That Brand Identity Thing

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How did this whole “brand” thing come about, anyway? When Coca-Cola and General Motors became iconic American companies as far back as the 1920s, was anybody talking about the actual word “brand”? In college during the 1970s and in my early years in journalism, I hardly recall the word itself ever being used in normal conversation.

But now, you can hardly crack the door on a press conference without hearing someone talk about brands and the importance of burnishing, defending, enhancing, extending or creating same. I thought of this last week when I was attending a Cirrus press conference where Ben Kowalski, the company’s marcomm guy, was describing a new customer delivery and service center Cirrus is erecting in Knoxville. It’s meant to be a high order facility where a Cirrus owner—including the soon-to-be jet owners—can dodge the icy blasts of Duluth (in June) and visit geographically centered Knoxville for service, training, aircraft acceptance and even order specing. It’s a great idea and well in keeping with what Cirrus does as a company. Notice I didn’t say “brand.”

When Kowalski threw up a slide saying Cirrus was thinking of the kind of positive brand resonance that Apple, Audi, Starbucks and Tesla have in their respective markets, I almost thought he had it backward. Frankly, as a customer of three of those companies, I honestly think they’re more about image than exceptional product where Cirrus, in my view, is more about product and less about image. Branding is sometimes a sleight of hand where a company seeks to have a customer think of something that is somehow larger than the product itself. Probably, some customers respond to that kind of massage, but I’m not one of them.It seems to me if you deliver the product, as Coca-Cola did, as GM did and as any of a dozen other such companies do, the image more or less takes care of itself. You don’t need MBAs hiring junior marketeers to dream up “brand enhancement.”

Having erected this tiny little soapbox, I shall now mount it, starting with Apple. This blog is being written on a MacBook Pro from notes recorded on an iPhone. In my home office, I have an iMac. Clearly, I am an Apple user but I am also as far from a fanboy as it’s possible to get. All of these products are functional enough, but they are overpriced, overhyped and festooned with flaws. I would give the company an A+ in sales and marketing, a lukewarm B- for support and reliability. Why do I persist in using them? Because they’re a little less worse than the competition. When I see people camping on the sidewalk the night before to get the new iPhone, I see people whose lives don’t seem to be happening, not a brand I’m pining to be associated with. Please, just make the next %$*&^$ iOS have fewer fatal flaws.

And Audi. Let me stop giggling so I can continue. My wife and I owned an A4 once. It was, by performance measure, a terrific car. Handled well and was a hoot to drive. Maintenance-wise, it was a service writer’s wet dream. When I was under the car one day banging the tabs of the drooping plastic air dam back in place for the fifth time with a rubber mallet, I suspected that the Audi “brand” was an apparently high-quality car, but one that was in fact cheap to build with a high margin. In other words, image trumped reality. When the heater core burst its seams slightly after the warranty expired, necessitating removal of the entire interior to the firewall, my suspicion was confirmed in a mist of sickly sweet glycol. It’s OK to project an image of lan and quality, but you gotta walk the walk.

The point is that when a company becomes brand conscious, it’s almost as though the brand itself is self-aware and the product merely tags along. Increasingly, I think if all the effort goes to the product and the people who buy it—which Cirrus seems to do pretty well—the brand takes care of itself.

Of course, as a professional crank, I am predisposed to see through all the hype that often puffs up “branding” like an overinflated bus tire and to merely ask if the company delivers a good product and treats its customers right. Based on contacts I’ve had with Cirrus owners, I’d say the company does that. It has a loyal community. But I’m probably the only person in the universe who thinks that next time Apple has one of its big, overhyped and contrived product announcements, it ought to throw up a slide with a Cirrus logo.

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