Invisible Brand

Is it possible for a service business to succeed commercially when it alienates the people who deliver the customer experience? It may defy conventional wisdom, but it happens. How do we accommodate this within our theories of branding?

Naomi Klein’s No Logo provided marketers with a great deal of food for thought but one particular morsel has proven harder than most to digest.

She argues that whilst, on the one hand, brands like Starbucks offer consumers a 360 degree brand / lifestyle experience they are, on the other hand, shameless exploiters as employers who treat their staff so badly that they are hated by them.

In terms of our core thinking there is obviously a massive disconnect here. If, as we argue, it’s the staff who basically deliver the brand experience, how can Starbucks have become an international success on the back of a totally alienated workforce? Several thoughts suggest themselves.

First, does the strength, presentation and consistency of the trading concept (as defined by everything other than its staff) work in inverse ratio to its dependence on its people? Other brands (not necessarily exploiters of their people, it should be said) spring to mind here. McDonalds, Holiday Inns, Little Chef, Shell and BP Retail each offer a powerful homogeneity of environment, pricing, product and value which, perhaps, are not so easily undermined by indifferent staff attitudes.

This leads to a second line of thought, suggesting that where staff add high levels of value to the customer experience, dependence on their attitude and goodwill is considerable. But where they add relatively little value – performing functional tasks that might well be carried out by machines one day, for example – then dependence is low.

There are, of course, further angles to be considered. It is pretty clear that those most open to abusive working conditions are those closest to the bottom of the social and employment ladder – the young, the uneducated, immigrants and so on. These are people who have desperate need of employment and, however they may be treated, will carry out their work as well as they can for fear of losing their jobs.

In short, it does not necessarily follow that they will respond to poor working conditions by delivering an equally poor customer experience. Furthermore most people (not all, granted), when faced with a customer, would want to acquit themselves well, to make a good impression, despite the underlying circumstances. It’s a simple matter of self-respect.

The really interesting question is: can a service brand with an alienated workforce sustain its success over the long term? Factors at work here include the difficulty it may experience in recruiting in times of high employment; the establishment of competitor brands who may achieve a marketing edge by looking after their people better; and the ‘word on the street’ which gently, but inexorably, may turn a fashionable brand into an extremely unfashionable one.

We suspect the last of these will, in the long run, prove to be the reason why service brand theory is not about to be completely turned on its head.