Brand Amnesia: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment
Brand Amnesia plagues millions. Apple, for example, suffered a bout of Brand Amnesia after they fired Steve Jobs. They regained their senses when he came back.
Unchecked, it leads to brand obscurity and, in many cases, the death of the brand. What's worse, the majority of the brands that have it don't know it.
Given its prevalence (and the fact that I made up the term) I thought I'd explain Brand Amnesia, what causes it, how to avoid it, and what to do if you discover you have it.
Definition:
Brand Amnesia, also known as brand dissociation, is a memory disorder that affects brand leaders and is characterized by episodic memory loss, said to occur for a period of time ranging from months to years.
Diagnosis:
Obvious signs of Brand Amnesia may include:
- Personality confusion, in which the leader mistakes his or her brand for another
- Confusion about ones brand identity
- Difficulty articulating a cogent brand story
- Erratic, unexplainable shifts in ones identity
- Inability to retrieve stored memories that preceded the onset
Prevention:
Brands who wish to avoid Brand Amnesia’s debilitating grip need leaders with courage and a strong sense of their own identity identity. A leader who doesn't know his or herself can't help a brand know itself.
Prognosis:
With said leaders installed, the brand can capture, clarify, and commit to their brand story. They can become the loyal shepherds the brand deserves.
Warning Signs, and Risk Factors:
- Holiday party speeches that sound strangely similar to the one from the year before
- When asked to describe their brand story the leader's jargon-laden explanation rivals a presidential State of the Union address in unnecessary length and lack of clarity
- Referring to brand initiatives as "fluff" or otherwise dismissing their value
- Obsession with other brands, especially competitors, which can alternate between worship and seething disdain
- Turnover among vendors and staff related to culture, marketing, and sales
Causes:
Brand Amnesia stems from a single cause: fear. Fear about the insufficiency of ones own brand spawns episodes that vacillate between aggression and wedging ones head under the cushions of an overstuffed couch. But don't be confused by such behavior. It's fear cycling through a rotating wardrobe of disguises.
Possible Treatment:
Leaders need to be reminded about the brand's authentic story. For best results, read the story aloud. This may chase dormant memories out from hiding. Consider also reading aloud books like Extreme Ownership or The Failure of Nerve. These too may arouse latent memories and, with time, help a leader remember the brand's true identity.
The End of Uber: How "Storyless Brands" fail
The Storyless Brand
A brand built on profit alone has no story. Of course, a brand without profit has no future. But survey the strongest brands in the world, or even in your neighborhood, and you’ll find a common thread: their story sustains them.
A brand’s story captures our loyalty because their story overlaps with our story. Their villain is our villain. Their portrait of a hero aligns with ours, and we discover that they’re going where we want to go. We value the product and service they provide, but what we really value is that we’re part of their story, and they are part of ours.
A brand’s story is their identity. It’s the brand’s lifeblood. It explains why a brand exists, the purpose it serves, how its unique from other brands, and every other element of a brand’s identity.
But what happens when a brand doesn’t have a story?
It dies.
Uber’s Decline
My oldest daughter and I loaded into an Uber in downtown Seattle on our way to see U2 play at CenturyLink Field last May. I noticed the driver’s windshield also featured a Lyft sticker.
“Which do you like better, Uber or Lyft?”, I asked.
“They’re pretty similar,” the driver said, “but I prefer Lyft. They treat their drivers a lot better.”
“Which do you use when you travel?” I asked. I wanted to test his loyalty.
“I use Lyft whenever I can,” he said.
Employee loyalty is the “canary in the coal mine” for a brand’s health. Strong employee loyalty breeds a solid customer fanbase. And brands that haven’t earned loyalty from their employees find their foundation rotting beneath them.
The driver’s lack of loyalty made me suspect that Uber may be in trouble.
And I was right.
The video of an altercation between an Uber driver and then CEO and co-founder, Travis Kalanick, came out just a few months before. Sexual harassment allegations, controversy over their response to Trump’s immigration policy, and several high level resignations sent Uber into a nosedive as 2017 unfolded. Under mounting pressure, Kananick finally resigned as CEO.
