising agencies or marketing firms; these people are thin on the ground but they are out there.

But these new business builders are struggling to push back old paradigms and are battling entrenched thinking.
Unless business embraces these new business builders and give them seats on the executive and in the board rooms, then the future will be difficult indeed.
It is time to accept the new reality; there are too many products and services, traditional media is failing, old marketing methodologies are struggling and the new 'more for less' economy is here to stay. It all adds up to a need for a fresh approach and the refresh starts at the top.

If businesses want control and certainty then they must embrace the new brand building dynamics and enshrine it in the planning process.

They need to or they will perish.

Remember the bank queue?

Having slagged the BNZ (I’m allowed to given I am a customer) I now find myself sprinkling a little praise. In this world we need to both give and take so back slaps where back slaps are due. The bank hasn’t surrendered its childish pigs yet but something profound is taking place right where it matters. I went into one of their branches several weeks ago and stood in the cattle race with a bunch of others during the lunch hour rush when bank tellers obviously desert the counters to also have lunch. But here is where the classic bank paradigm changed.
As I stood patiently in line I observed a bank employee emerge from an office and head straight for the woman standing in front of me. He asked her a question (I didn’t hear what was said) and took a keen interest in the wad of papers in the lady’s hand. They both headed off for his office and disappeared.
Now I was left pondering because there is little else to do in a bank queue. Did the banker know this woman, why had he picked her out of the cattle race, if she was here to see him why had she lined up with all the rest of us plebs?
As these thoughts raced around in my head I spotted another man emerge from another office but this character was making a bee line for me.
"Is that a cheque you are depositing sir?”, he asked me with a smile. I admitted it was. “Then I can sort that for you”, he said as he took the cheque from my hand and headed back to his office.
Now I know this isn’t exactly Mohammad going to the mountain but culling me out of a queue is a significant step forward and one that I think deserves a mention.
What is even more impressive about this ‘customer interface improvement’ is that the BNZ haven’t advertised it. My advice is don’t. It is better we discover this great service than hear you skite about it and then not deliver.
In fact lose the pork guys and beef up your customer service; we might just get some real competition in the banking industry.