Brands and Bullshit Read online

  How they greeted and welcomed people.

  That they remembered them.

  That they knew what returning guests wanted.

  That they would get things for guests.

  They would make recommendations.

  Out of this brand persona research, we gave Jeff Bezos not only the core elements of the Amazon brand but also the brand attributes (e.g. one click login, reviews, recommendations, etc.) that you still see today. Later, we “observed” how a customer moved through the website through path analysis. Companies are being built today entirely in a digital world. Uber, AirBnb, SnapChat, etc. How long they thrive and survive is based on how powerful their brands become or stay relevant. What’s key in their growth and survival is to really understand and create an emotional feeling with their target customers. If not, they will become a commodity which can be easily replaced.

  WHAT A CUSTOMER FEELS IS CRITICAL

  As a marketer, you usually have two choices in front of you with a marketing campaign or strategy: create something that is new and create a positive customer brand feeling or take an existing product or service and reinforce or change the customer brand feeling about that product or service. Most marketers do not understand that it is more important to understand what the customers “feel” than what the marketer “says.” Nike can say, “Just do it” but they better make sure their customer internalizes that and “feels” like a champion when they are wearing Nike products or their message will fall flat.

  So, how do you begin to understand what the customer is feeling right now? You need to be searching for customer “truth.” Think relentless searching, which means “unending.” Before you create your marketing or brand strategy, embrace the idea that you’ll continually be in the customer’s environment to learn about that customer. You’re not just there at their purchase decision, but also wherever the actual customer environment is, whether that’s a retail location, a dealership service area, a restaurant, a local mall, an airport, a grocery store or an ecommerce website. You will be studying customer behavior so well that you will “know” what they might do next. Additionally, you will need to study your competition and see how they treat their current customers, and what could possibly be improved. For example, as a general partner in our integrated marketing agency, CKS Partners ($1 billion agency with 10,000 employees), which dealt with creating new brands or launching new products, I regularly walked into the customer environment and met with real customers. I never relied exclusively on surveys, research data or third-party industry reports. I needed to “feel and touch” the customers. I needed to see what they felt, to better understand their patterns, to really get insights into the trends that were affecting them or those that were potentially starting. As a marketer, you need to be zealous in your approach to understanding your current or potential customers. Just as an aside, it would have helped Blockbuster Video and Borders Books if they had watched or listened to their customers!

  You may or may not believe that a customer’s “feelings” about the brand you are working with matters. But you need to believe this: customers may not always know what they want, but they are never wrong. So, you need to be constantly learning what customers are feeling in order to understand what messages you need to reinforce or create in your marketing strategy. How important is understanding or creating a powerful “emotional” connection to your customers? Research conducted by several firms across hundreds of brands in dozens of categories shows that the most effective way to maximize customer value is to move beyond mere customer satisfaction and connect with customers at an emotional level – tapping into their fundamental motivations and fulfilling their deep, often unspoken emotional needs. That means appealing to any of dozens of “emotional motivators” such as a desire to feel a sense of belonging, to succeed in life, or to feel secure. On a lifetime value basis, emotionally connected customers are more than twice as valuable as highly satisfied customers. These emotionally connected customers buy more of your products and services, visit you more often, exhibit less price sensitivity, pay more attention to your communications, follow your advice, and recommend you more. That is why you want to really understand what a customer feels. But how do you create that customer feeling for your brand?

  ARCHITECTING THE CUSTOMER FEELING

  As a marketer, you may have the ambition of moving up your career ladder and being someone who can create a brand so powerful that it emotionally connects its customers and produces a powerful set of customer feelings. Ever walk past someone sitting at a restaurant table or attending a networking event and they say to the person next to them,” I love my iPhone.” Did you ever stop to think about their comment? Love their iPhone? Is that comment an accident? No, it’s not. It’s exactly what Apple and Steve Jobs intended. So, how do you architect a marketing strategy and set of tactics to create a powerful feeling that a customer believes in and will say out loud?

  AIM FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS’ HEARTS, NOT THEIR WALLETS

  There’s a big difference between sticking with a brand and being stuck with one. If your customers aren’t happy with your brand but they stay with you because of hefty switching costs, they’re not sticking with you—they’re stuck with you. Nobody wants to be held prisoner, so if your company’s customer-retention strategy relies on making it difficult for people to leave, you’re not building brand loyalty—and you’re not building a great brand. To create valuable, sustainable customer relationships, great brands don’t sell customers on contracts—they seduce them with emotional connections. Impactful, memorable, emotional connections lead to true brand loyalty.

  Consider Virgin America’s appeal. Virgin provides luxurious interiors, in-flight wi-fi, live TV and on-demand food service. Its fleet is 25 percent more carbon-efficient than the U.S. average and the company reduces its footprint with progressive practices like single-engine taxiing, idle reverse landings and regulated cruising speed. Customers themselves can even make a difference in-flight by purchasing carbon offsets or making a charitable donation through Virgin’s entertainment system.

