People relate to brands, see them as having characteristics best described in human terms
Whenever I have done research over 40 years in this game and sought to identify the elements of a brand, the one constant has been that human terms have been used to describe them, both good and bad.
I wonder what words would be used to describe United airlines at the moment?
Who would want to be in the airline business anyway? It is a capital intensive, highly regulated business, competing on price with a number of significant airlines being subsidised as the national flag carrier, with a major consumable cost, fuel, subject to wild and largely unpredictable fluctuations.
The branded competitive framework we all work in is a double sided coin.
On one side is the regulatory requirements, which must be followed, the other is the moral responsibility that all businesses have to their customers, the promise made by the brand. You take their money in the promise of delivery, just how you go about that delivery can vary, that is the moral dimension.
United airlines failed miserably.
As far as I am aware, the United flight 3411 arrived in Louisville safely, and roughly on time. But they failed the moral responsibility badly.
An airline is legally entitled to overbook, they are legally entitled to remove passengers for a number of reasons, and they are legally entitled to fly their staff to a destination where they are required. Question is, do they have a moral right to pull a passenger off the plane to and substitute their own staff for operational reasons.
They made a promise to their customers, that they would take their money to get them to a destination safely, and in some comfort.
Coming in the same week as the United fiasco, this story of Alaska Airlines managing a problem represents the difference in the moral decisions that are taken and they have a profound impact on the brand.
Those who own brands make choices about a range of things, how they want to be seen, usually represented by the statements of missions and values they stick in their lobbies, however, what really matters is how they behave, particularly when there are choices involved, and the harder the better, as it is the hard ones that demonstrate the real value of the brand.
Customers do not read and remember the crap in your lobby, but they watch what you do, and remember.
So, what sort of brand to you aspire too be?
Image credit: By Unknown or not provided – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17413025
