Last week was my family’s spring break, and I tried to catch up on lots of reading. Needless to say, my thoughts often turned to the business of marketing and strategic brand management. Since I was fully immersed in a hotel/resort brand experience, an article in the Tuesday, March 25, Wall Street Journal caught my attention. The front-page story, "Ailing Sheraton Shoots For a Room Upgrade: Starwood to Tackle Biggest Hotel Brand; The ‘Ugly Stepchild’" focused on how Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. is trying to deal with the inconsistent brand experiences of its Sheraton Hotel brand.

The article states, "Guest surveys also show that quality varies dramatically between Sheratons in different locations. In an industry where consistency is critical, one bad experience at a $300-a-night hotel can cause a guest to write off the brand entirely." The article goes on to say, "The problem is compounded in the Internet age, where popular online consumer-review sites can spread word of a bad hotel almost instantly."

An inconsistent brand experience can be the bane of any college experience too. As costs to attend increase significantly, student and family expectations rise with those costs. The value proposition for the entire college experience is assessed frequently and constantly. If it is consistently good, the college benefits with very positive word-of-mouth testimonials and referrals. But if it is an inconsistent and poor experience, then watch out, especially in this era of the Internet. As a speaker I recently heard shared with his audience, "There is nothing worse than a lover scorned." A bad experience will be taken very personally and shared with a much wider circle of people.

The moral of the story: Survey your various constituents on a regular basis and manage the entire experience. And make sure student and family expectations are ones based on promises made and ones you can consistently keep.