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How Not to use a Brand

What is a brand? For most businesses it is your identity, your face to the world. You are recognised by your brand and building it up, builds up the trust in your business. Having an established brand means you stand out from the competition and have earned your place in the industry. There is history behind an established brand. But what do dishonest people use brands for? Laypeople without basic decency, like pop psychologists throwing out their diagnoses to people around them, twist brands and bastardise them to rip people off. What do I mean by this? Here is an example.

Photography studios are known to be scammy. At the end of the day, they sell photoshoots. Big deal. Maximum cost for that should be £120 all-in. For that you would expect a couple of hours with a photographer and at least 10 quality photos, even touched up a bit as needed to remove spots etc, but not too much to make you look like a clown with an Instagram filter. You expect photos that look like you, but in a good way. You, on a good day. These photos are for you to put away for your old age. This is the reality of photography services.

What is being sold by them is quite different. They don’t actually sell photos, they sell dreams. They don’t charge based on their work, but how big your ego is and how much they can delude you in their stuffy little high-pressure sales rooms they take you, after taking some awful photos of you, and touching them up so much they aren’t even usable. They want to sell these photos to you at the highest price possible. Before you even walk in there, they tell you you’ve been selected to use their services. This is where the con starts, and I’ll get on to how they abuse brands to get away with it.

These days photo studios have more sales people than photographers. They select people they think have money and large dreams, and they prey on them. They try to approach us to set up their ‘new brands’ and ‘new website’ even though they claim to have years of experience. They do this because they set up brands just to trash them. It is like asking Gordon Ramsey to prepare a meal for you to throw against the wall. We refuse.

Their idea of a brand is something their sales team can use to con people into trusting them. They set up their review platforms and add reviews before the even open the doors. They know that within a couple of months the jig will be up and they will be exposed through bad reviews, and so they are always setting up new brands. This is how not to use a brand. Online reputation management is not about protecting scammers. It is about allowing good companies and individuals to show their true self online, without troll comments, fake reviews, or inaccurate news articles.