Back in the 1980s for product brands we collected a databank : how much share does a market leader enjoy just because its seen as market leader? We did this by seeing how share slumped for a former market leader once it had clearly been deposed. Our best estimate then 20% of business was due solely to being though of market leader- this made sense eg for customers who didnt know or care how to choose and therefore believed  the safest (and least socially criticised choice) would be going with the leader. Other's said more subtly that the leader had more to lose if ever it did something untrustworthy and hence gave them a greater guarantee. 

There are now several good reasons for believing that the lost halo effect is much more than 20%:
1) networked effects
2) service effects; I have noticed on more than one occasion recently that a company whose service staff training I thought was best, may only have been relying of the joie de vivre that a market elader's staff gets (eg fewer complaints); once these service people lose market leadership relationships, they tend to be the elss capable of all in terms of handling genuine complaints caringly

Of course brand valuation algorithms defined as they were since the 1980s to be clueless about whole system dynamics have no idea about the risks of these and other trust-flow futures, even though they are entirely measurable should leaders wish to include them in the quality of their intangibles decisin-making. If you are investing for a pension, don't invest in brand companies unless they can prove they do transparency audits as well as transactional ones the Big 5 global accountants were kings of doing on the shred.  Many more reasons why pensioners-to-be should avoid non-transparent companies in equity markets here http://www.tomorrowscompany.com/publications.html

Chris Macrae, wcbn007@easynet.co.uk
open sourcing transparency mapping and intangibles valuation at http://www.valuetrue.com





posted by ..., 11:16 AM  permalink

Are you sure you already knew that the largest publically owned media in the world is British? It behoves a country's people (especially one that is no longer a great empire but whose past still compounds geographical misfortunes) to work through what the country uniquely owns, and how to do soemthing different with that ownership.

Elsewhere, Beyond Branders have demonstrated every case for believing that global brand image making (devoid of reality-making) is either a bust model or where it enslavens people one that busts the human spirit's most joyous accomplishments. At the very least there is a need for the world's largest public media to offer a very different world service from the dis-services of the world's largest commercial media which appear to be spinning a process that has made the world's largest government beholden to big business rather than to its people. The networking age was always going to be a most difficult one for superpower nations to transparently connect with, as our club of future historians foretold in 1984. Accidentally, on our timeline we projected 2005 as the eyar the world turned a different way round: determined to narrow the most pressing humanitarian divides causes by differences in incomes and expectations of rich and poor nations. This was not argued solely on grounds of altruism, it makes good economic sense to go above zero-sum policy making now that networks can multiply that.
 
The diference in living in a country where public setor media barely exists and te lucky UK is amazing. To see how misfortunes compound in a country with little freedom from commercial space, consider:-
http://www.outfoxed.org/

A VITAL GAME
Seeing the world we could start to be spinning in 4 yeasr time if the BBC saw its remit as wholly different from commercial media and serving its owners (the public) and the British ideas of fairplay worldwide and inspiration of diversity, not pampering to national politicians smallest needs.
10 players needed. Please register you interest -reply here or converse at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk. Time needed for first virtual round: one hour over an elapsed period of a month.

posted by ..., 10:38 AM  permalink

Since being converted in the late 1980s by a year spent in Japan work on marketing projects there (and actually going back to the first marketing book I ever read Hugh Davidson' Offensive Marketing) I have found myself at odds with large parts of the profession on 2 main issues:

-branding/marketing is vital but only when done at the lowest possible (not the highest possible) cost
-any global company's total investment in branding is about designing 1000's of system connections, not separating perceptions; I hate the distrust that compounds when image-making and reality-making divorce each other; from that moment on both an organisation and leadership lose context, and compound value destruction, both monetary and of other human kinds such as chances to learn or the ability for globalisation to be a locally good thing for every society
 
http://www.valuetrue.com/home/glossary.cfm?letter=c
Back in 1995 we open sourced Brand Chartering to work so that people, leadership teams and every group collective intelligence and network in between can questiuon context passionately and openly untiul they are all working from the same scripts. True systemic connectivity of communications, actions and leadership systemic decisions- the ones that compound what futuire happens. However, it can only work if a climate of trust-flow is ciruclating all around.
A journalist is just finishing a book on how to measure whether trust-flow is systemic, as well as to explain to any investors with slightly more interest than speculators why losing trust-flow is at least as serious as leaking cash-flow. That will be out in 2005, though I can advance individual chapters on 1:1 request.

Meanwhile, I have realised that there are a lot of non-owned but vitally valuable properties that can benefit both from Chartering's toolkit, and valuetrue mapping of triust-flow.
I will be posting a short series on tehse : 1) Water, 2) Cities, 3) The World's largest publically owned media. I also look forward to your suggestions of other brands the public owns
chris macraewww.valuetrue.com
posted by ..., 8:19 PM  permalink

It will always be tough to topple BT from the top of my Brand hate-list.

Trying to get customer service from BT is like trying to get truth out of the Government. However, recently T-mobile has popped onto my telco radar screen, the unwitting, but unrepentant victim of an unscrupulous web sales company:
DIAL-A-PHONE.

What's the problem? They just can't stop billing me. For a phone I've never had, ordered from www.Dial-a-Phone.com, who will give a phone to anyone, deliver it anywhere, and not bother to check whether your credit card matches your address, whether your address matches your name...and who are partnered with ALL major telcos.

The same Dial-a-Phone that when I reported the fraud, forced me to spend 10 minutes listening to sales promotions on their 'Customer Disservice' line, told the customer disservice agent to put the phone down on me.

I also want to shame the insurer Cornhill Allianz (whose customer service person tells me: Yep, this sort of fraud happens 'more often than not' with Dial-a-Phone.)

Most of all I want to shame T-mobile...
1. I explain the fraud but am told: We acknowledge the fraud, but we can't do anything about this over the phone. please can you send us all the documentation'. So I do. And hear nothing.
2. I receive another different bill.
3. I phone them. "We have no record of that, can you send us the bill." I ask 'you mean the same bill you just sent me? "Yes, that's the one". I do, explaining teh fraud again.
4. I receive another bill, this time a final demand. So I phone. After 30 minutes on the phone, I get: "Could you just send us that final demand together with another letter...". I do, I give them my home number and ask them to confirm their next action.
5. No call. (What can you expect from a telco), but I get a three line letter acknowledging receipt of my letter. No apology, no indication of their likely action against Dial-a-Phone, nor their intent to reform their own systems and no indication that they will stop purusing debt that doesn't belong to me.

The truth here, is that we are all exposed, and none of these companies has any ability or intent to change the customer experience across their disjointed systems.
Are you a victim of fraud? Tough shit!

Choice and Additions on-line catalogues have also been exposed, and are similarly incapable of joining up their fraud investigation to their ruthless pursuit of outstanding debt.

Finally I turn to the police in a large London station. Perlease! I say, what can be done? You must report it Sir, but you're better to do it in your home town. You see none of our systems are joined together.

So I shall attempt to track down a pervasive network of internet-based identity fraud
from a small town police station.

Grrrr. Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells. posted by Tim, 2:39 PM  permalink