We've got you covered. Until we haven't.

You may be familiar with the scene in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in which the King’s Counsellor, Polonius, offers advice to his son, who is about to embark on a long voyage: ‘This above all,’ he says. ‘To thine own self be true.’

In other words, don’t forget who you are and where you’ve come from. Hold onto the values that have shaped you. Be consistent. And never pretend to be someone – or something – that you’re not.

It’s good advice, and not just for a young person leaving the protection of their home and their family for the first time. I’ve spent much of the past forty years singing the same song to a succession of company founders, CEO’s, CMOs, and others in the corporate hierarchy who share responsibility for brand guardianship.

At all levels, they tend to nod vigorously in agreement. ‘Yes, our brand has to be itself.’ They pledge to be consistent in their consistency.

I then ask them:

‘So, who are you?’

‘What are your most important values?’

‘Why do those things matter to people in the world beyond this office?’

And, in most cases, the number of people I ask equals the number of different answers I receive.

It’s less common in companies where the founder is still actively engaged. In the late 1990’s, when I worked with Nike , and came close to working with Apple , it was hard to find anyone at either company who didn’t eat, sleep, breathe and readily articulate the vision of Phil Knight or Steve Jobs. If they didn’t, their stay at the company was generally quite short.

However, Phil Knight and Steve Jobs were unusual in their single-minded, sustained focus on the place their brands occupied in the world’s consciousness, and in their efforts to ensure it remained so. I vividly remember a meeting with Steve Jobs, in which he announced his intention to kill a number of new products, on which tens of millions of development dollars had been spent, because they ‘don’t represent Apple at its best.’ He didn’t just own or manage the brand; he had an intuitive relationship with it – and with its customers – that was simultaneously more binding and empathetic than most marriages.

As their companies grow, other founders, even the most passionate of them, can become distracted. They start to look sideways rather than forwards. Making sure employees answer customer calls the right way gradually becomes less important than opening up opportunities in other categories. Reviewing packaging, or getting the lighting right for a new product launch (the things about which Jobs was obsessive) seem less exciting than launching the brand’s YouTube channel, developing social media relationships with C-list celebrities, or starting a space tourism program. And slowly, but inexorably, as the leader’s attention is drawn away, the brand’s sense of self is diluted.

The problem of a brand’s self-awareness is often most acute when responsibility has been passed down from the founder through a succession of CEOs. I’ve worked with some excellent CEOs, who understand, respect and nurture their brands as well as any founder; they instinctively balance their responsibilities to shareholders with their responsibilities to the brand. But they have been in the minority. Others are more interested in making a profit, and building their own reputation (not necessarily in that order), and care little for the mess that the next CEO will inherit. To them it’s just a job, the result of which can be measured in dollars in the bank – both in the corporate account and, naturally, in their own.

David Packard once said, ‘I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists solely to make money. Money is an important part of a company’s existence, if the company is any good. But a result is not a cause. We have to go deeper and find a real reason for being.’

I worked with HP in the United States in the 1990s. The company had a new CEO, Carly Fiorina, who came to Goodby Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco to ask for help in defining what the company stood for because, so far, she had met no one at HP who could tell her. The problem was that in the fifty years that had elapsed since the company was founded, it had grown beyond recognition, had been split into different, semi-independent divisions, each of which had different identities and priorities, and the founders were no longer involved in the business.

To cut a long story short, we found HP’s reason for being articulated very clearly in the book David Packard had written about the company’s birth, which was that he and Bill Hewlett had set out ‘to create technology for the benefit of mankind.’ Not technology for technology’s sake, but technology that really made a difference. While Carly brought the separate divisions back under the central HP umbrella, we helped her with communication: to remind everyone in the company that the reason HP existed, and the reason they should all get out of bed in the morning, was the pursuit of relevant invention. Nothing else mattered.

Like so many other examples I saw in the course of my career, the process of identifying this brand truth was more archaeological than creative. People in the companies I advised tended to be so focused on the day-to-day, the detail, the new opportunities or threats, that they allowed what had once made their brands great to be gradually, almost imperceptibly, covered in layer upon layer of dust, until one day it was invisible – both to those inside and outside their corporate headquarters. My job was to take out my strategic trowel, dig carefully until I uncovered it, and then jog the collective corporate memory.

