How to kill a brand
A friend of mine once lamented about a vice in (particularly) Ugandan culture i.e scheduling an appointment and failing to turn up or even calling to cancel.
Experience 1: Someone asked to see me today morning and I had this nagging feeling he wouldn’t show up. I went ahead to mildly prepare for the meeting but didn’t “wait up”. True to my fears, he didn’t show, didn’t even call. What’s worse is, this is a corporate banker.
Experience 2: While discussing taking up office space with a prospective landlord, I agreed to his terms but asked him to look into some fixtures I wanted and he promised to revert in 24hrs.

After a week, I hadn’t yet heard from him so I called him. For starters, I was surprised he took my call (he’s always very busy and seldom returns calls). He explained that the costs of the fixtures was high and suggested I first move in then maybe we work out a way to offset the costs of the fixtures etc etc.
I didn’t even bother bringing up the fact that he’d promised to revert in 24hrs and hadn’t. I simply moved on. I’ll stick with my current office space.
While these experiences are spectacularly inconveniencing, they’re a constant reminder to us at Trail Analytics to continuously aim for excellence in our products and integrity in our service provision.

So, if you want to kill a brand, here are a few tips;
- Miss every single appointment and don’t call to apologize.
- If you can’t miss the appointment, at least be late by no less than one (1) hour.
- Whenever you find missed calls, don’t bother calling back or sending a message to find out who called/why they called.
- For those on WhatsApp, when you read a message addressed directly to you, under no circumstances should you respond. Bear in mind, the sender can see that you read the message.
- When you commit to getting back to someone, do not make a reminder that you need to get back to this person after all, that’s what you want to be known for.
Ours is a brand built on excellence, attention to detail and integrity.
What will yours be?
