Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

284 BRAND RELEVANCE
resent a brand that attempts to copy or, worse, is phony and
attempts to be an original. Asahi Super Dry beer, as discussed
in Chapter One , was an incredible success in 1986. Kirin Draft
Dry, which appeared fewer than two years later, was a comparable
product but failed because it was a transparent effort to copy
the success of an underdog brand that had broken out of the
Kirin lager beer world. It was clear that a fi rm that had prided
itself on offering the best lager did not really have its heart in
the dry beer space, and Kirin Draft Dry failed the authenticity
test big time. The fact that Asahi, with associations of
Western, young, and cool, delivered more than crisp taste made
Kirin ’ s task more diffi cult because gaining “ authentic taste ”
was not enough.
Authentic means genuine, original, and trustworthy. A genuine
offering is one that can be counted on to deliver to expectations
on all dimensions. It will not disappoint. Original means
that it is not a copy or fake. It may not have been the pioneer,
but it was the first to get the offering right. Trustworthy indicates
that the organization or person behind the offering exhibits an
interest and sincerity in — if not a passion for — creating a genuine
product or service.
Getting and retaining authenticity ultimately means delivering
on the entire value proposition, never compromising. That
starts with having high standards and developing the people,
culture, and systems to deliver against those standards. The fi rm
behind a “ real brand ” will not compromise. The most trusted
names in a 2010 survey were Amazon, FedEx, Downey, Huggies,
and Tide, all brands that deliver on their promises consistently. 2
There was once a beer named Schlitz that was, with Budweiser,
the market leader. The Schlitz product ’ s brewing process
was compromised in order to reduce costs. As a result the beer
turned fl at while on the shelf, and the brand lost everything.
Even returning to the original formula and showing live taste
tests during the Super Bowl were not enough. The problem that
Schlitz could not overcome was the raw fact that the organization