What is Cloudy Syndrome?
Cloudy Syndrome is a crippling disease that plagues many businesses. It’s as common as a cold in the world of branding. Cloudy Syndrome makes your company appear foggy, dim, wavering, and undependable to a significant group of people: your customers and prospects.
What are the five main causes of Cloudy Syndrome?
>No Cohesive Brand – You don’t have a crystal clear branding promise or a Branding Map™ to keep customers, prospects, employees, and leadership on the same page. You have always sold in the trenches with your sales team in a sink-or-swim mode of survival. Your business has survived and even grown through sheer entrepreneurial will-power, but no one really “gets” what you stand for. For you, Cloudy Syndrome has been a permanent disability.
>Garbage Collection – It is easy to be complicated. You add layer upon layer of marketing ideas or strategies that are based on anecdotal experiences. You succumb to every new marketing fad. You make off-brand choices. Over the years your marketing becomes big and sloppy. You neglect the hard work of keeping your brand genius and simple, giving Cloudy Syndrome an opportunity to set in.
>Disconnects – Everyone inside and outside of your company is telling a different story. You allow your brand not to make sense to your real market on some or many levels. Because of your disconnect with your crowd, your brand winds up being marketed to everyone and appealing to no one – a classic case of Cloudy Syndrome.
>Hand-to-Hand Combat – You are in what the book, Blue Ocean Strategy, calls “bloody water”. Competition is fierce and you decide to be macho and duke it out with your competition. You sink to your competitors level to play the game of one-up or price war. You used to stand up for your client’s well-being but now you stand up against the competition. Cloudy Syndrome lurks at this level of competition.
>Brand Extension – You are making a profit and have more elbow room in your budget. Suddenly, like the ancient sirens calling Odysseus to the rocks, opportunities start singing your name. So you decide to diversify, stretching your brand over “related” products and services. Immediately you take your eye off the ball of your main brand. The new products turn out to be sink holes sucking the life out of the original brand. The market becomes confused about what your business does and what it stands for; your business suffers from another case of Cloudy Syndrome.
What is the cure for Cloudy Syndrome?
The best medicine for Cloudy Syndrome is a healthy dose of focus. Stay “on brand” by adhering to your company’s branding promise and make sure everyone is on the same page with your Branding Map™. Keep your finger on the pulse of your customer base. Become a great succession of professionally managed and thoroughly enjoyable experiences crafted just for your clients. Become the Disneyland of your market.
The future belongs to two types of companies: the huge mega-brands, which have the muscle to dominate their markets with price, and the specialists, who position themselves as the savvy, well-branded standouts, who focus on continually supporting and inspiring their loyal crowds.
Brand well and prosper!
Andy Cleary