When Protecting Your Brand Damages It!

I’ve been watching YouTube clips from the latest Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Festival, and a phenomenal performance by John Mayer prompted me to write this Tip.

When I was 16, I bought a beautiful second-hand black Fender Stratocaster for $275. I’ve been a passionate Strat fan ever since. Today, that guitar would be worth tens of thousands of dollars because those early 1960s Strats are legendary.

Leo Fender, the Strat’s developer, never applied for a trademark or copyright on its much-loved design and shape. So in the 1970s, other guitar manufacturers, seeing the Strat's popularity, started flooding the market with cheap copies.

Why I sanded off my prized logo

For the uninitiated, the main thing that differentiates a real Strat from a copy is the Fender logo on the headstock, which Fender has strongly protected.

Back then, many professional guitarists were also having their Fender Strats stolen from gigs.

To protect mine from this fate, I sanded the iconic Fender logo off the headstock and told everyone it was a cheap imitation. I knew it was the real deal and figured the drop in kudos was worth it to protect my beloved black beauty.

For guitar players, a real Fender Stratocaster is not just a product. There’s something almost tribal about the affection we have for these guitars.

I belong to two Fender Stratocaster Facebook groups, and whenever someone proudly posts a photo of a new Strat, it is not unusual for hundreds of complete strangers to congratulate them.

That's extraordinary brand loyalty. And it's why something Fender recently did caught my attention.

Their best customer was told to go away

Following a German court ruling that classified the iconic Stratocaster shape as a "work of applied art", Fender sent cease-and-desist demands to a number of guitar manufacturers using the Strat-style body shape.

Because many had been making these guitars for decades, parts of the guitar community saw Fender's actions as corporate bullying and contrary to their culture of "live and let live."

This public relations blunder followed another interesting Fender story involving one of the world's best-known guitarists, John Mayer.

For many years, Mayer was a Fender ambassador with his own signature Stratocaster. But over time, he became frustrated with what he saw as the company becoming rigid and corporatised.

His key contact at Fender's Custom Shop left, and Mayer found it increasingly difficult to know who to talk to when he wanted to experiment with new ideas.

In one interview, he recalled requesting a guitar with a different neck to try something new, only to be told that he had already received the two guitars permitted under his contract that year.

Think about this. One of the world's most influential guitarists wants to collaborate and improve your product, and someone basically says, "Go away, you've reached your quota."

Beware of undermining your culture

Feeling disrespected and frustrated, Mayer announced he was leaving Fender and tweeted, "I love Fender guitars and will continue to play them, but the fact is that the company as it is today isn't the same one I started with."

He then moved his loyalties to PRS Guitars, where he could work directly with founder Paul Reed Smith and his team, and build things together.

That collaboration produced the PRS Silver Sky, which became a phenomenal success and has outsold Fender’s flagship Stratocasters in some markets.

Several commentators believe Fender's recent cease-and-desist demands, including one involving PRS, are an attempt to use the courts to win back market share lost through PRS's successful collaboration with Mayer.

This tip is not just about guitars. There is a broader lesson here.

As businesses and franchise networks grow and change hands, they understandably introduce structures, policies and processes to create consistency and protect the business.

But these can also undermine the culture and brand.

People who once had conversations with other people now have to communicate through faceless departments. And instead of feeling respected and valued, they start feeling like a number.

You can be legally right and relationally wrong

I often refer to the three legs of the franchise relationship — legal, commercial and psychological.

When someone comes to you with a request about something they are passionate about, you may be legally correct and commercially within your rights to say, "No, go away!"

But this ignores the psychological leg, which is all about trust and commitment.

So before saying no to a request from a long-standing collaborator, ask yourself, "What will this do to our relationship?"

Healthy cultures and strong brands are not built by contracts and logos. They are built through hundreds of small, respectful interactions that create positive feelings of trust and commitment.

And while it takes years to build a strong psychological leg, it can be quickly damaged through thoughtlessness or a mechanistic focus on the rules. Fender found this out the hard way.

Always remember, you can be legally right and relationally wrong!

Until next time,