What Happens When a Brand Dies

My friend Peter from Australia sends me this post from a far away time. It was followed up by Heath Row at Fast Company more than five years ago in a post that referred to a somber article about Driving in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Working at a company where employees and customers have been killed is very hard - I know from personal experience, although it is not as harsh as the one depicted in the article.

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On August 28, 2003, the Melbourne, Australia, Company of Friends (Fast Company's readers network) group held a forum on death and business -- and how our attitudes toward death influence our lives as business people.

Without wishing to make light of the gravity of the article linked above, there was one paragraph which struck me as equally applicable to business: "There is no management book, no business school case study on how to lead a company that has become the target of war."

Business can be a metaphoric war, companies seek the "death" of opposition products, business units, and ultimately the company. Business schools teach how to kill in business, but, in our experience, none teach how to deal when our businesses are the victim and our companies die or are dying.

Our guests for the evening were a corporate liquidator; a former major, rescue pilot, and now business coach; and a member who had suffered near death in life and business. Each agreed that in the west, for many, death in business is as much ignored, avoided and sanitized as death in life.

We came up with our own ideas on how to lead in the face of death:

• Plan for death. Morbid as it sounds, our liquidator confirmed that companies that had business plans for death coped better both financially and personally.

• Have rituals upon death. Employees often dealt better with death than management and the board. This was seen as a result of employees getting together and grieving, whereas management and the board were alone in the process.

• Help people grieve when their products, services, and strategies die. They will transition to their new life quicker. Death should not be left to the experts alone. In leaving death to the experts, we rob ourselves of an essential part of our lives -- an experience which informs a healthier approach to life and business.

• People with strong network deal with life threatening situations better.

• Businesses die for many reasons which have nothing to do with the founders directors and employees. Though death in business (perhaps from an Australian cultural perspective) is often seen as failure. Perhaps we need a way of recognizing the contribution of a company that has died.

Peter asks - can social media help all stakeholders grieve and celebrate a dying or dead brand?

[image of personification of death from Wikimedia]

Comments

[BrandlandUSA]

Fascinating topic. I blog about brand names that are near death, or are legacy brands that have been around for generations, and when they disappear, customers are always sad.

[olivier Blanchard]

Like old soldiers, good brands never die. ;D

Even when businesses fail (or just end), sometimes the brands they created can endure. You see this a lot with restaurants and other foodservice-related businesses.

I've seen examples of strong brands backed by wounded businesses use social media to rally customers to help save them. In some cases, that customer engagement works and the businesses recover. In others, the business dies but the brand endures in such a way that it can be revived later.

Now we need to create a post around zombie brands: Brands that come back to life after the businesses that created died. :D

[Mike Wagner]

Some brands are dead and don't know it. Or perhaps I should say the employees and customers know it but the senior leaders have yet to get the memo.

At other times a business and therefore its brand will fail.

Regardless, the advice to embrace the grieving is exactly right.

And Olivier's notion of "zombie brands" sends my mind racing in more than a few directions.

An example like Indian Motorcycle comes to mind.

Keep creating...a brand worth raving about,
Mike

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Garland - Peter is an interesting individual and I think his question is provocative. I'll be curious to see if anyone thinks social media can help.

@Olivier - extending the analogy. When a brand is well liked, it endures the failure of its underlying business to care for it. Zombies, huh? Just in time for Halloween.

@Mike - I have seen an example of brands that have died and everyone but the decision makers knowing it. What we did not get to discuss is the possibility that social media could help with the grievance process. Or maybe our brands on a personal level evolve so rapidly with social media that we have shifted our preference over already by the time we realize the brand is dead.

[Peter]

Hi Valeria,

My intention was not to be provocative but compassionate towards those who suffer in silence when Brands die.

That brands live on after the death of the Company (thank you Garland, Oliver and Mike) may be the best way to understand how brands work when the Company is alive.

But what happens to the individual who invests themselves in a brand - and in whose image they have come to mirror their own personal identity. Surely that hurts.

"Or maybe our brands on a personal level evolve so rapidly with social media that we have shifted our preference over already by the time we realize the brand is dead."

That strikes me as devolution.

Peter