Think About It

We tore into the Magnavox box with the delight of children on Christmas morning. We smiled at each other, basking in the radiant reflections off our "smart, very smart" DVD player.

One frustrating hour later, we finally had the player hooked up to the TV. We slid in a DVD and hit play. It was great! A crisp, clear picture. But wait. Now the picture was fuzzy. Wait ? crystal clear again! Then grainy again. Hmmm.

The feelings of smartness were beginning to falter.

A slip of paper we found in the box implored us to call a toll-free number in case of trouble. So we dialed. And we waited. And waited. And waited some more. We were on hold about 20 minutes, or long enough to watch the picture morph from perfect to perfectly awful approximately 284 times.

When we finally made it to the front of the service line cue, the representative who answered ran through some basic questions to be sure we had connected everything properly. Then she told us the DVD lens might need cleaning. OK, we said, what’s the right way to clean it?

"Go to Target and ask them what kind of lens cleaner you should get," she answered.

Thinking we could at least avoid another half-hour phone call, we asked what we should do if cleaning the lens didn't solve the problem. "I can only tell you that after you try the lens cleaner," she replied.

Our smart-meter dipped below zero.

We had one last hope: the Magnavox Web site. But when we got there, all we found was an "under construction" message. Apparently they were building a better site, and in the meantime, we couldn't access any information about anything.

In the course of a few hours, we had made three different contacts with the Magnavox brand: the product itself, telephone support and the Web site. Not one of them made us feel like we were dealing with a "smart" company.

This sad story exemplifies the all-too-common gap between brand talk and brand action.

Magnavox's marketing department developed a great brand concept with "smart." But to protect the truth of that brand position, they needed to be sure everyone in the company was playing along.

The department that manages the Web site should have known that having the site down would be counter to the "smart." brand. Had they been dancing to the "smart." brand tune, they would have found a way to update the site without shutting it down, even temporarily.

And even telephone support needs to keep step with the brand position. Granted, the woman we spoke to almost undoubtedly was working through a third-party call center, not as a direct employee of Magnavox. Still, as a customer-facing brand representative, she needed to come across as "smart." too. Referring product questions to Target – not exactly a bastion of technical expertise – missed the mark badly.

How well do your brand ideals come through in the day-to-day contacts you make with your customers? POV can help you foster an understanding of your brand throughout your organization and beyond. So even your outsourced partners will be able to represent you faithfully. How smart is that?