2. Resilient Brands Know Increased Market Stress Triggers Customers to Reassess their Brand Loyalty

When you feel stressed, do some of your natural responses and habits change? If so, you are not alone. During market stress, the purchase drivers which motivate customers to spend money often change. Sometimes these changes can be dramatic. Some things will take on more importance than normal, others will fall off purchasing patterns entirely. 

When customers’ daily lives are in flux, they reassess their needs and desires subconsciously — all of which potentially impacts their levels of brand loyalty and purchase drivers. 

For example, during a recession, customers may decide to trade down to cheaper brands or own label products in some categories. While in other categories they may trade up to choices which appear more solid or trustworthy. 

A good example of this is seen in the insurance market. Until you make a claim, you may not think too much about your insurance provider. But if you have a traumatic experience such as a medical emergency or household problem, you are more likely to reassess your insurance choices. 

This is a typical “switching” moment, when customers reassess their relationship with a brand, and either proactively dump it or become more loyal to them. It’s a critical moment of truth in which a brand is deemed dependable and worth the spend, not to mention referable, or dismissed and perhaps negatively rubbished in social channels.

Any moment when a customer reconsiders their relationship with your brand is pivotal – you need to optimize your chances of getting them to engage with your brand more, not less. That can mean trial, but it can also mean building a deeper relationship with an existing customer. Remember, it is almost always cheaper to sell to an existing customer than to a new one. 

Related: Branding Psychology in Adversity – 7 Ways You Can Embrace Behavioural Shifts to Grow Your Business

3. Resilient Brands Provide Clear Roadmaps for Thriving in Market Stress

Increased market stress triggers a lot of conflicting priorities. Often, attention is thrown into activities which may ordinarily take little or no time, such as chasing accounts receivable and managing disrupted supply chains. This means that as a business leader or decision maker, you have less time and headspace to decide how best your brand can handle a crisis. That is dangerous, because such decisions are even more critical during increased adversity — they need clarity of thought so you make the right decision.

The clearer you are in advance about what your brand does and does not stand for, the easier it is to assess possible courses of action through the filter of your documented brand strategy because it’s the baseline on which your business sits. 

That is true for external branding but it is also important for internal branding. Brand vision, brand purpose, brand mission and brand values help fast track your decision-making and improve its quality at a time when you may understandably be distracted and under pressure. 

Related: Top 5 Reasons Why Brand Purpose is The Essential Growth Driver in a Fast Changing World

The fact is, we’re all vulnerable to making poor decisions when operating under increased pressure so engineering resilience into your business helps mitigate that risk.

Related: How Your Brand Mission Enables You To Achieve Your Commercial Objectives

4. Resilient Brands Doesn’t Need to Adapt to Market Stress – They’re Built For It

Tone of voice always matters in how a brand is perceived, but it is more important than ever in market stress. People are sensitive, uncertain and nervous when making decisions under pressure. So, a brand’s tone of voice can have heightened impact. Light-hearted or playful brand communication that might be ideal at other times often doesn’t match the moment in market stress. That can mean sudden, sometimes dramatic re-jigging of key brand planning elements such as brand communication and promotional plans.

However, a well-structured brand can pivot how it communicates – but the core of the brand strategy itself should remain constant. Like a well-rounded friend or relative who speaks gently to you at a time of personal sadness – although their tone of voice and choice of words may change, they don’t change who they are.

This is more important than ever in a digital age, where social media amplifies missteps by brands who mistake their customers’ mood at a time of crisis. The backlash after social media influencer Kim Kardashian had a party on an island during the Covid-19 pandemic was an example of getting such brand sensitivity and contextual connection wrong.

Image via Campaign Live © Guinness

A case study of doing things the right way also comes from the COVID-19 crisis. For St. Patrick’s Day, Guinness shifted from its usual communication focus on pub gatherings and instead focused on wellbeing – a different communication approach, but still consistent with the brand identity.

