For This Writer, Image Is Everything
IBM has one. So do Tiffany, Rolex, McDonald’s, Haagen-Dazs and Grey Poupon. What these diverse companies and products share in common is this: a positive image.
And, according to Laguna Beach management consultant Bobbie Gee, a positive image and reputation are the most important assets a company can possess.
But don’t get the wrong idea.
“When you say image, “ says Gee, “people think of clothes. That is not what we’re talking about here. Image is how your business is perceived by your customers. The company may be wonderful, but if the customer has a bad experience with an organization, that’s going to be their reality.”
Gee has traveled extensively over the past 12 years speaking to scores of corporations and businesses--from IBM to First Interstate Bank--on the importance of public perception and corporate images. Now she’s written a book on the subject.
“Winning the Image Game: A Ten Step Masterplan for Achieving Power, Prestige and Profit” (PageMill Press; $18.95) outlines the ingredients that go into creating a positive image for both large and small businesses--from product quality, advertising and media relations to customer relations, employee policies and company principles and standards.
“No one has ever taken all the elements that go into developing a profitable money-making image before,” Gee said. “There are books out there on advertising, books on public relations, grooming and marketing, but I tried to pull into this book all of the elements.”
Gee, who first began to realize the power of image while serving as image and appearance coordinator for Disneyland in the late ‘70s, believes creating a positive image is “going to be very important” for the profitability of businesses in the ‘90s.
“When money is tight, people are not going to spend it frivolously,” she said. “They’re going to be very careful about where and how they spend their money. They’re going to go toward the companies and products with the best reputation.”
Many companies, Gee said, don’t understand the importance of “strategizing” their image: learning how to appeal to the particular market they’re interested in.
“People have a tendency to think that image means expensive, and that’s not it at all,” said Gee. “An image can be whatever you want to make it.”
That explains why two of the nation’s most successful retailers--Tiffany, which caters to an upscale market, and Wal-Mart, which appeals to the masses--have prospered with two distinctly different images.
“What we’re trying to do,” said Gee, “is to help small businesses become more profitable by understanding the true power of the image that they project. The book has been especially attractive to people like doctors, dentists, attorneys and chiropractors. Because they’re not a huge corporation, they have to really be careful of their customers’ perception” of their businesses.
In her book, Gee recalls taking her daughter to an orthodontist who, although sounding technically competent during a consultation, nevertheless made a poor impression: His hair was shaggy, he had an unruly beard and he was wearing orange, yellow and green plaid pants, an orange Izod shirt and brown Earth Shoes.
“When I first saw him,” Gee writes, “my brain did not register dentist; it registered golf caddie. My brain simply could not visualize this ‘golf caddie’ working on my daughter’s teeth.”
Gee took her daughter to a different orthodontist.
There are, she said, “so many sides to a positive image that need to be considered. You can have it in your building and miss is it personally, or have it personally and miss it in your relationships with people.”
In fact, Gee said, developing good customer relations is one of the most important elements in creating a positive image.
The primary reason businesses lose customers, she said, “is not because they didn’t give good service. It’s simply an attitude of indifference. A company needs to train their employees (about) the difference between customer service and customer relations.”
And, she said, there is a big difference between the two:
“You can give wonderful service but never develop a relationship with the customer. It’s kind of like people: You can be acquainted with someone all your life, but it remains an acquaintance until you develop a relationship.”
The success of any organization, said Gee, “comes down to human beings: Human beings dealing with human beings, and whenever one human being makes another human being feel important--feel special--you want to go back.
“You want to go back to any person, organization that makes you feel good.”
