Knowing What’s Important for Navigating a Brand

The depth sounder on our sailboat stopped working this spring. Although this is an annoyance, it’s not a critical issue, so I decided to wait until the end of the season to correct the problem.

However, many of our guests on the boat asked worriedly about the nonoperative sounder. I tried to explain that I am not as concerned with how deep the water is directly under the boat as I am about how deep the water is ahead of the boat. And the instrument that tells me that is working just fine.

I see a parallel in our industry. Consider, for example, the CEO or president who is fixated on today’s cover count rather than on where the brand is headed, or the CFO who is preoccupied by this week’s average unit volume compared with that of the same week last year. What both should really be thinking about is multiyear benchmarking against their competitive brands.

Results from R&I’s 2009 Consumers’ Choice in Chains survey were published recently, and restaurant executives are evaluating how their attribute scores compare with those of their competitors. I wonder how many of them will look at multiple-year trends–not just to determine whether their respective brands’ scores are getting better or worse, but also to see how their scores change over time in relation to a competitive set of scores.

The depth of water under your boat right now may not be that critical, but knowing whether the water is getting shallower is, especially when there’s still time to turn and head for deeper waters.