Attempts to Ruin Brand Equity: From Logos to Brands

In Chapter 8, we addressed protecting a company’s intellectual property, trademarks, and copyrights, including its logos. Here, we make the distinction between a logo, which is the identification of a company’s brand, and the brand itself, which is what embodies our collective concept of a company.

From a customer’s perspective, logos and jingles help identify the products and services that a company sells. As one of the world’s longest standing and most recognized logos, The Coca-Cola Company’s logo—white cursive letters on a red background—is recognized by most people. Some global mobile phone manufacturers, like Nokia and Motorola, have set the default ringtone to play their own signature sound. Logos are useful because they help current consumers, prospective customers, shareholders, employees, the media, and other stakeholders to identify a company’s products and services.

A brand, on the other hand, is your concept of a company or product, built up by a commitment to delivering quality products and services throughout the history of your interactions with the company. Your brand perception is further motivated by the company’s advertising and what you hear about it from the media and from your friends and family. Prior to the Internet, we primarily experienced brands through just a few touch points, mostly through in-store purchases, television ads, print media, or phone surveys. The Internet added new touch points, including company websites and affiliate merchants. Social media has further multiplied your touch points with companies, including corporate Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, blogs, YouTube channels, support forums, and idea marketplaces. In addition, social media provides exposure from individuals posting to forums, blogs, Wikipedia, Twitter, photo-sharing sites like Flickr, and review and recommendation sites like Yelp.com and TripAdvisor.com.

Individuals can now share their experiences with brands, both positive and negative. In 2010, Southwest Airlines removed actor-director Kevin Smith from one of its flights in accordance with their “customer of size” policy. Little did Southwest know he would unleash his anger on Twitter to his 1.4 million followers (http://abcnews.go.com/WN/kevin-smith-fat-fly/story?id=9837268). Also, in 2010, when Nestlé created a Facebook Page for KitKat, the Company was caught off guard by environmental activists, who used social media to wage their war against the company regarding its purchases of palm oil for use in the candy bars (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304434404575149883850508158.html). A Comcast technician fell asleep on a customer’s sofa in 2006 while on the phone waiting for Comcast’s own customer service line to respond; the resulting video has been seen by millions over the years. Nothing on the Internet ever goes away. Whether on their blogs, Twitter streams, Facebook accounts, or elsewhere, individuals are talking about brands and are certainly not shy about sharing their negative experiences.