So how could such a prominent brand decline so fast?
Do NOT “Start with Why”
One of the most watched TED Talks ever is Simon Sinek’s 2009 TEDx presentation where he encourages brands to “Start with Why.” Sinek says, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”
Sinek’s right about the value of Why for a brand, but he’s wrong when he says we should “Start with Why.”
We should start with Who.
A brand’s Who is their identity. Their Why arises from their Who. Their identity is the beginning. This is where we should start.
Uber doesn’t have a Why because they lack a Who.
Uber thinks they have a Who, but what they call their identity is just a great idea—Ridesharing. A good concept alone isn’t enough to sustain a brand. A brand needs substance, integrity, and purpose.
A brand predicated on profit lacks a story. Consider what Logan Green, co-founder of Lyft, Uber’s main competitor, says about their culture, “The company culture is about being human, being good to other people.”
That’s a story that excites employees and resonates with consumers. Despite Uber’s concept and profits, they lacked a story.
Now we recognize Uber for who they are: a Storyless Brand.
Can your employees and customers see themselves in your story?
Strong brands function as a story. We see ourselves in their story and want to be part of it.
Your brand story is your foundation. It sustains all other aspects of your brand. Know your story, own your story, communicate your story in everything you do.
The result is a story that draws us in. We want to be characters in your story.
ANNOUNCEMENT: The Brand Storyteller Basecamp
For the first time in my more than 15 years of helping brands tell their stories, I've captured my process in a 3-step approach that I call The Brand Storyteller Basecamp.
This 1-hour online Masterclass will help you:
1. Clarify your brand story
2. Communicate your brand story
3. Connect others to your brand story
Mark your calendars for May 3 at 11:00 PT. I'll send out registration information to my mailing list in a couple weeks.
Join my mailing list to get the scoop!
How to boost your "Fall in Factor"
I just started reading The Hobbit to my two youngest daughters. Each night as I sit down on their bedroom floor, open the book, and start reading, something magical happens: all three of us fall into the story.
We’re no longer in a bedroom. The three of us enter the story and travel along side Bilbo, Gandalf, and the others on their journey. This explains why every night my daughters say the same thing when I close the book:
“Don’t stop reading!”
Great stories have a “Fall in Factor” that captures us and won’t let go. The same is true of great brands.
You’re probably accustomed to thinking of your brand as having stories that you communicate through messaging, marketing, and advertising. Your brand has a lot more in common with The Hobbit and other great stories than you think.
Just like a great story, great brands have a villain, a hero, struggles, crises, and resolutions. These elements reach out and captivate us.
Nike’s villain, for example, isn’t Under Armor, Adidas, or any other competitor. Nike’s villain the human proclivity for apathy, laziness, self-doubt, and disdain of losing. Read Phil Knight’s biography, Shoe Dog, and you see that this was true from the very beginning of Nike’s story.
Clarify and protect your brand story. It’s yours! Don’t let it devolve into someone else’s story.
Ask the following questions at your next team meeting to clarify your brand story:
- Who is our true villain?
- What does it look like to be a hero in our brand’s story?
- What distractions prevent us from moving our story forward?
Everything becomes more clear when we view our brand as a story. We remember who we’re fighting, what we’re fighting for, and our role in the story.
You build that “Fall in Factor” that every brand craves. The people who come in contact with your brand will say the same thing:
“Don’t stop reading!”
The 10 Rules of Resonance
A recent project with a global apparel brand inspired me to update my "10 Rules of Resonance" for presentations. Click the image below to download as many copies as you'd like.
I wrote these in chronological order, as opposed to order of importance. (They're all important.) These questions represent the chain of thoughts I go through when I'm preparing my own presentations or helping someone else.
Good luck, and let me know if you have any questions or comments!
My 3-Step Presentation Preparation Process: Dump, Distill, and Design
Presentations are an opportunity to move people. But the final product—an incredible presentation—can’t materialize out of thin air.
Use my 3-Step Presentation Preparation process as you put together your next presentation.
