& Commentary

Attack of the Brand Zombies

What is a brand zombie? It is a marketing professional who believes they have a brand, but don’t. Their brand is dead to customers but still walking around eating as many brains as it can. Plundering the catacombs of potential customers minds like a messy drunk chick at a frat party, bumping into walls, grunting, spitting up on itself, and asking everyone around to hold it just for a second.

And when customers hold it, the “needle moves” –people buy stuff. Then customers walk away quickly forgetting where they bought their HD TV, bag of onions or blouse. Not because they had a good or bad experience, but because they had no experience at all.

Just so you know, I’m not talking about brands that people don’t like e.g. Meryl Lynch, BP, United Airlines. They actually have a brand, however worse than customers hating you is customers not knowing who you are. It’s a lot easier to change people’s perception from hate to love than it is to change people’s perception from nothing to love.

Your brand could be a zombie for several reasons. It went through a price war and lost (Nobody wins price wars). It doesn’t say anything memorable. It has adopted strategies that their competitors are using. There’s lots more, but I’m not smart enough to think of them right now.

Price War Zombie: This will kill your brand by making it seem cheap, and not in a good way. You’ve decided to put starbursts on every piece of communication you generate because you believe driving store traffic in the short term is more important than people respecting you. It’s the marketing equivalent of a one night stand. The brand decides to go out one night, dress a little sluttier than normal to attract a good shagging. Just remember, your customer won’t respect you in the morning and probably won’t call you back.

Unmemorable Zombie: You could’ve gotten yourself in this predicament a few ways. It could’ve been from watered down advertising. It could’ve been trying to be all things to all people. It could’ve been from trusting creative judgement to focus groups rather than trying to do it yourself. Or you could’ve tried to say so many things in your communication efforts that it became white noise. Either way, no one remembers you. You’re the guy that the company laid-off and no one noticed because you had no impact and no ideas.

Strategic Zombie: You’ve laid awake at night trying to figure out a new way to say “have it your way.” Stop trying. Somebody already said it. Or you’ve decided to put your business strategy on a billboard: “Every Day Low Prices” “60% off department store prices.” When so many businesses are saying this, all of those business start occupying the same space in customer’s minds. You will get lost, adrift in a sea of percentage symbols and ad-speak that barely worked in the 50s. You went to a party and wore the same dress as 6 other girls at the party–on purpose.

So what do you do? Stop eating brains for one. Suck it up and say something, even if it’s polarizing–even if it doesn’t hit every corner of your target audience. Who knows, you might even create an audience that never existed before. Then you’ll be the guy at the party telling a bunch of cool stories that no one has heard of before.