02.03.2023, News

From Lufthansa to Mercedes: Many German brands now stand for broken promises.

"A brand is a promise. A good brand is a promise kept," said former Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent. Unfortunately, I currently see a number of German brand icons breaking their promises.

Example 1: Lufthansa.
When presenting the new brand design in 2018, CEO Carsten Spohr said: The crane is "a symbol of the highest quality, of excellent service (sic), of aviation expertise, of reliability, of innovative spirit; and it stands for trust." Today, customers experience canceled flights, unreachable hotlines and "goodwill" offers that do not compensate for damage that has already occurred. Instead of "Say yes to the world," you increasingly hear "I say no to Lufthansa." Christoph Waltz talks in the SZ newspaper about how his Rimowa suitcase "with some beloved things" got lost on the way from Munich to Berlin... The customer is managed by the software and overwhelmed employees...

Example 2: The car industry.
The respected analysts at J.D. Power recently surveyed the quality perception of car brands in the USA. Result: BMW in 15th place, Porsche in 20th, VW in 24th and Audi in 30th - out of 32 brands examined. Added to this are completely unclear delivery dates and repeated reports of postponed product launches, unreliable software, etc.

The best or nothing? Probably nothing! Of course: Neither problem was caused by brand management - but brand promise and brand experience are drifting further and further apart. At the same time, I often see no effort on the part of those responsible to save brand capital threatened by communication - or to use it to solve problems. Instead, problems are hushed up. For me, this immediately raises the question: Why is that? And the answer is (unfortunately): Because the people responsible for the brand are probably not at the table.

Because the controllers, technicians, lawyers and possibly PR people talk about problems in the company. But the people responsible for the brand only have the floor again when the sun deck has to be polished after the storm. In my view, this is a mistake. Brand management is part of company management and not a logo and colorful pictures. The brand is the central link between the company and its customers - which is why it is particularly important for me in times of crisis.

Brand managers must show internally what broken promises mean for the brand's value in the long term. And they must explain what a promise like "There's no better way to fly" or "The future is an attitude" actually means when passengers are treated like that or my car won't be at my door for two or - I don't know - years. Brands must also look at reality!