It’s easy to understand how and why brand guardians forget; how and why they take their eyes off the ball; how and why they focus on activities that no longer support or strengthen the fundamental promise of their brands. But they allow these things to happen at their peril.

There’s a travel company in Melbourne named Luxury Escapes , founded in 2009 by Adam Schwab . ‘Our customers are at the heart of everything we do,’ the company’s website states, ‘so we’re working hard to bring you the world’s best travel experiences as well as the little things you need for an unforgettable (and stress-free) trip. We have you covered.’

That’s pretty clear. The brand is named Luxury Escapes, and that’s what it promises.

Unfortunately, the dust has started to gather.

My wife and I recently booked a trip through Luxury Escapes to Jordan and Israel. We had travelled with the company on several previous occasions, always in small groups, and always in high-end accommodation. Across all of these trips, our experience had been very good.

On arrival in Israel, however, something didn’t feel right. In spite of having paid an additional fee to be fast-tracked through immigration, no-one showed up until we were already through. When we eventually reached our hotel, my first impression – and indeed my subsequent impression – was that it might have been nice in the 1970s. And when, smelling a rat, we spoke to the local Luxury Escapes representative and asked how many others were on our tour – because we had been told it could be just the two of us if others had not booked – she told us that she didn’t know.

The next morning, we discovered that we were part of a group of 42. Our itinerary had spoken of ‘getting to know your fellow travellers over dinner in the hotel,’ but this would have been difficult. The group was spread out between three different hotels, each with half an hour of Jerusalem traffic between them. In the mornings, it took more than an hour to pick everyone up and, each time we stopped, more time was wasted getting on and off the bus. Given that at least 35 of the 42 had weak bladders, bathroom stops were plentiful. When told what time we needed to be at a meeting point, someone was always late. In Bethlehem, one American member of our group decided to return to the bus without telling anyone, and we spent an hour waiting while the guide searched for her, concerned to the point of speaking to the Palestinian police about her potentially being missing. (She eventually showed up, unharmed, but indignant that she had been forced to wait for us.)

All of the above – especially in light of the events that unfolded in Southern Israel just two weeks later – may be regarded as belonging in the category of first world problems. But in the absence of that point of comparison, in the context of a brand that calls itself Luxury Escapes and promises the world’s best travel experiences, and relative to our own expectations, it was frustrating. We estimated that in each of our first three days in Israel, at least three hours was wasted – time we would much rather have spent in Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Museum), or at one of the countless other wonderful places that we did not have the time to appreciate fully. It just wasn’t how we like to travel, and not what we’d signed up for.

After three days of the planned seven, we jumped ship. While we were upset to miss the parts of northern Israel we had been due to visit, we had to make the most of our time in the country. We thus returned to Tel Aviv, settled into a hotel that seemed like it belonged in the 21st century and, for the remainder of our stay, enjoyed the city’s vibrant restaurants, bars and sunshine.

Back in Perth, we contacted Luxury Escapes to express our dissatisfaction. Please bear in mind that we had previously travelled with them around ten times, and not a word of complaint had ever passed our lips. This time, however, we felt that we had been misled.

A company that puts the customer ‘at the heart of everything we do,’ might be expected to react quickly. In fact, it took Luxury Escapes two weeks to respond, in the course of which I sent a total of four emails. When we did finally hear back from them, their ‘concierge’ informed us that ‘the management team’ did not accept that we had been misled, because (wait for it) the ‘readily accessible small print,’ says that this tour was being run by a ‘trusted partner,’ and could include up to 50 people.

The large print had implied nothing of the kind, and at no point in any of the phone calls and emails that preceded our trip had anyone even hinted that this was anything but a small group tour. But I wanted to find this readily accessible small print.