5. When Market Stress Puts Brand Culture to the Test, Resilient Brands Thrive

The saying goes that bad news comes in threes and market stress does seem to snowball on all fronts. While you may be dealing with practical challenges such as getting your offering to market, you may face branding challenges such as reduced media availability but also internal challenges – market adversity can affect staff, sometimes dramatically. 

That is why investing time and energy into building the right brand culture internally is so important. A brand culture that is already well-developed and a positive support as a living part of everyone’s experience when you need it most is a critical factor because it helps maintain focus, nurture confidence in leadership decisions for the collective good and, pull your team together particularly when they’re operating under more pressure. It is much harder to build brand culture from scratch in market stress and even if you can, there are usually other pressing things to do in hostile trading conditions.

Related: 6 Ways to Develop and Nurture a Successful Brand Culture With a Limited Budget

Brand culture shows its importance during market stress in multiple ways. It helps your people have a sense of identity, which can be important when other values come under pressure. It helps you adapt to new working paradigms, for example home working or self auditing and helps underpin employee loyalty when you most need it. 

Image via CNet © Microsoft

An interesting case study of a resilient brand culture is provided by Microsoft, which shifted to more home working during the Covid-19 pandemic. They then made the switch to home working or mixed site working a permanent choice for many employees. That is enabled by Microsoft having a long-standing clearly defined brand culture emphasising trust in its employees.

Related: How to Use Brand Building and Culture Integration to Unlock More Value from Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures

6. Brand Style Guides Help Resilient Brands Manage and Thrive in Market Stress

A brand style guide is a simple but effective way to ensure that your brand is managed, protected and presented in a consistent and appropriate way however and wherever it appears. In truth, it’s an essential business tool at all times because it enables you to protect one of your most valuable assets — your brand IP — and helps you mitigate risk and prevent unintentional self sabotage. 

With increased market stress when your team is operating under more pressure, it becomes an even more critical tool. With conflicting priorities and time pressure more common in adverse conditions, a brand style guide takes some pressure off because you don’t have to think about what you are doing from scratch every time, and instead apply efficiently and fast without unintended mistakes or poorly executed outcomes.

Related: What’s a Brand Guide and How Can it Help Your Business?

7. Resilient Brand Strategy Trumps Reactionary Brand Tactics in Market Stress

Different brands respond to market stress in different ways. Usually, a lot of them will try new things to match sudden shifts in customer sentiment without a very informed basis underpinning those decisions. However, the danger of constantly shifting tactics is that you may make the wrong call and unintentionally sabotage yourself.

Spending times of market stress down in the tactical ditches also consumes a lot of your time, just when you will need it for a host of other priorities. The clearer and more actionably your brand strategy is engineered to withstand market stress, the more efficient, focused and effective your response will be in market stress.

Brand strategy trumps brand tactics every time during market stress. You may still need to work tactically, but the stronger your brand strategy is to start with, the better your tactical response which flows from it will be.

Image via World Brand Design © Carex

A case study on point is provided by personal care brand Carex. It made a big move into hand sanitizer during COVID-19. A lot of brands did this just by making sanitizer, but Carex was consistent with its brand identity as a hand care band rooted in soaps, and instead focused on sanitizing benefits in its core handwash range. Even its standalone sanitisers emphasized the softer, caring brand identity of the brand rather than the harsh, scientific tone adopted by many sanitizer brands.

Book Your Brand Audit Consult with Lorraine Carter here

8. Resilient Brands Value Long Term Brand Consistency Built for Market Stress Over Short Term Business Results

“Never waste a good crisis” is a helpful mantra – but only if applied in the right way. A lot of brands get it wrong, by misjudging the mood and being seen to profit from people’s uncertainty or fear. This is unattractive behaviour and can be severely punished by customers.

When you are assessing the short-term business opportunities for your brand which may be thrown up by market stress, assess them with the same brand mindset you use at other times. Ensure that your brand behaves consistently with its brand values at all times, particularly during increased market stress.

