In his book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely tells about a phenomenon that we see as enlightening in terms of the relationship of Romanian entrepreneurs with their brands and their weight in making a change.
At Duke University, where Ariely's story takes place, basketball is almost a religion. The university owns a fairly small stadium for spectator demand, so in order to get tickets to a match, many students undergo a difficult selection process. As a result of this process, only a limited number of students will be ticket holders, with the others continuing to participate in the next selections, undergoing the same difficult process.
The question Ariely and INSEAD professor Ziv Carmon asked themselves was whether students who won tickets put more value on tickets than students who didn't, although the latter made the same effort to get them. Thus, after interviews that the two had with both students who won the tickets and those who did not, the two verified their idea that says that owning a thing increases its value in the eyes of the holder.
This property right makes us emotionally attached to what we own, focus more on what we lose than what we gain, and value our property differently from those around us.
By linking this principle of experience in various rebranding processes with Romanian entrepreneurship, we realized that there are some aspects that make entrepreneurial businesses unique, but at the same time diminish their power to change things when the business model or context requires it.
Entrepreneurs are in love with their brands and that blinds them.
And it's good that it happens that way. It is unfortunate that this affects business decisions. Often in rebranding processes the feeling of ownership over a brand acts against its effectiveness and implicitly against its evolution. Brand names are kept that greatly complicate the communication process, just because there is an attachment of the organization to it. An old symbol/logo, which cannot give rise to an idea, is untouchable, just because the organization has known it there for years. In branding processes, entrepreneurial businesses need to think better when balancing feelings about their brand to dream of its future.
Entrepreneurs focus in a rebranding process on what they lose and less on what they gain.
Aversion to lose is a powerful emotion. In business, however, this can lead to delayed decisions or making wrong decisions. Romanian entrepreneurial businesses were built by instinct, without access to knowledge of business strategies. Today, a name given to a business 20 years ago can create confusion. They are developing businesses whose name is no longer relevant either with the business idea or with the expectations of customers. These businesses refuse to see what they lose by keeping that name and what they gain by giving it up. Sooner or later they will make the change. One thing is for sure, when it comes to selling them, the estimated value of the brand will be lower.
Entrepreneurs have a hard time accepting that consumers see something different about their brand than they see.
Romanian entrepreneurial brands were born and lived for a good time in a market where demand far exceeded supply and buyers were quite generous. This situation has created a kind of myopia of entrepreneurship that has led to the inability of many businesses to adapt to a business environment driven by competitive strategies. Romanian entrepreneurs are still under the calming effect of past successes, they still hardly accept that they need specialized help to move to another level of their development. From the perspective of branding, entrepreneurs have to go through a stage of cleaning up, choosing the traits that define their business and their brands. Whether we call this process rebranding or just call it change, the result should be the same: keeping the relevance of a brand, a business in its category.