Every brand, even a personal brand, relies on specific triggers to fascinate.
When consumers buy a product, what they’re often actually buying is something more than the utility of the item—they’re buying a trigger. If they pay for your product but don’t get the expected trigger in return, you could face a backlash.
When Kelly Clarkson became the first American Idol winner, her fans’ expectations were clearly defined: She was the newly christened American pop princess, decorated with bubble gum and sparkles. But then Clarkson threw the world a curveball with her third album, My December. The new darker, grittier Clarkson abandoned her pop formula. Songs such as “Haunted” and “Sober” were deemed “too negative” by her own label. Clarkson canceled her tour due to underwhelming ticket sales and sought new management. The singer’s brand has recovered, but only after returning to her fans’ expectations with the trust trigger once again. Madonna, on the other hand, succeeds because of her manipulation of the vice trigger; her fans expect her brand to reinvent and experiment.
Every brand’s value is built upon a specific combination of fascination triggers. Abandon those triggers with great care. Obviously, if Porsche released a car that was safe-yet-sluggish, or Volvo released a car that was zippy-yet-unsafe, these companies would contradict their primary brand triggers, and weaken brand value. Such is the problem now facing Toyota.
The trust trigger was Toyota’s most precious brand asset. Damaged trust could cost the brand far more than the actual cost of the recall– even more than lost stock price or market position. I outlined ramifications in my blog post last week, with an interview:
The more respected the brand, the greater the surprise when that brand contradicts its core triggers. Just as Toyota contradicted its primary trigger, Tiger Woods contradicted his brand’s valuable triggers of prestige, mystique and power. Can the Tiger Woods brand recover as quickly as his golf game? Stuart Elliott in the The New York Times reports:
Is the Tiger Woods Brand Beyond Repair?
Tiger Woods’s golf game may recover, an advertising executive believes, but it may take his brand a long time to do so — if it ever does.
That is the conclusion of Sally Hogshead, who worked at agencies like Crispin Porter & Bogusky and is now a brand consultant and author. Ms. Hogshead, who said she was in the satellite media center during Mr. Woods’s remarks on Friday morning, called his speech “a big step forward in recovering the Tiger Woods brand.” …Mr. Woods’s decision to try “defending his wife, protecting his children and paying respect to his mother” should help “quell the outrage” over his behavior, Ms. Hogshead said, especially among women…. Also on the plus side of the ledger, she said, was the fact that he “let his guard down” with his remarks “to show us his humanity.”
On the negative side, Ms. Hogshead said, was “the way in which he manipulated the press conference” by taking no questions from the press… Also, the Woods brand “was founded upon prestige, mystique,” she added, “and an aura of elusive untouchability…”
Once lost, the prestige and mystique triggers, are extremely difficult to regain. Fortunately, Woods can return to his power trigger in golf. How do other established personal/corporate brands evolve over time, while staying true to their triggers?
Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck’s company scores high on lust (crave-able foods), and prestige (trendy restaurants such as Spago). Even while selling part of his brand to Campbell’s, and introducing his soups to a broader market, Puck retains his core values of lust and prestige. The lesson: As your company expands, stay mindful of your fascination promise to consumers.
It’s good and necessary to update your message over time. However, radically changing your trigger without warning might just end up sparking another trigger for your accountants… alarm.
