There is no exercise in this short section.
The following points are intended as a reminder for the company’s CEO.
They mention recurring patterns experienced by many brands at all stages of maturity. Being aware of them can help you avoid a few pitfalls along the way.
One of the four risks a brand has been exposed to over the years is contagion.
This is what happens when a product or service fails.
All it takes is for one element of the brand's solutions portfolio to fail, and the bad news spreads like wildfire, tarnishing the image of the entire portfolio.
Your customers and prospects will gradually lose confidence in all the portfolio elements, and it will be called into question.
That's why it's better to come up with one correct solution rather than several average ones.
To make things even more precise, imagine for a moment that you're giving a bouquet of flowers to the one you love.
If one of the flowers doesn't look right, the image and perceived value of the whole bouquet suffer.
The solution: remove the flower from the bouquet before offering it. No one will judge a bouquet with one flower missing. Anybody will complain about a bouquet that's a little off.
Much more common than contagion ... confusion.
See those toothpaste brands that offer twenty different kinds of toothpaste?
What are Signal's mission, vision, and values to you?
And now, the same question for Colgate.
You can't tell the two apart, can you?