Sustainable Brands Are: Reliable
Can your customers count on you? I recently read that “Brand is the embodiment of an organization – all the symbols, experiences and associations connected to it. It’s what we feel about a product or service, why we trust it. And when it delivers on both aspiration and function, it’s near unstoppable.” It’s suggested that there are five key characteristics that signal the presence of a sustainable brand – four Rs (relevant, responsive, reliable, and resilient) and last but not least a T (transformative). For today, let’s talk about being reliable. Is your process sound? Do you deliver on your promises? Can your customer depend on the products or services they look to you for?
Reliable brands hold themselves accountable for their claims and performance, often applying new models of assurance. Traditionally, brands have done this with certifications or other independently audited standards. But we think the brand itself is becoming the ‘certification’, and that, in future, confidence will come less from 3rd party validation and more from transparency. Timberland’s Voices of Challenge series seeks credibility through transparent dialogue. Thought leaders, experts, and corporate practitioners lead the online discussion of key sustainability challenges and, in the process, impart their own credibility onto Timberland’s related efforts.Unilever’s brand family is similarly reaping the benefits of its efforts to lead groups like the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil and the Marine Stewardship Council.
At the Dispensary of Hope, the reliability of our processes is validated by Board of Pharmacy certifications, CHAN audits, and Pharmaceutical Manufacturer audits. We meet weekly to discuss dozens of internal metrics that reveal throughput, perfect order index, and feedback from our network of sites. Our Instant Access Program has intrinsic constrains around availability of donated medications, but we work hard to improve the availability of the 700+ medications, and we make sure that the aspects we can control (ordering, filling, shipping) are reliable. Our Continued Access Program’s 700 drugs are highly available but we’ve had to work to make the process reliable and easy to use. As with other new programs, we launched it with an initial focus group of 10 dispensing sits that provided weekly feedback to make the process more seamless – and ultimately reliable.
