Should Eskom feature in brand polls?

Certainly last week's fiasco was a comedy of errors from start to finish especially given that at about this time last year, Eskom was assuring the consumer that it wouldn't happen again. And when it did last week, the hastily published load-shedding schedules didn't even vaguely match reality leaving private and industrial consumers not knowing just when they were going to be plunged into darkness.

But, will this necessarily damage the Eskom brand as such?

A favourite SA brand

Last year, for example, Eskom was voted into ninth place by South African consumers in a Markinor survey of the country's favourite brands, the field work for which was co-incidentally conducted at about exactly the same time as powerouts were plaguing the country. None of which seemed to have any effect on the way the majority of South Africans felt about the brand, which sounds completely illogical.

However, as Markinor quite rightly pointed out in the November 2006 issue of the Journal of Marketing, Eskom has over the past decade made a considerable contribution to the lives of the poorer communities, both urban and rural, in terms of bringing electricity to those who not only never had it before but tens of thousands who never thought they would have it in their lifetimes.

The bee's knees

Add to that the fact that electricity in SA is still relatively cheap and for a lot of people legally and illegally free of charge - and this along with Eskom's corporate social investment activities and fairly extensive and emotional advertising - and it is small wonder that a lot of lower LSM consumers think that Eskom is the bee's knees and happily vote it their favourite brands.

And that if the power goes off every now and then, well, so what - if you never had it before then having it 350 out of 365 days is still wonderful.

And with the sample used for Markinor's annual top brands survey spread equally over the whole LSM spectrum, it is understandable that Eskom still scores well.

Consistency

But, this does beg the question about whether a company's brand reputation and integrity should be measured only on its ability to deliver products cheaply to as many consumers as possible. Surely product quality and in Eskom's case consistency of supply should play a role in determining overall brand status? And how about management efficiency and the ability to predict consumptions trends within the market? Surely those factors should also be brought into the brand ranking equation?

With Eskom being a monopoly it is, of course, impossible to make comparisons which in turn makes it even harder to arrive at any sort of definitive way of ranking on the South African brand ladder.

Confusing for Eskom

All of which must be very confusing for Eskom itself. Because if one looks at general media coverage of Eskom and the letters to the editor columns in most newspapers, it is inconceivable that the utility should have any sort of positive brand reputation at all let alone be ranked in the country's top ten.

One can imagine the interesting debates that must go on within Eskom, with marketing and particularly communications people tasking the technocrats to get their act together, while the technicians just point to the brand rankings and ask the marketing people why they're getting so unnecessarily paranoid.

It is going to be interesting this year to see just how Eskom shapes up in terms of SA's overall favourite brand? Will it hold its position or will a lot of those powerouts have affected enough of the lower LSMs for them to change their minds about this favourite brand of theirs?