How is it that good salesmanship can defeat a brand?  It happens because good salesmanship, at its roots, is somewhat contradictory to good branding.  Problems occur when master salesmen set brand strategy.  The master salesman isn’t wrong…but his job is to sell a product, not build a brand.  Selling a product and building a brand are two distinctly different tasks.  Selling is short-term.  Branding is long-term.  Branding should outline what the salesman sells and how it’s sold.  Selling (as a strategy) leads to short-term rewards, but long-term identity crisis and price wars.  Branding (as a strategy) means slower growth, but creates longevity and higher price points.

This series deals with 5 areas in which good selling contradicts good branding.  The topic of this post is AGING.

Aging deals with the choice to either grow old with your current customer base, or continually renew your customer base at the same age.  A business doesn’t face this issue until around the 5 year mark or so…10 years in some cases.  Here’s how the issue arises:  out of the gate, you experience great success with your market.  They love you…they are loyal to you.  Well done.  But, that base doesn’t remain frozen in time.  They age.  With age, comes different tastes, different demands, different priorities.  At that point, you have a choice to make.  Do you listen to their demands and evolve your business?  Or, do you stick with what made you successful to start with?

A perfect case study in again is Cadillac.  Cadillac hit pay dirt with the Greatest Generation years ago.  They grew old with their market.  Younger Boomers and certainly GenX’ers view Cadillac as “an old person’s car.”  Thus, Cadillac has been working vigorously to correct this perception and break back into a younger market dominated by other brands such as VW, Volvo, BMW, and Infiniti. To put things in perspective, “younger” for Cadillac means 40 or 50-something and hiring an ad cougar (is Kate Walsh really considered a cougar?  wow…).

What’s wrong with growing old with your market, you ask?  Well, eventually they will retire and your brand will be irrelevant.

So here is where good salesmanship and good branding clash:  successful, established salespersons always place first emphasis on pleasing the existing customer.  A good brand manager should always place first emphasis on the emerging customer.  This means that each and every year products and services will change to meet, greet, and welcome the youngest members of your market.  It also means that certain demands, wishes, wants, and preferences of the older members of your market should NOT be catered to.

Now, to be clear, I’m not advocating intentionally irritating, ignoring, or otherwise leaving your customers dissatisfied.  I AM advocating that you must allow your existing customer to grow out of your brand in order to remain relevant to tomorrow’s consumer.  Staying relevant to the up-and-comers is tough work…but is very rewarding in the end.