Related: How to Use Brand Values to Drive Unwavering Customer Trust and Commitment

9. Internal Branding Helps Resilient Brands Navigate Increased Market Stress

Brand culture is critical, but it needs to be clearly communicated to be effectively understood. That is why resilient brands consistently recognise the importance of internal branding. They communicate internally with the same passion they communicate to the outside world.

In market stress, staff may have to engage in new additional tasks, or work with less structure, support or supervision than normal. Not only can that be risky for the business, it can also be challenging and perhaps nerve-racking for the staff. The more confidence they feel in how to embody the brand values and why those brand values are what they are, the clearer their direction and higher quality of execution they are likely to provide.

Internal branding helps foster a long-term spirit of belonging, and knowing what is and is not appropriate for the people delivering the brand. In market stress, such internal branding means management can spend less time explaining, and the company overall can spend more time actually doing.

Image via New Civil Engineer

The engineering consultant AECOM provides a useful case study. It emphasized employee trust, creativity and doing things differently as part of its brand culture. So, when COVID-19 came along, adapting to new ways of remote working was easier.

Related: 7 Ways Brand Collateral Helps You Grow Your B2B Business Profitably Even in a Hostile Market

10. Resilient Brands in Market Stress

Customer experience shapes customers’ perception of a brand. That can matter more during market stress, because a product or service takes on additional importance to them, or because the customer experience helps match changed circumstances.

A well thought through customer experience across all touchpoints brings some welcome reassurance, calm and certainty during increased market stress when other things may feel more chaotic. That is welcomed by customers and helps build longer term loyalty.

Related: Top 10 Brands for Customer Experience and What You Can Learn From Them

Final Thoughts

Resilient brands perform well in times of market stress by design — it’s not luck or accident. They start with a clear, well-thought-out brand strategy which provides an actionable roadmap captured in a Master Brand Strategy Document also called a Master Brand Profile.

Strong resilient brands are controlled and managed in daily activities through a brand style guide. Brand culture is important and is reinforced by internal branding. This is matched by an equally well-considered external branding strategy, delivered through great customer experiences.

We know this because we’ve observed it in many of the world’s most successful brands, not to mention our clients and customers.  They’ve proven to be incredibly resilient even when operating in more vulnerable sectors. 

So the question is, which of these ten principles of resilient brands will you implement in your business and brand strategy now?

Questions to Consider

1. How clear is your brand strategy? Is it built
2. How do you ensure your brand communications are proactive not purely reactive?
3. Do you have a brand style guide to help ensure that your brand strategy is delivered consistently?
4. What defines your brand culture?
5. How does your internal branding reflect your brand?
6. How does the customer experience you deliver bring your brand mission, values and purpose to life?
7. Would a Lean Brand Audit help you address your vulnerabilities so you can make your business more resilient and adapt your business model to new opportunities and emerging trends?

Your Persona Client Satisfaction Guarantee

1. When you work with us we’ll create a customised brand-building plan and strategy with clear investment for you tailored to your specific requirements and preferences
2. You’ll know each step of your brand building journey before we start because we’ll discuss it, document it and agree on it with you before work commences
3. You’ll have timelines, key milestones and deliverables to evaluate and approve for each stage and part of your brand building process
4. Because we know the unexpected sometimes happens we can make adjustments along the way if you need it and if something extra is requested we’ll ensure you’re fully appraised about what that entails before committing
5. As we achieve pre-agreed objectives you’ll be able to evaluate your brand building work and strategy in progress, coupled with the outcomes to ensure return on investment

Get in touch today because we’d love to enable you to re-evaluate and build your standout, powerhouse brand so you can Be The One — increase your profits and leave your competitors way behind.

Email us [email protected] or ring us +35318322724 (GMT 9:00-17:30) and ask about our VIP Brand Strategy Re-Evaluation.