Dealing with External Threats to Your Brand (Recon Thursday/Promotion)

Hello, I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy for Once a Day Marketing™.  It’s Recon Thursday and we’ve been talking recently about SWOT analysis.  Today we are going to specifically look at the T, or threats and how you deal with a threat to your brand.

Threats are external forces beyond your control.  For example, the Hurricane Katrina flood happens and impacts a New Orleans restaurant.  How do they deal with that?

Next, if your business is a destination away from town and people have to drive to your location, how would the skyrocketing price of gas effect your operation?

This last example is occurring right now.  Because of the ongoing drug wars in Mexico, tourism is down substantially in numerous cozy, seaside resort towns and destinations.  That is major threat and we’ll expand more on it now.

When discussing branding, I often mention that perception is reality.  This is true in the case of the Mexican tourist destinations.  Resort that may be 1,000 miles away from where the violence is occurring are seeing a substantial down turns in visitors.  Some businesses are experiencing tourism down 50% at their locations.  Occupancy and the amount of spend at resorts is down in excess of 70%.

Efforts are being made by the Mexican government to promote tourist destinations in new ways.  One is to host parties in the United States at the homes of people who have had enjoyable vacations to these quaint resort towns.  It’s an elaborate way of providing testimonials.  They are also using more online testimonials to promote good experiences of US based travelers visiting these Mexico communities.  It’s hard to say if these sales parties or the online testimonials are really working.  The point is they are responding to a serious threat.

Your assignment is to consider threats to your business and ensure you have contingency plans for what you would do should those threats arise.   This will better prepare you to respond to threats in the future.  They may not happen very often, but they do happen.

That concludes Recon Thursday.  Join us tomorrow for Digital Friday.  To discuss an online or face-to-face service engagement and enhance the marketing and branding for your organization, contact James Glover: (505) 501-1330 or onceadaymarketing@gmail.com.  I’m Jim Glover, That Branding Guy, for Once a Day Marketing™ and we’ll see you next time.

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