Back in the mid-1970’s I was young and poor. I had to think long and hard about buying anything – even a used clunker of a car. So when I did, I went with a 6-year-old Corolla, a dull, boxy little get-around. But I chose it because Toyota was the brand that promised and truly delivered “reliability.” You could drive those hummers for two hundred of thousand miles (and a number of my friends did) just by feeding it gasoline and a little oil now and then.
So what happened that reduced the “reliability brand” to needing to recall 2.3 million vehicles because of a dangerous quality issue with sticking gas pedals? Reports suggest that Toyota even now may not have completely identified the technical answer to that question, which is telling and damaging all by itself. But the bottom-line answer is that the company lost its way.
At a leadership level, the company decided that “job number one” was not reliability, after all, but increasing global sales and market share. Toyota proclaimed a few years ago that their goal was nothing less that becoming the top auto manufacturer in the world. They broke a sacred trust by making reliability secondary to growth of market share.
Kelsey Swanekamp of Forbes reports that the recall may cost Toyota as much as $1.1 billion, but the long-term consequence of the massive recall resulting from the loss of consumer confidence may haunt the automaker for many, many years.
In writing about the Toyota debacle, automotive marketing blogger Cameron McNaughton says, “The automotive industry is guilty of thinking that its brand promises are adjustable.” But of course, no brand can shift its brand promise without serious consequences. It reminds me of the great Groucho Marx chestnut: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
This same mindset sometimes invades the higher education arena, where institutions might begin to think that their brand promise can shift and change depending upon the consumer environment, or the competition, or other market forces. For example, a number of institutions are finding that “affordability” can be a resonant sales message during these tight economic times. Some of these institutions are making “affordability” part of their brand platform.
But by making “low cost” or “affordability” part of their brand messaging, colleges and universities come dangerously close to turning higher education into a mere commodity, where price is the primary or sole differentiator.
While short-term enrollment management issues always tempt organizations to shift emphasis, brand marketers must step up and sound an alarm about the long-term consequences of losing focus on what is most important. Your brand promise needs to come first, always, regardless of marketplace shifts or changes in leadership, or the demands of the economic environment.
The brand promise should shape and drive everyone’s behavior, from the departmental secretares, to the classroom professors, to the President. Every faculty and staff member is responsible for delivering the promise. The marketing unit is merely charged with making the brand promise clear to the public and demonstrating that it has been kept through brand “proof points.”
Staying focused on what is most important is very easy to say and very difficult to do. But it is the critical factor in building brand credibility and trust. Ask Toyota.
Back in the mid-1970’s I was young and poor. I had to think long and hard about buying anything – even a used clunker of a car. So when I did, I went with a 6-year-old Corolla, a dull, boxy little get-around. But I chose it because Toyota was the brand that promised and truly delivered “reliability.” You could drive those hummers for two hundred of thousand miles (and a number of my friends did) just by feeding it gasoline and a little oil now and then.
So what happened that reduced the “reliability brand” to needing to recall 2.3 million vehicles because of a dangerous quality issue with sticking gas pedals? Reports suggest that Toyota even now may not have completely identified the technical answer to that question, which is telling and damaging all by itself. But the bottom-line answer is that the company lost its way.
At a leadership level, the company decided that “job number one” was not reliability, after all, but increasing global sales and market share. Toyota proclaimed a few years ago that their goal was nothing less that becoming the top auto manufacturer in the world. They broke a sacred trust by making reliability secondary to growth of market share.
Kelsey Swanekamp of Forbes reports that the recall may cost Toyota as much as $1.1 billion, but the long-term consequence of the massive recall resulting from the loss of consumer confidence may haunt the automaker for many, many years.
In writing about the Toyota debacle, automotive marketing blogger Cameron McNaughton says, “The automotive industry is guilty of thinking that its brand promises are adjustable.” But of course, no brand can shift its brand promise without serious consequences. It reminds me of the great Groucho Marx chestnut: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others.”
This same mindset sometimes invades the higher education arena, where institutions might begin to think that their brand promise can shift and change depending upon the consumer environment, or the competition, or other market forces. For example, a number of institutions are finding that “affordability” can be a resonant sales message during these tight economic times. Some of these institutions are making “affordability” part of their brand platform.
But by making “low cost” or “affordability” part of their brand messaging, colleges and universities come dangerously close to turning higher education into a mere commodity, where price is the primary or sole differentiator.
While short-term enrollment management issues always tempt organizations to shift emphasis, brand marketers must step up and sound an alarm about the long-term consequences of losing focus on what is most important. Your brand promise needs to come first, always, regardless of marketplace shifts or changes in leadership, or the demands of the economic environment.
The brand promise should shape and drive everyone’s behavior, from the departmental secretares, to the classroom professors, to the President. Every faculty and staff member is responsible for delivering the promise. The marketing unit is merely charged with making the brand promise clear to the public and demonstrating that it has been kept through brand “proof points.”
Staying focused on what is most important is very easy to say and very difficult to do. But it is the critical factor in building brand credibility and trust. Ask Toyota.
Posted by Bob
Lately, it seems as though budget cuts, tough times, cutting programs, furloughs, and layoffs come up more often than not when
Last week my colleague Jennifer Mullen, Assistant Vice President for Marketing Communications at Old Dominion University, and I gave a presentation on Leveraging New Media at the CASE I District conference in Boston. Great conference and great turn out in the session.
Since the economic downturn began in late 2008, marketing budgets at many institutions have been slashed. Cuts of 25% – 30% or more in ad spending have not been unusual at colleges and universities during the past year.
After several years of social networking hype, many companies are still attempting new ways to spread their brand to the social networking masses. I recently came across a 
The following is a guest blog post by David Dalka. He was scheduled to speak at the 2009
What an awesome time Ineke and I had at the
Now on to the blog, after the holidays and in time for everyone’s New Year’s weight loss resolutions, Taco Bell released a new campaign tactic –
The thoughts above kind of bring me around to some of the fundamentals of branding – consensus and tie-in. In essence, in a place as big as a university, everyone from the faculty, staff, students, alumni, administrators, and community leaders could be considered a brand spokesperson for your university. If everyone mentioned above could easily point out and discuss a couple of the key pieces of information (brand platform, positioning statement, and a couple key messages) about your university, then it would be easier for that consensus driven message to travel out to the masses. In contrast and for example, if the faculty think your institution is academically challenging and the staff think it is a beautiful campus, and the students think it is second-choice school then it will be hard for a potential student on the receiving end of these messages to grasp the true brand of your university.
Thank you to all our readers and followers for a wonderful 2009. We truly enjoyed writing these useful tidbits on branding, marketing, web design, social media, higher education and more.
I was reading Jon Lasner’s blog 
