A Rolls Royce engine appears to have failed
on a Qantas flight from Singapore. As well as the distress caused to
passengers and crew, this has resulted, at the time of writing, in an 8%
fall in the company’s share price.
The
incident was doubly worse for British interests as the engines are part
of the Anglo-French Airbus 380, the most advanced aircraft of its kind
in the world. This follows on from the fate of another iconic,
world-class British company BP, whose value has been decimated by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, and is only now starting to recover.
Even
the quality-conscious Japanese are not immune to these problems, as
high-end Lexus cars are recalled for safety defects and the cachet
associated with the brand takes a battering.
It
only serves to illustrate the importance of brand names to consumers,
industry and financial markets. When things don’t go to plan, as in the
examples mentioned above, fixing the defect or re-calibrating the
engineering process is only half the battle. How many times nowadays do
you hear the phrase ‘bad for PR’ in association with all kinds of
mishaps? It seems to be applied to gaffe-prone CEOs, greedy bankers,
misbehaving footballers and hypocritical politicians.
So
what has all this got to do with product finishing? Surely our industry
operates below the radar of such high profile incidents?
But
perceptions of brand integrity work on every conceivable level. Rolls
Royce may be an extreme case, but in the finishing industry, those
companies with the vision to employ professional marketing in order to
build a strong brand are usually rewarded with lasting success.
For
instance, stop any person in the street and ask them to name a brand of
surface coating and I guarantee the only name they will come up with is
Teflon®. There is nothing remarkable about this process; it is a form
of powder or liquid coating with both industrial and domestic
applications. And yet, because of clever branding and association with
household appliances, it is a name that sticks in peoples’ minds (excuse
the pun!)
Three years ago, I had
misgivings about re-branding our company as ‘Riley Surface World’,
spending a significant amount of money in the process. Now the only
regret I have is not doing it earlier, as the investment has paid off
handsomely. The key is to make the name synonymous with the products or
services. Riley Industries could be any industrial conglomerate. But
under our new label, there is no doubt about the business that we are
in.
In our industry, it is the
chemical companies that do this best. They are able to distil complex
formulae into cogent, end-user benefits and communicate them with
clarity.
In the equipment field,
companies like Wheelabrator, Rosler and Nordson also make a good fist of
getting their messages across in clear and simple terms. In all cases
the brand names and their associations are enhanced.
Indeed, it is to the credit of Rolls Royce, BP and Toyota
that when their brands take a knock, it seems so out of character. Like
Arsene Wenger allegedly ‘playing away’ with a Parisian rap artist. But
let’s not get carried away!
To
summarise, we may all seem to burrow away down in the grimy basement of
manufacturing industry; cleaning, polishing, coating, blasting, baking
and generally getting our hands dirty for insufficient remuneration. But
it is those companies that build brands that are synonymous with
excellence that always have and always will be rewarded well in the
longer term.
