It seems NextStage is becoming a clearing house of debranding stories. I've written on the topic of debranding -- when a company does something that so alienates its audience that it might as well close its doors -- often and NextStage did a longitudinal study of the subject that came out in one of our Hungry Peasant papers.This time out, we learned about a company with a specialized market -- a highly social and vocal market -- that stopped shipping products for a two month period of time.
The company specializes is arts&crafts supplies to the hobbyist through small design shops. This is a good sized market. Many of them study and teach arts&crafts in addition to doing it as either a sideline or main source of income.
This is also a highly vocal and social market. These people tend to form bonds that a more substantial than standard business ties because they're involved in creative endeavors. An aspect of being creative is wanting to share what they've created, something I call the "I made this for you in shop" mindset. Sometimes they want to share and be told they've done well whether they have or not. Lots of times they want to share so they can perfect their skills and be instructed in how to become artistically better.
The company is primarily a web vendor. They started years ago as a catalogue shop and easily moved to the web. Now they've grown again because they've done well with their web business. This is (I think) where the problem comes in.
The last growth spurt was the move from a pure catalogue shop to a web shop. This growth spurt involves moving their inventory to a bigger warehouse. They placed a notice on their website that they wouldn't be shipping or accepting orders for two months while they moved their warehouse. It wasn't there one day and was there the next. There was no other warning.
They wouldn't be accepting or shipping orders for two months? And they didn't tell anybody to stock up beforehand?
Welcome to DeBranding 101.
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Links for this post:
- A New Branding Paradigm, Online and Off
- Branding and Online Ad Placement
- Branding in Online Video
- Branding Blog posts
- DeBranding Blog Posts
- Moving Your Brand into New Markets
- Usability Studies 101: Brand Loyalty
- Websites: The Secret to Landing Pages and Shopping Carts
- IMedia Brand Summit on 9-12 Sept 07
- XChange on 20-21 Sept 07
- DC Emetrics Summit on 14-17 Oct '07
- Society for New Communications Research Annual Research Symposium & Awards Gala on 5-6 Dec 07 in Boston.
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