A wake-up call from Dragon’s Den: mistakes entrepreneurs make about brands and branding

This season’s Dragons on BBC 

Good branding helps you to succeed only when you have an authentically great product.

One of my favourite shows on BBC is Dragons’ Den. I have watched it since I was in university and often feel really inspired by entrepreneurs and startup businesses with big dreams and ideas. Since I joined Grain Creative, the show has given me much more insight into entrepreneurship and helped me provide better consultancy to our clients.

I watched Dragon’s Den season 12, episode 02 which includes Tej Randeva’s pitch for investment in his food business, Spice 2 Go.

I feel his passion about his business and his strong belief in the potential success of his curry business although it is currently loss-making. What I’m concerned about is his perception of his brand. Please don’t get me wrong: through his pitch and my further research on the entrepreneur, he’s definitely a great business owner and has a good understanding of branding. He amazed me when he started his pitch that he knew that good branding is fundamental for success. He invested lots of money in making beautiful packaging, localised social media presence to communicate better with customers and invested in brand communications to ensure brand consistency.

However, when the Dragons tasted his curry, their reaction was, sadly, negative. Dragon Piers Linney said it was just like microwave curry and did not have any special flavour. They all agreed that the product was neither unique nor outstanding; but then Tej responded that it is the branding that matters and his business does not have a kitchen. When customers order, there will be an outsourced chef to cook curry. Then I suddenly wondered: who will be responsible for quality control when it’s franchised? Who could make sure the product will have consistency across the chain? Peter Jones CBE pretty much summed up the flaw in this business: “I think it’s quite well-branded […] but the reality is I don’t think you’ve brought anything unique and different.”

When an entrepreneur launches a business, often there are two scenarios: he or she focuses too much on polishing and improving products, scrimping on the budget for branding and packaging. In this case, we often have to convince our clients that branding and design give a strong identity and will boost the chances of success. The second scenario is that company owners do focus on branding but they fail to give enough attention to the product or service itself, and maintaining quality control. In this pitch Tej has concentrated too much on creating and promoting his brand — forgetting that, however much we try, a brand will soon collapse without having authentically great products.

Once more, this confirms our approach to entrepreneurs and owner managers. Whenever we sit down with a potential client for Grain, we try to get to know as much as possible about their products and services first so we can help them build their brand strategy. This way, during our branding process we can always keep an eye on the soul of the brand and stay true to it.