It’s all about the Brand

I’ve written a lot about “Influencers” over the past few years and how I think they are the biggest risk to any marketing endeavor (or strategic marketing/communications campaign).

#BudLight will always be used as how they can spectacularly fail.

But, influencers are a brand. When another brand affects your brand, it can be good (like what Bud Light was hoping for), or horrible (like what happened with Bud Light).

The influencers brand is the same as any companies. Is it trusted, competent, good, reputable, and so on?

But, here’s the kicker. Does a company stand behind its own brand? Of course it does.

Does the influencer stand behind their brand? Most do. Some don’t (and they just fade away).

Let me be clear — a brand, in the case of the influencer, is the name of the person (think of every athlete or actor). As I’ve written about before, if the actor screws up (think Alec Baldwin), their brand is tarnished and may never recover. In other cases (think Mel Gibson), it is tarnished, but then does recover.

A brand is a name.

Enough about influencers — let’s talk about brand destruction.

So, now to the crux of what I’m writing about. Brands are names — and universities are brands. If you don’t agree with me on this, then, stop reading.

So, we have UCLA, Columbia, NYU, etc. all allowing the inmates to run the asylum (as I write this). A few people who are sympathetic to terrorists are disrupting the majority of those that attend the university for a higher education.

Sorry, the above must be said, because, it leads to this: will these colleges/universities ever get their “brand” back. The damage being done to their brand is astronomical.

And I get it. They have billions upon billions of dollars in their banks (and it keeps growing daily — well, not so much anymore). And those billions will keep them in business for the short term — with the short term being a decade or even longer. Even if all of the students pull out or stop applying to those universities.

As I watch other foreign universities, governments, and individuals say they will no longer attend/work with those universities, believing that they won’t get the education/research/needs they want and desire, I have to ask myself why are leaders and boards of these colleges allowing this damage to occur to their brand.

If you look at the boards of these universities, no one understands the damage that they are doing to their brand. A) Because they don’t understand marketing and/or B) they don’t care, obviously, about the long term consequences of allowing their brand to recover. Very few in a leadership position at these universities has ever worked at a private sector company and understands that brand reputation is everything.

Once you lose the trust in a brand, it is hard, so extremely hard, to recover from. If the reputation of a brand becomes synonymous with a bad experience or outcome, there really is no good outcome.

I so want to know what the marketing classes at the universities are talking about with these unique cases that are happening on their properties. Are they making this a teachable moment? Or are they teaching that (a lie) that every brand can recover, that the short term damage, even if severe, will make the brand stronger in the long term.

Imagine it this way. You go to an oil change place (like Jiffy Lube, Pennzoil, etc.) and they take your car in to be serviced, but, while sitting there, you have to be abused (verbally or physically), subjected to being in an uncomfortable location, and, most importantly, wondering if your car is being serviced the way you wanted (or are they changing your windshield wipers instead of changing the oil).

In other words, in this case, are they getting the service (education) that they think they are paying for.

I will never now, nor in the future, recommend my children, my nephews, nieces, friends kids, or any person to go to a university that allows their brand to be destroyed in the name of ignorance. I will recommend they to go to a community college (or trade school or a college where education is more important than ignorance) where teaching truth and facts is first and foremost, not feelings and emotions (based on ignorance).

I know this is a bit of a rambling piece, but, I hate seeing brands that were once respected, destroyed for no other reason than emotions, feelings, all founded on ignorance.

It takes years to build a brand, but only moments to destroy it — and in the case of these colleges, it may not have started from the top leadership, but certainly fell in their lap where the choice to save the brand and reputation or not was the only decision they had to make.