Anti-branding. How do the customers influence the brand badly?

It is important to understand how clients’ behavior influences the success or loss of the brand. Nowadays, in the era of the Internet, the problem of anti-branding is becoming even more vitally significant. Among key factors of anti-branding behavior can be singled out the following:

• Customers nowadays have free access to the Internet, where they can write whatever they like. So, the level of indignation is rapidly growing towards the brand.
• A great number of websites and social networks also produce a negative effect on the brand. Though, the behavior of the clients there is rather short-term, it still produces a long-term effect.
• If the company is considered to be profitable and successful, all the efforts aimed on negative brand identification are quite useless.

Current problems

The idea of branding in the era of the Internet is closely connected with the relations between the sellers and the buyers. Though, the company can have a good reputation, in the eyes of the clients, it can be hateful. So, the idea is that the image of the company doesn’t always suit what real customers think. 

Nowadays, just the customer is the main element that creates a real image of the brand. The direction of anti-branding is a kind of a protest, where people can show their relations towards the brand. The chance of using the Internet makes this process even easier than ever. 

At the same time, there are some questions that are worth while discussing. The first is connected with the real influence on people’s decision on the basis of brand hatred. And the second deals with the idea of purchasing the products of the brand.

Important! The main question that marketers are concerned with is the influence of bad comments and reviews on the conversion. 

Bad efforts to create anti-brand

It is predicted that brands are the most valuable and communicative instruments of various companies. At the same time, it is impossible to imagine companies without clients. It is just the law of the market, where goods are sold, and customers buy them. So, nowadays, customers can create anti-brand trend by means of the Internet. 

They can do it many ways. Usage of negative language is one of the main directions. People just write how they hate the brand, how they were disappointed by using it, etc. Some even prefer to make photos and post them on the pages of social networks. 

One important thing about anti-brand direction is that the larger company is, the bigger chance of being hated it will have. You will hardly notice hated remarks towards a small company that is located only in your town. They might exist, but the percent will be rather low. In comparison with small ones, big companies have two groups of people. The first is worshipping the products and the company, the second is ready to burn it down.

There are traditionally four groups of people who create the atmosphere of hatred and anti-brandalism:

1. Experts;
2. Haters;
3. Complainers;
4. Opportunists.

The first group is the most dangerous. They have real arguments and their aim is destroy the company by using relevant information. Haters are not so dangerous, because their negative thoughts are based on the ideas of other people. They heard something bad, but they are not sure about it. Their aim is just to spread rumors. Complainers are ready to express their negative feelings whenever they like. They are not usually content with the service, products and so on. The last group is just exaggerating the problem. They offer the news and try to get as much traffic as possible to their websites and pages.

How is it important?

According to the statistics, the number of events aimed on brand destruction is rapidly growing within a decade. The most powerful effect produces experts and haters. They create a great number of sites, social networks, posts and so on. In comparison with this group, complainers and opportunists produce almost an invisible effect on people. 

The most powerful brands attract even more efforts for creating the opposite direction. It is connected with the popularity of the brand. Some experts consider that such trends are necessary for the companies. They must be observed as the platform of communication between buyers and sellers. 

Currently, the trends of hatred are rather widespread in the most popular social networks.

How does anti-branding influence the customers? 

The question is connected with the idea of influencing the conversion on account of anti-brand trends. For example, if the company presents not pleasant news for the clients, it can lead to various consequences. For example, the number of customers can be reduced rapidly. At the same time, the situation can be changed. The number of potential users will be growing. In fact, big global companies with good reputation are not subjected to such trends as anti-brandalism. No matter how many efforts people are trying to put to destroy them, it is quite useless. In general, the influence of anti-brand trend can be explained in the following way:

• Strong companies are not subjected to long-term bad influence;
• Negative publicity has little effect on real customers;
• Anti-brand trends don’t have a strong effect on people.

People are ready to be tied up with the brand even it has negative trend currently. If people are satisfied with the service or with the product, they will have no desire to change anything. 

Conclusion

The relations between the clients and the managers of the companies are rather important. They can help to solve lots of problems. At the same time, every side must understand how far they are ready to go. If it is a constructive discussion – it is one thing, if it is a torrent of hate – it is another problem. 

Though, a group of people who want to destroy the brand can be extremely large, it is hard to evaluate their influence. In fact, real customers use only their personal experience to draw the conclusions.