{"id":2522,"date":"2020-12-11T11:41:49","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T00:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bprworld.com\/?p=2522"},"modified":"2020-12-11T11:41:49","modified_gmt":"2020-12-11T00:41:49","slug":"dont-do-a-gerald-ratner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/news\/dont-do-a-gerald-ratner\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Do a Gerald Ratner"},"content":{"rendered":"

By David Kidd, BPR<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gerald Ratner\u00a0is a British businessman and motivational speaker. He was formerly chief executive officer of the major British jewellery company Ratners Group.<\/p>\n

Ratner joined the family business and became CEO in 1984. He quickly built it into a company with 2,500 stores, 25,000 employees and annual sales of 1.2 billion pounds. The shops shocked the formerly staid jewellery industry by displaying fluorescent orange posters advertising cut-price bargains and by offering low price ranges. People loved his stores because they offered affordable products to the working class. In fact, it was generally known as the place where working-class boys bought rings for working-class girls.<\/p>\n

All was going along brilliantly for Gerald\u2026.. expensive cars, houses, boats, high society events and rubbing shoulders with Margaret Thatcher at Number 10.<\/p>\n

That was until 23 April 1991. On that day, he made a speech addressing a conference of the\u00a0Institute of Directors\u00a0at the\u00a0Royal Albert Hall attended by 6000 business people and journalists.<\/p>\n

During the speech, he commented:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for \u00a34.95. People say, “How can you sell this for such a low price?”, I say, “because it’s total crap.”<\/p>\n

Poor old Gerald compounded this by going on to remark that one of the sets of earrings was “cheaper than a\u00a0Marks & Spencer\u00a0prawn sandwich but probably wouldn’t last as long.”<\/p>\n

As you can guess the media had a field day with this and ran the story so many times that any working-class boy buying his working-class girlfriend \u2018crap\u2019 from Ratners would not be \u201cgetting lucky tonight\u2019. The customers knew the products weren\u2019t high quality but don\u2019t spell it out for them!<\/p>\n

People deserted Ratner shops. The value of the Ratner group plummeted by around \u00a3500\u00a0million\u2026. yes half a billion pounds\u2026.which very nearly resulted in the firm’s collapse. Gerald lost his playboy lifestyle as well as his job and the company had to do a phoenix and rename themselves \u2018Signet Group\u2019.<\/p>\n

Today, Ratner’s speech is still famous in the corporate world and is referred to as \u201cDoing a Ratner\u201d which equates to really screwing it up. It is an example of why business leaders not only need to choose their words carefully but also reinforces the value of brand image over quality.<\/p>\n

This relates to radio stations too. My recent series on Radio Promotions That Didn\u2019t Go According to Plan shows just how easy it is for successful stations to Do A Ratner and go from market leader to cellar dweller.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, researchers have found that people will overlook quality issues if they love the brand experience\u2026. the emotional connection. Low brand image is much more damaging than low brand quality. A strong brand image can overcome negative quality issues.\u00a0Gerald\u2019s \u201cjokes\u2019 destroyed the company\u2019s brand image.<\/p>\n

The same goes for radio stations. There are many successful stations that don\u2019t do things absolutely perfectly\u2026but they don\u2019t do them badly either. The one thing they do have is a powerful positive<\/em> brand image in the minds of the listeners which provides a \u201chalo effect\u201d or an \u201cemotional bond\u201d which can overcome any perceived quality issues in the product.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In BPR\u2019s Strategic Studies we always measure a station\u2019s brand image to test its strength\u2026 its emotional bond with the listeners.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, how strong is your station\u2019s brand image?<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By David Kidd, BPR Gerald Ratner\u00a0is a British businessman and motivational speaker. He was formerly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bprworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/pexels-pixabay-128867-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2522"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2532,"href":"https:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions\/2532"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bprworld.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}