Companies that continue to decline in CoreBrand’s ‘Familiarity’ ranking share a couple things in common: They have a comfortable niche in the market and are failing at raising awareness.
▶ Giving Communications Short Shrift: It’s an, er, alternative approach to PR and marketing: Communicate with your core customers, maintain a solid stock price and keep a low profile. The strategy may work to juice the top and bottom lines, but probably won’t help the long-term viability of the brand. Take the negative movement, with regard to brand familiarity, tracked by brand consulting company CoreBrand. Several of the companies listed below have seen precipitous declines in their familiarity during the last five years, said Jim Gregory, CEO of CoreBrand. “A lot of these companies were very respectful Fortune 500 companies whose decline has been spectacular and consistent,” he said. “They’re not out there telling their story as they have in the past, which got them to a high-level of familiarity to begin with.” But any company can turn things around. “It’s a matter of thinking more holistically about your brand,” Gregory said. “Advertising, PR, IR, employee relations; they all add value to the total awareness of a brand. Some companies may be confused about that.” He added: “If you’re not consistently communicating about your brand, then you will eventually disappear.
This article originally appeared in the April 21, 2014 issue of PR News. Read more subscriber-only content by becoming a PR News subscriber today.