Brand Loyalty: Why customers fall out of love with brands
In this day and age, converting new customers is difficult, but doable. Getting them to stay loyal to your brand forever? Not so much. This is down to patchy customer service, badly-calculated ETA’s, poor employee rights and a 99.9% chance of being left waiting on the pavement.
With increasing competition and reducing attention spans, brands need to be doing more to resonate with their existing audience (not just their intended audience) in a way that’s going to last.
What are brands getting wrong?
Poor personality
For a brand personality to be effective, it needs to be memorable, and generate positive associations. If the typical image people have of your brand is negative, you’re in for a tough ride.
Take UBER; they were the answer to our prayers when they launched 10 years ago, but have since become ‘the most hated brand in the U.S. & UK’. This is down to poor customer service, inaccurate ETA’s, and bad treatment of their drivers. Reversing the damage is challenging and often calls for a rebrand.
Coca Cola
Inconsistent branding and purpose have the power to sabotage your hard-earned brand love.
Coca-cola provided us with the perfect example of what not to do when they bought out their 1985 ‘carbonated disaster’ — otherwise known as New Coke. They wanted to introduce something to appeal to a younger demographic, but it went down as a national disgrace. Their hasty brand deviation was in response to the “Pepsi Challenge” — luckily they reintroduced Coke classic a few months later and taught us all a valuable brand lesson.
Great brand, sh*t service
Consumers are ‘more loyal to service than they are to brand’ (Wunderman Thompson Commerce), and 20% of 6–16-year-olds would not even consider brands that can’t deliver within a day. It’s therefore no surprise that the brands that thrived over lockdown, were those that offered great customer services, and unbeatable convenience.
Ryanair has been named the worst brand for customer service and received the lowest rating of one star across all categories. If their basic brand colours aren’t enough to put you off, they also offer frequent delays and MIA luggage. Whilst we’re tempted by a bargain, without satisfactory service, you can wave goodbye to loyal customers.
Cancel culture
It’s not just celebrities getting cancelled these days. Brands can also be haunted by historic oversights. In the digital age, controversy travels like wildfire, so it’s more important than ever for brands to stick to the safety of their guidelines.
Brewdog was boycotted after being accused of having a ‘rotten culture’ in a damning open letter signed by more than 100 ex-staff. They have also had a run-in with watchdog after falsely claiming competition winners would receive a “solid gold” can. Their feeble attempt at recovery also got slammed as insincere.
Irrelevance
Does the notion of ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity’ still ring true? Whilst all brands dream of infallibly glowing engagement, the ones that fail to innovate can become replaceable.
Netflix started as an online company that would post DVDs to your door — they moved with the times and switched to streaming when the market did. Blockbuster was handed a lifeboat and could have bought Netflix for $50 million, but the CEO thought it was a joke. In 2010 Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy and Netflix is now a $28 billion-dollar company.
All brands make mistakes, but with loyalty more fragile than ever, they need to be quick to react. Next week we’ll be posting part 2: How To Get Your Customers To Stay Faithful. In the meantime, check out our latest report on how brands can foster their community, encourage participation, and prolong user engagement through gamification here.
