(My colleague, Rohin Dharmakumar co-wrote this post with me)Michael Perschke, 44, the managing director of Audi India is a confident man. And rightly so. Though a late entrant to the Indian market, under Perschke’s leadership the German car brand has grown rapidly to become a very close number two, or possibly even the number one luxury car brand in India. In just about five years.Audi did that by doing two things – converting “class defining leaders” like Baba Kalyani, Adi Godrej, Rahul Bajaj, Abhishek Bachchan and Ranbir Kapoor into Audi customers; and using “halo models” like the hulking Q7 SUV to create an aura around the brand.Which is why it’s ironic that an incident that took place last week featuring both of those – a “class defining leader” and the Q7 “halo model” – may have ended up dimming that halo.
Is there a lesson from this for big brands? Shankar says there are four:1. Apologize, and take control early. “The first thing Audi should have done was to acknowledge the problem and promise to look into it the moment Gondal made his first post. Instead it took them two or three days to step in. Brands should especially be careful when people who can amplify news very quickly are talking about them, otherwise they risk a ‘butterfly effect’ from a single negative incident. If Audi had just accepted the problem then half of the negativity would not even have happened. But I saw every single post made by Gondal and there is not a single official Audi response to them, they were just not in the conversation. I’m sure they were reading the conversation but were afraid of being mobbed,” says Shankar.2. There should only be one brand voice. The Audi service center kept refuting Gondal’s allegations, sending photos of his car’s odometer and a handwritten log of vehicles entries. I thought a handwritten log sheet rubs off very badly on what is otherwise perceived to be a sleek and high tech brand [ed: Audi’s global slogan “Vorsprung durch Technik” roughly means “Advancement through Technology”]. That’s when the real damage started happening,” says Shankar.3. Be open. The most disturbing part about Audi and Gondal’s reconciliation is that it is very cryptic. Everyone who was following this issue and supporting Gondal wants to know what finally happened. Keeping things in the dark damages both Audi and Gondal. Incidents like these are like reality shows. People have been extremely supportive of Gondal with their likes and shares, so it just feels a little impolite to not finish the story,” says Shankar.4. Use the crisis as an opportunity for change. “By not talking about this incident Audi is losing a huge opportunity. Even without accepting any wrongdoing they could have just said that they were replacing Gondal’s Q7 to erase any doubts he had, because customer satisfaction was most important for them. They could then announce corrective measures to make sure something like this never happens again, for instance new security cameras and electronic vehicle records across every dealer in the country or the appointment of a new ‘chief quality officer’,” says Shankar.
First Published: Nov 30, 2012, 16:51
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