Branding Mistakes That Lead To Failure

Just one mistake in changing the design of the brand logo can cost the company a lot of money and time, as well as the departure of loyal consumers. Our tech branding agency wants to share it with you.

One day, the clothing brand GAP decided to change the design of its logo – to abandon the classic blue square and develop a more modern visual. This decision was followed by a wave of violent reaction. Customers were furious with the new logo as it didn’t have the same brand appeal as the previous one. Given the negative reviews, the company had to go back to its original design, spending a lot of time and money.

To make sure your brand doesn’t suffer such unnecessary losses, don’t make these 10 branding mistakes, according to Talk Business.

Consistency is a key requirement for successful branding.

The moment your brand becomes inconsistent, it stops serving its purpose. This creates a misunderstanding of your proposal among customers.

Inconsistency affects the memory of your brand. For example, Ferrari has always been associated with speed, as the company’s brand fits this theme. If you fail to create a strong brand response, it will be very difficult for you to attract the attention of customers in a competitive market.

Be careful when creating brand relationships with something or someone. Having partners who are not affiliated with your brand can backfire. If you’re trying to bond with another brand that has a different value system than you, customers see you as unreliable and inconsistent.

When deciding on brand affiliation, do some background research. See how this cross-ad relationship will benefit your brand and make sure your brand does not lose out on this collaboration.

Chanel received a lot of negative feedback from customers, especially women, when it chose Brad Pitt as the # 5 Chanel fragrance ambassador, as all consumers associate this fragrance with the female celebrities.

A brand guide is a document that contains recommendations, an action plan, results, methodologies, and everything in it. Everything that goes into branding should be part of the appropriate guide. This document will help you make sure you are on the right track. In addition, it helps create a unified vision for all team members.

Some of the must-haves in a Brand Guide are: logo design, brand colors, slogan, brand goals, visualization, positioning, brand differentiation.

If you think rebranding is a gamble, you are at great risk. Lack of research and understanding of your current market position can lead to the introduction of brand changes that do not correlate very well with the main target audience.

It only takes customers 10 seconds to form the first impression of a new logo. This is a feature that you must consider and work with. If customers do not find the new logo attractive, they will very quickly abandon the brand.

Perform a demo test before officially starting a brand change. Get a focus group together and get their feedback. Their reaction will help to highlight elements that reduce the attractiveness of the innovation.

Many companies are trying to save money when it comes to branding. Yes, you need to limit overhead costs, but you cannot reduce the costs of branding components. For example, small businesses try to limit spending on office space without thinking that this is the first thing customers pay attention to.

When clients come to the office and are forced to sit in a broken chair, they have serious doubts about your brand. In an effort to cut costs, you simply lose a customer.

This approach negatively affects not only customers, but also employees. If you don’t invest in workplace ergonomics, as a rule, you get low team loyalty and productivity.

Moreover, these working conditions account for 40% of employee injuries. This means a long period of their absence from work, and, as a result, an increase in costs, which also directly affects branding budgets.

Brands often focus too much on the product when communicating with customers. This approach

may work in the short term, but rarely gives the desired result. To make your brand more sustainable, communicate with your audience by talking about benefits, not features.

Let customers know how your brand can help meet their needs. This creates a more attractive brand image in the eyes of customers. You can create content that affects consumer pain points and provides information on how you can help solve those problems. In this way, customers will see more value for your brand.

As customer needs change, so does your brand image. This will help reduce churn and increase customer engagement. Track customer satisfaction and responsiveness. This way, you can customize your brand offering based on the current challenges customers are facing.

Contextual autoresponders are doing more business damage than you might imagine. The problem is that brands try to portray the answering machine as human activity. Such actions on the part of companies are perceived by customers as unreliable. The fact that brands rely heavily on autoresponders in their customer interactions is one reason 60% of automation implementations fail.

Brands grow stronger through genuine engagement and weaken through poor communication. In both cases, the solution involves an interactive dialogue. The brand must be empathetic and emotionally intelligent. The answering machine cannot satisfy any of these conditions.

Some brands age like wine, while others freeze in a time capsule. When you constantly remember “how good it was before,” you tend to forget about the current state of affairs, and the brand loses its position.

To keep your brand relevant, collect and analyze feedback. This information will help you make changes to your product line, leadership strategy, brand positioning and visualization.

No one will be more committed to your brand than yourself. But you have to be realistic about your brand’s capabilities. Lack of real perspective can force you to form strategies without taking into account reality.

When Microsoft announced the launch of its Vista operating system, everyone was ecstatic. The company has made a big bet by positioning the OS as the next level of innovation.

Unfortunately, after the software was released, it developed compatibility issues that drew fierce criticism, eventually leading to the termination of all Vista-related projects.

Often companies do not pay enough attention to brand visualization because they believe that it has no direct relationship to sales. This may be true, but visuals are a very powerful tool for creating perception and increasing engagement. People perceive most of the information visually.

Lack of attention to visual elements can lead to several things that can negatively affect the brand’s reputation in the eyes of consumers:

Low quality images. In the HD world, low quality images suggest that a company is incompetent and unprofessional.
Low brand value. Boring visuals won’t be remembered by customers, leading to low brand awareness.
Wrongly chosen brand color. Each color has a meaning. For example, if a brand associated with extreme sports uses green (calm) instead of red (adrenaline), it will not have the desired effect on consumers.
By making such mistakes in branding, the company will certainly have the opposite effect. Learn from other people’s mistakes so that you can do less than your own. Learn about hiring google ads specialist too if you want to be in the loop!