Archive for the ‘Experience Marketing’ Category
I ran into a friend the other day while plunking away on my laptop in a cafe. He gasped. I thought my fly was down, but he exclaimed, “You use a PC? I thought for sure you’d be a Mac person.” I got a little excited by his consideration of me as an Apple person for I feel like one. Sadly, the price of a Mac was a deterrent when I needed a laptop a few years ago. In an attempt to eradicate the loser cloud cast by my ancient PC, I whipped out my iPhone and asked if he’d seen the new LightSaber app. (Yeah, nothing like a LightSaber app to prove you’re cool, but I digress)
Once my PC shame subsided, the exchange got me thinking about brands and how much they’re entwined with the personas of the users. Apple is an anomaly in that it’s transcended the phase of user-makes-product-cool. See a geek with a Mac on his lap and you think, maybe not so geeky after all. It took Apple a long time and lot of hard work to arrive at this exceptional state of influence. The majority of brands still rely on users to up their fab cache, not the other way around.
When a brand is introduced, a target audience is identified. Marketing textbooks will tell you that a target audience is the group whose demo and psycho graphic data most closely resembles the need solution of the product. But let’s get real, a target audience is the group you hope and pray will make your brand cool.
In a brand’s infancy, the product itself, its availability, distribution channels, and marketing are all success factors, but it’s the early users that play a large part in shaping public perception. I call it Association Magic. A cute, young, and fashionable girl riding by on her Public bike glamorizes the Public brand more than any website or clever ad ever could. It’s why companies give free stuff to rich celebrities and not the homeless who really could use a hand-out. I’m not immune. Susan Sarandon rockin’ Ray-Bans on the red carpet makes me want to buy them more than if I saw the same specs on Howard, my neighborhood eccentric.
This is why discounting can be risky. I used to work for a hotel that booked a lot of bands and celebrities. A big draw of staying there was that you might ride in the elevator with someone famous. When tourism plummeted after 9/11, we discounted deeply on travel sites where people booked on price alone. Suddenly the hotel was filled with camera-wielding tourists in souvenir t-shirts who shouted, “Oh my gawd, would ya just look at that man covered in tattoos!” These folks were bad for business. We may have filled a few rooms, but we harmed our image with loyal customers by virtue of the fellow clientele. That’s why I caution clients to think hard before using discount tactics as they can backfire.
Brands looking to create Association Magic should aim to get influencers using or talking about their product, now more than ever with social media allowing people to immediately share what they love. Get the cool kids to “Like” it and the rest will follow. Get Apple users to “Like” it and prepare for a stampede.
I have a dirty little secret to confess. Here goes – I get my daily coffee at Starbucks. Gasp, right? This is especially shameful given that I live in San Francisco, a city where people will cheerfully wait 30 minutes for their artisan, fair-trade/organic, hand-dripped coffee. However, there’s one reason I choose The Bucks over my neighborhood’s equidistant Hipster Cafe and that, my friends, is consistency.
In 20 years of marketing, there’s one thing I’ve seen build fierce customer loyalty and it’s delivering a predictable guest experience over time. It’s not sexy and it’s not immediate, but it appears to be the secret to longevity and faithfulness.
I listened to a story on NPR recently regarding political party faith and the scientist being interviewed said that brains like to make predictions and when they come true, little bursts of dopamine are released. We literally get high by correctly predicting what an interaction might be like. That’s why consistency is so important. The more companies can deliver or exceed an expectation, the happier the customer is.
So, let’s go back to why I prefer Starbucks over Hipster Cafe. Is the coffee better at Starbucks? No, but it’s consistently fine. Hipster Cafe serves way better coffee, but only on some days. Others days it’s the wrong temperature or has a funny after-taste. What’s more, the staff at Starbucks is lovely. They know my name and even give me freebies occasionally. At Hipster Cafe, some are nice and some are icy cool with a heavy dose of ennui. No thank you. Besides, there’s too much turnover to get to know the staff. The wait is also a factor. A round-trip trip to Starbucks takes no more than 15 minutes. Hipster Cafe, who knows? Could be 10, could be 30, they’ve never gotten it together well enough to streamline the service.