You'll find that the final product translates your message into a format that engages your audience.
A Brand Differentiator: Separate High-tech and High-touch
We can separate brand interactions into two categories:
- High-tech Interactions—websites, apps, social media, and other digital sources
- High-touch interactions—phone, in-person, and other analog interactions, such as print
“The strongest brands keep High-tech and High-touch as far apart as possible.”
Starbucks serves as another example of a brand that separates High-tech from High-touch interactions.
For example, my wife and I recently had our credit cards stolen. I called our credit card company immediately, and on the second ring reached a real human being. In addition to sounding genuinely sorry about what happened, he quickly shut down our old card and issued new ones that we received the next day.
Our credit card company also provides an easy-to-use online platform that efficiently addresses my everyday needs. I can get into the site, review charges, and pay a bill in a few minutes.
My credit card company insulates High-touch and High-tech interactions. My High-touch phone call didn’t require me to interact with technology, and my Hi-tech online experiences are so intuitive I don’t need to engage a real human.
“Lesser brands allow High-tech and High-touch co-mingle.”
For example, I needed to book our airline tickets well in advance of the Thanksgiving holiday. I spent the better part of two hours trying to use our air miles to purchase the tickets. Frustrated by a host of complications, I phoned the airline. The person helping me was nice enough, but informed me that I’d have to pay an additional $25 for each of the five tickets.
What can the airline learn from my credit card company?
Increasingly so, we can assume most customers prefer an intuitive, efficient High-tech experience. In and out. No headaches.
But when our customers need personal attention—they can’t find what they need on the website or through an app, or they just prefer human interaction—provide them with a memorable, high-touch interaction.
What if the airline offered a discount for booking travel by phone? They should view these high-touch interactions, not as a drain on their profits, but as a rare opportunity to build loyalty. In highly competitive industries, like the airline industry, this kind of High-touch experience differentiate brands from everyone else.
Differentiate your brand. Offer exceptional High-tech and High-touch experiences. But don't try to make one do the other's heavy lifting just because it's more convenient for you.
Say more with less
It doesn’t matter what kind of day I'm having. This image spreads an involuntary smile across my face every time I see it in my photo collection.
You may have a completely different sense of humor, but hopefully you have something like this—a memory, a saying, a Key and Peele sketch—that when you remember it, you can’t help but laugh, even if you’re having a bad day.
I spotted this image on the wall of a brewery in Redmond, Oregon after my niece’s graduation a couple years ago.
There’s a story here.
Someone took out a pen and, after disregarding the impropriety of writing on public walls, scrawled this statement.
And of all the things they could write, they chose “Toy Story 2 Was Okay!”
This person took time out of their day to, not to extol the merits of Toy Story 2, but to say it was just okay. Exclamation!
But the story doesn’t end there.
Look closer. Someone else came along and scribbled out “2”. They saw the statement and it sparked a conviction. This person felt so strongly that they simply couldn’t pass by without adding a corrective measure. They even made an attempt to cross out "Story". But notice they didn’t cross out the entire statement, which leads me to think they’re not entirely anti-Toy Story. It’s just that in this person’s mind it was Toy Story, not the sequel, that was just okay.
I suspect I may have shed a number of readers by now, but if you’re still with me, let me explain why this statement inspires me to be a better communicator.
Four words and a number. That’s all took to hook me so much that I took out my phone and captured this image. So much that I laugh every time I see this image, and even took the time to write an entire post about this peculiar statement.
But isn’t that the point? Isn’t that how we hope people respond to the messages we send out into the world, or circulate within our company. Rather than deploying gaseous messaging that drifts past people, we want what we say to reach within people and resonate at the deepest possible level. We want them to stop and take a picture of it.
We have limited time, space, and opportunities to craft messages that resonate with our audience. Say something that moves us, not because it shocks us, that's too easy. Say something that delights us in some way.
Imagine you only had four words and a number. What would you say?
Communication matters. What we say, do, and make says something. Let’s try to craft messages that resonate with people, even if they’re having a bad day.
