A Case Of Mistaken Identity

In the book, the authors focus on sharing various differentiation strategies to show how a company can dominate their niche market and as a result, create a strong brand for themselves. While many benefits can come out from that, there is also one pitfall that you will need to look out for when your company’s name become THE strongest and most associated name for a particular product/service or industry. When that happens, people may mistakenly associate bad feedback or news with your brand name. Thomas once shared about how this happened to PestBusters some time ago. He told us the story of what you are about to read below, when Sant gave him a Mont Blanc pen to commemorate the first print of Secrets To Dominate Your Niche.

Thomas showing the Mont Blanc pen given by Sant to commemorate the first edition print of the book. 

While admiring the beautiful packaging of Mont Blanc pen, the authors got to talking about branding and how sometimes having strong brand can backfire if the company does not take care to protect the brand from bad publicity that is generated from the public’s ignorance.

When Anything To Do With Pest Control Became Associated With PestBusters

There was a particular gala dinner that Thomas attended a while back when he met the head of one particularly large corporation that owned a building. While everyone was happily networking with each other and making conversation, Thomas was sharing with the head of this company and some other people within the group about what business he was in. When he mentioned that he was in pest management and that his company is PestBusters, this company head immediately cut him off halfway and loudly proclaimed, “Oh! PestBusters! I know your company. You do the pest control for my building and it was done very badly!”

Of course Thomas got a shock. He asked the head what he meant and requested for some details of the company’s building so that he could find out what the problem was. After that conversation, Thomas checked to see whether that company was one of their clients and whether the negative feedback that the company’s head had talked about was true.

As it turned out, the company’s building had never been serviced by PestBusters before. When Thomas called the company’s head to clarify, he sheepishly said, “Oh. I clarified with my staff and it is actually another pest control company that did that bad job and was servicing us.” Of course the company’s head apologised to Thomas for his case of “mistaken identity”  but the “damage” was already done because his remarks were already heard by some of the people at the dinner. 

That is one of the so-called “bad” part about such famous and strong brand name because people automatically associate your company with the industry that you operate in, without first clarifying the details or seeking out the real truth. That is also why Thomas is very protective about the PestBusters brand i.e. implementing stringent rules and regulations within his company to ensure that his brand is well-regarded and represented such as having trained technicians, using cutting-edge pest management strategies, etc. (You can find out more by reading Chapter 12 and 17 of the book.)

When Pampers Really Means Drypers

However, a case of mistaken identity is a good problem because it means that you have successfully dominated your market. That can only happen when the public takes your brand as the generic name for a specific product or service, such as the usual suspects like Pampers, Xerox, Colgate and so on.

When Thomas was sharing about his story about PestBusters’ mistaken identity, he also talked about the time when he had his own mistaken identity case many years ago. That was when his wife asked him to buy Pampers for his baby daughter on his way home from work. Like the doting father that he is, he dutifully went to the supermarket to pick up a large pack of diapers, as requested by his wife.

When he got home, he passed the diapers to his wife and got “scolded”! As it turned out, Thomas had bought Pampers (which his wife told him to buy over the phone) BUT what she actually meant was Drypers, because his daughter was allergic to Pampers. Of course Thomas knew that and he also knew that they have been using Drypers for his daughter, but as he says, “Even though I knew that and I knew that my wife meant Drypers when she said buy Pampers, it just slipped my mind when I was buying it. Because I was just thinking, I need to buy Pampers.”

I’m sure these are not the only two interesting stories of mistaken identity and if you have your own story to share, we would love to hear them.