I know what I’m going to get at Starbucks and in return, they have my loyalty. Now, I also know it’s not cool to like Starbucks. I’m not about to yelp or tell all my friends to go there. However, despite it being my little secret, they have my business nearly every day because of delivering a consistent experience over time. And that just might be a secret worth sharing.
I’ll sometimes get a call, “Our brand needs an overhaul. Can you help us create a new logo or tagline?” The answer is – sure, I can create a cool new logo or write a powerful tagline, but do I think it will singlehandedly overhaul the brand? Not really.
There’s a common assumption that an organization’s brand resides in its traditional outward-facing marketing foundation: logo, tagline, positioning statement, advertising, and so on. However, companies often fail to recognize how much the brand actually resides in the unique experience they deliver to the customer and that marketing is only a fraction of that experience.
Simply put, a brand to an individual is the total sum of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions based on his or her interactions with the product or service. And a brand as a public entity is the aggregate perception of all those customers. This is evident more than ever since the advent of social media and review sites. A 4.5 star restaurant on yelp.com has way more brand equity than a 1.5 star restaurant. These ratings are largely based on the customer experience and far less on the marketing. You don’t read many yelp reviews that say, “Everything was amazing, but I’ll never go back because of that logo.”
I encourage clients to brand holistically – to not just evaluate outward-facing marketing tactics, but look inward at the culture, leadership, style, attitude, ambiance, and exchanges with the customer. One restaurant I worked with didn’t need a new logo. Instead its brand turned around on a suggestion that they switch the door used for their entrance, providing them with increased street visibility and a much warmer arrival for the diners.
Branding from the inside out can be a bit more complex than a conventional approach, but it’s also way more exciting. Creating powerful, memorable, and unique experiences for the customer is exhilarating. It gets people talking, it garners positive reviews, and it inspires people to come back. If you want to overhaul your brand, start by asking what your experience says about you.
Why smart companies approach branding experience-first.
I learned a powerful lesson on branding in the unlikeliest of places; in a class on early childhood development at my son’s preschool.
The course leader did a very interesting exercise. She gave each parent an apple and asked us to bite into it. After we did, she encouraged us to shout out words to describe the experience of eating the apple while she scribed them onto a large notepad. Descriptors like juicy, crunchy, snappy, tart, sweet, smooth, intense, tangy, fragrant, delicious, and succulent filled the page. Finally, we had to stop because the page ran out of room.
Then she asked us to forget about eating the apple and showed us a picture of a red apple. She inquired, “Now based on the drawing alone, what can you tell me about an apple?” Words were not flowing now, but trickling very slowly. Red, flat, green stem, and round-ish were pretty much the extent based on the illustration.
Finally she asked us to forget about eating the apple and the picture. She showed us a piece of paper with the letters, “APPLE,” on it. She asked, “What can you tell me about an apple from this alone if you had no experience with an apple?” Beyond apple being a five letter word, we came up with nothing.
Her demonstration was to describe the Three Stages of Learning
- Experiential Learning – eating the apple
- Symbolic Learning – interpreting the picture of the apple
- Abstract Learning – utilizing the code ‘APPLE’ to represent it
She explained that all three learning stages are ideally linear – that if we have the experience of something first, it deeply enhances our ability to relate to and connect with both its symbolic and abstract forms. When we experience something – we
build a Fund of Knowledge around that thing solidifying our relationship to it. When we jump to symbolic or abstract forms of a thing without this Fund of Knowledge, it’s meaning and emotional connection are diminished or perhaps non-existent.
How does this relate to branding? Well, a lot. So often I encounter clients who are consumed with their logo (symbolic) or the copy on their website (abstract) without a thought to the most powerful form of branding they do every day – the experience they deliver to their customer. Some companies are oblivious to the Funds of Knowledge they are building in consumer’s minds about their organization. Furthermore, if these Funds are negative, a logo refresh or copy rewrite won’t enhance the brand or turn-around customers.
That’s why my company, Slye Marketing, approaches branding experience-first. The fastest way to build customer affinity is to build positive Funds of Knowledge. In doing so, the symbolic and abstract representations of a brand come easy as (apple) pie.
