I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again—your logo is not your brand. Your brand is made up of everything that is a part of your company/organization. I had an experience this week that gives a great example of how everything—the person answering the phone, in this case—affects your brand.

I wanted a pizza for dinner last night. There are many pizza joints to choose from in Bay City, but I have a couple of favorites. I couldn’t find a menu, so I looked them up online and found their website. The website has a menu, but I still had a question about one thing on the menu, so I picked up the phone and dialed.

A young woman answered the phone brightly, with a friendly greeting and the name of the restaurant. This was the high point of the phone call.

My question was pretty straightforward and, having worked in a couple of pizza places in my life, should have been very easy to answer. My question left her baffled…I’m not sure what was so confusing. I repeated my question, but she couldn’t answer it. Instead of informing me that she had to ask someone else, she just put the phone down and started asking a co-worker.

The co-worker then answers the question with this snotty, mocking/condescending tone, as if it were a stupid question. I can hear the whole conversation and I wanted to hang up right there because I was pissed. I let it go and when she gets back to the phone, she repeats what her co-worker said, minus the mocking tone. I tell her what I want and she tells me they have a special on a certain pizza—it isn’t exactly what I wanted, but it sounds fine so I tell her I’ll take it and then try to place my order.

I tell her the size and crust style. She repeats it back to me and gets the crust wrong.

I repeat the crust style and this time she gets it right.

I give her the toppings. She repeats them back to me and gets them wrong.

I repeat the toppings and gets it right.

Then she starts offering side items, which I tell her I don’t need. She tells me that to get the special, I have to get the side items. I tell her that I just want the pizza, but she can’t give me a price.

In the end, I give up.

I wasted several minutes on what should have been a one-minute phone call. The person who answered the phone was uninformed, couldn’t answer simple questions, wasn’t very good at listening, and overall communicated very poorly (outside of the sunny greeting, that it).

I don’t care how great your logo and website are, what people are going to remember long after they forget what your logo looks like is how they are treated. Both on the phone and in person. If I were a first-time customer, I’d never call back a second time. As a repeat customer, I’ve had bad service there a couple of other times, but it’s good pizza. No matter how good the pizza is, though, there comes a point when customers are going to stop coming back. 

The life of any brand can be either shortened or lengthened based on customer interaction. This is why it is crucial to keep in mind that the person answering the phone is as much a representative of your business as your logo and your product. If I know that I am going to have a problem every third time I place an order, why would I bother calling back? There are, as I said above, many pizza joints to choose from. I’ll just go to the next name in the phone book and give them a shot. (HA! I said phone book…how quaint.)

I’m not sure that there is a definitive answer to this question. People’s answers tend to be tilted a little bit based on their personal viewpoint. Some people feel that the product/service is the most important aspect because a good product will sell itself. Designers will often say that the design is key because it’s what gets people to look at the ad/product in the first place. Copywriters will say that it’s the copy because without clean copy, the message is lost no matter how slick the ad looks. It turns into a chicken-and-egg discussion, I think.

Personally, I think that at least as important as the copy and design is the execution of the campaign. Let’s take, for example, the recent KFC fiasco. For those unfamiliar with it, I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version. Responding to people’s concerns for healthier eating habits, KFC introduced a new product line in their stores, Kentucky GRILLED chicken. As part of the product launch, they used one of the biggest marketing weapons in the world—Oprah Winfrey. On Oprah’s show they announced that anyone who downloaded a coupon from their site would be able to receive a free two-piece grilled chicken dinner, complete with sides and a biscuit. Great deal, right?

This is the point when the train jumped the track. Apparently, the chain was unprepared for the response they received. Some stores ran out of the product and were forced to turn customers away. Other stores simply did not participate in the promotion—it would seem to me that full participation would be crucial in any launch on Oprah, wouldn’t it? Ten million coupons were downloaded and KFC pulled the plug on the promotion before even half were redeemed. Instead, customers could present their original coupon to the store, fill out a form and wait for a replacement coupon. If you want a much better-written account of the story, check out AdAge’s article.

The result of all of this is that KFC has been buried in an avalanche of bad public relations. There were rumors bouncing around in the blogosphere about in-store riots and so forth. There is no credible news source citing rioting, but it’s beside the point. People think that’s what happened; it doesn’t even matter if it’s true or not anymore. The execution of this plan seems incredibly half-assed for a company the size of Yum! Brands, whose other brands include fast-food giants Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. 

What could have been done to avoid this marketing nightmare? It’s easy for me to Monday morning quarterback, but it seems like this should have been foreseen as a possible outcome beforehand. A smart marketing person looks at contingencies and plans for all likely outcomes because the last thing you want to do is be caught with your pants down like KFC was. 

This isn’t just a cautionary tale for corporate titans—there is a great lesson here for small businesses. Whether or not you are working with a marketing communications firm or handling all of your promotions yourself, take the time to think your plan through. Maybe that means being sure you have enough staff on a given day or enough a particular item in stock. If you plan ahead you can avoid easy pitfalls that create badwill among consumers. Word-of-mouth is important to every business, but holds significantly more importance with small business. KFC will survive this fiasco and this will be mostly forgetten (except by marketing teachers) in the next year or two. For a smaller business, though, bad word-of-mouth can mean the difference between staying open and having to close. 

It is as true with marketing communications as it is with any other aspect of your business, the 6P rule applies: Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.