5 Steps To One-Up Your Competition. February 7, 2009
Posted by compliancebranding in Uncategorized.trackback
If you want to do the competition one better, you’ve got to raise the bar in your category. What that means is that you have to develop a differentiator than positions your company as a leader not a follower. Here is a 5-step primer to doing exactly that:
1) Analyze how you carry out business on a regular basis. Are there any best practices, you could exploit?
2) Take these best practices and package them into a tangible process.
3) Brand this process as a proprietary product, using a trademarkable identity.
4) Develop additional processes to validate and trouble shoot for effectiveness, ie: ROI
5) You now have a self-administered compliance that you can market as exclusive to your business. It is sort of your own Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Market it extensively. Scream from the mountain-tops.
As a self-administered compliance – only your company owns it. If it is compelling enough, it will effectively differentiate you. Now you have something you can build on and possibly add sub-brands to down the road – strengthening the offer.
Agreed. Self administered compliance is just like have a proprietary product. It is yours to own and do with what you will. Once the investment has been made to determine what is important to the business to be in compliance with it is critical to maintain it. In order to maintain there may be several options such as management oversight, internal audit or even layered process audits as a method to monitor and measure if the compliance is effective and assisting the company to make their mark in the marketplace.
I believe every company has statutory compliance requirements in order to be permitted by government or associations to stay in business. That should be the primary concern of a company of course. That compliance could be strategically positioned to increase the brand value. Look at the recent outbreaks of salmonella and e-coli where the brand has been utterly devastated by harm to the public. If companies focused on ensuring that they were fully compliant to the legal minimums then branded that fact that compliance or exceeded compliance was the mission of the company the brand may be choice of the consumer as they are currently looking for confidence in a product.
Confidence should not be misinterpreted as blind trust. Companies must prove compliance within the brand.
The Maple Leaf problem is just one of many examples of how companies lose themselves in other issues. i.e. lack of resources, financial difficulties, union disputes etc. I honestly believe that open communication and belief in these values at the uppermost level is imperative for a sucessful operation. Unfortuantely for companies traded publically, the ability for management to be honest and open is greatly hindered (insider trading issues). It is so imporant for a management to remain in touch with their workers and never lose contact with the pulse of the operation.
The critical aspect to any compliance is proper risk communication. Failure to communicate just leads to failure- – -period. True that that publicly traded companies may lead to a more measured and controlled method of communication in order to protect the shareholders. The same may be true for private corporations as well by taking an overly protective approach the message may be lost in protectionist ideals. Once recognized by such by the consuming public the brand is lost.
Another risk to compliance is apathy!!
By far the most common reaction to risky situations is apathy. Figuring out how to combat apathy — how to get people to recognize a risk as serious, to become concerned about it, and to take action — is the mainstay of a risk communication specialist’s job. It is also the mainstay of a health educator’s or health communicator’s job such as in the Maple Leaf case.
The list of health risks to which people under-respond is a very long list indeed. The difference between apathy and denial is clearest when you try to warn people, to scare them into attention and action. Apathetic people don’t have much initial interest in your warnings, but once you get through to them they become more concerned. But people in denial have a very different response: The scarier your message, the deeper into denial it pushes them.
According to Bill Leiss, one of the world’s foremost authors on risk, ” “competent” risk management can only be achieved if the foundational structure of such controversies are better understood. It is argued that such understanding will facilitate the movement towards a more satisfactory and effective relationship between science and the public in the context of dealing with risk issues”
To summarize, working toward compliance, understanding the risk of compliance will help any company be a better communicator of the measures they have taken to mitigate the risk as well as protect the brand.