I started with the Luxury Escapes’ mobile app, which happens to be the medium by which my wife researches and makes our bookings. The information I sought was nowhere to be found. I then tried searching on my laptop and, more than an hour later, I finally found what I was looking for. Perhaps not as readily accessible as they would have me believe.

Since then, my repeated requests to speak to someone in the management team have been ignored.

While I’m personally appalled that any company can act in this manner (and feel that I have been ripped off to the tune of several thousand dollars), that’s not why I’m writing this article.

I’m writing because it also offends me professionally.

It upsets me to see a brand forgetting who they are, and falling short on the promises they have made, the expectations that they have spent so many years building. Luxury Escapes is by no means alone in losing its way; in recent years I’ve observed brands like British Airways , Qantas , Manchester United , Rugby Australia and many others making the same mistakes. The reason their experience is important is that losing the trust of their loyal customers and fans is a steep and slippery slope. And once you’re sliding down, it’s very hard to climb back up.

Jay Chiat (the founder of the Chiat\Day advertising agency) once said that ‘a principle isn’t a principle until it costs you money.’ He said this in the context of his agency only working with clients who bought into the Chiat\Day philosophy, and refusing to work those who did not. It ensured that the agency was able to do its best work, which then became a shop window for other, like-minded clients. Refusing to pitch certain clients, and resigning those who stepped out of line, undoubtedly cost him a lot of money in the short term; however, if he hadn’t stuck to his guns, it would surely have cost him a great deal more in the long run.

If Luxury Escapes were true to its principles of world class travel and customer service, we would have received both an apology and some financial compensation. Yes, that would have cost them money. But less money than it has already lost through us not booking a couple of future trips that, under other circumstances, we would have done. As things stand, we will never book with them again.

Moreover, while the management team may feel that they’re doing well, and one person’s complaint doesn’t matter, the dissatisfaction of one person can be contagious. I haven’t been shy about telling my friends, many of whom have taken Luxury Escapes trips in the past. And now, here I am on LinkedIn. I don’t have thousands of connections, but some of those I do have are connected to tens of thousands, and, between them, hundreds of thousands. If someone shares what I’ve written, and it strikes a chord with other individuals who have had similar experiences with this brand… It doesn’t take long in today’s world for one person's experience to become the opinion of many.

To Adam Schwab and his team – and indeed to all brand guardians who are making the same mistakes, or risk doing so in the future – I say, never forget who you are and what you wanted to be. Don’t be distracted. Don’t hide behind the small print while ignoring the bigger picture. Remember your promises. And don’t ever let down the people who believed those promises. It takes months, years, to build a relationship. But this relationship can be broken, as mine has been with Luxury Escapes, in the time it takes for a customer to realise that the company actually doesn’t care about them.

It may not be the end of the world; such a fracture can be healed. Many brand guardians don’t realise that when something goes wrong, it represents perhaps their greatest opportunity to cement a long-term relationship. But that requires them to acknowledge the problem, say sorry, and take substantive action to make things right.

You’ve got me covered?

Well cover me.

***

Now retired, Jon Steel was formerly a partner at Goodby Silverstein & Partners , global planning director of WPP , and a director of WPP Australia. He’s the author of Truth, Lies & Advertising and Perfect Pitch.

***

Two days after posting this article, we received a personal email and apology from Adam Schwab . Adam recognised that mistakes had been made, in LE's communication about the trip itself, but primarily in the company's response to our complaint, which he described as 'unforgivable and extremely disappointing.' His reaction was, considered, and heartfelt. 'As the founder of this business,' he said, 'I'm responsible here and will be doing everything in my power to ensure this type of thing doesn't happen again.' He also offered substantive compensation - both to make things right on our Israel trip, and to enhance our experience of any future LE trips we might take. He did acknowledge that given their post-trip errors 'you might never want to deal with us again... which would be understandable,' but his honesty was both disarming, and persuasive. We accepted his offer. Yes, mistakes had been made, and it took a long time to address them, but once we had succeeded in bringing the situation to Adam's attention, he acted decisively and effectively - not just to do the right thing for us, but to ensure that LE's team does the right thing for other customers in the future. Thank you, Adam.