  But these features aren’t why customers want to fly with Virgin again and again. The reason is that Virgin treats its customers like special guests, tending to their needs and making sure they’re comfortable and content. The company’s stated goal is “to always provide you with an unforgettable experience that adds value to your trip.” To that end, its staff is empowered to make decisions on the spot to help customers. This level of care and attention has established Virgin as a brand that takes care of its customers and cares about the planet. And this has inspired fierce loyalty, with many brand loyal fans going out of their way to fly Virgin. By consistently executing on its brand values, Virgin employees give customers every reason to love flying with them. Once you’ve had the best flight of your life, it’s hard to settle for what other airlines offer, even if you’ve racked up their frequent-flier miles or are tied to one of their credit cards.

  People decide which brands to buy and which ones to stick with based on how the brands make them feel. That’s why great brands aren’t in the business of selling products—they’re in the business of forging close emotional ties with their customers.

  So, it’s important for you as a marketer to understand how to create emotional customer connections in order to create powerful brand “feelings” that are internalized by your customers. Do that and you will have created a powerful brand. Here are four insights to help you craft a brand from an emotional customer perspective:

  Ground your brand identity in emotional values that set you apart from the competition and resonate with your consumers. Product features and claims of efficacy should be used only to support those values.

  Give long-term customer relationships priority over short-term sales. While this is a widely accepted notion, the pressure to demonstrate immediate return on investment and the traditional managerial imperative to reach for top-line revenue goals lead companies to put sales ahead of relationshi
ps. Leaders need to resist the urge to chase the sale, and their best defense is a firm commitment to their brand identity (see above).

  Use your brand—not product categories—to determine your business scope and scale. Your focus on creating deeper emotional bonds with customers should drive future product innovations and brand extensions. Dollar Shave Club started by selling razors to young men; now they sell grooming kits via their subscription business model.

  Perpetually ask and answer: “What business are we really in?” Virgin America isn’t in the business of selling flights. Its business is making good friends during relaxing, luxurious, and affordable experiences. With this level of commitment to making an emotional connection, Virgin, like other great brands, continuously redefines consumer expectations and challenges the norms of its industry categories.

  Most brands have the same business goals as most companies do: longterm customer loyalty, retention, and satisfaction that generate a continuing revenue stream from existing customers. But great brands achieve their goals by forging personal and meaningful bonds with customers. An emotional connection is what separates brands from companies that are just selling products. And customers are able to tell the difference.

  HOW CUSTOMERS RATIONALIZE BRANDS

  BRAND RATIONALE HIERARCHY

  Not all brands are created equal no matter how successful they are. When we need a tissue, we ask for a Kleenex. That does not mean we actually value the brand Kleenex. In fact we just need a tissue. The same goes for making copies on a copier. Give me a Xerox means, make me a copy. Not necessarily on a Xerox copier but on any copier. In that same manner of thinking, customers have a hierarchy of how they perceive brands in their minds and hearts. Some brands are transactional, others vie to meet their specific needs and the best brands are those which the customer believes have no substitute. Here is the simple hierarchy in a customer’s mind:

  1.JUST MEET MY NEEDS. In any customer experience there are a set of needs that the customer is trying to satisfy. The lowest level of the brand hierarchy is simply about whether or not these needs were met by the brand. For example, if a customer goes to a store to buy a product and it’s out of stock then they will buy whatever product is there that also meets their needs. Think ant spray, paper towels, cooking oil, etc. It’s very hard to make one of these brands standout unless it has a specific attribute or benefit that no other product has in that category.

  2.YOU HAVE TO SATISFY MY NEEDS. The middle level of the hierarchy is about how easy it was for the customer to have their needs satisfied. This is all about the effort that they need to expend getting what they want. A great experience in a customer’s eyes is getting what they want with the least possible amount of effort. Minimizing physical movement, searching time or making relevant comparisons easy are all example of reducing effort for the customer. Understand though that simply satisfying the customer does not mean that they are loyal to your brand. They might buy the BMW this time but if Audi comes out with a killer design and the same performance specs, they might be gone.

  3.YOU BETTER DELIGHT ME. The final and top-most level of the hierarchy is all about enjoyment and creating the most powerful feeling a customer will have regarding products in that category. If you can make the customer actually enjoy the experience on an emotional level, rather than the more functional dimensions that are lower down the hierarchy then, and only then, will you have a chance of gaining a brand advocate. Customers will believe there is no substitute for your product or service. They will say this: “I love my iPhone.” “I start every day of my life with a Starbucks.” “When I run in my Nike’s, it’s like I am floating.”

  Creating brands seems like it would be easy but it’s hard. What are you selling, a brand or a product? Last year, more than 250,000 new products were launched on a worldwide basis. According to a Harvard Business Review study, 95% of them will fail. In order to increase your odds of success, you better understand core branding basics which will be covered in the next chapter.

  BRAND INSIGHT

  In 1996, our agency office in Portland, Oregon was in the middle of launching a new brand and in order to get more insights from potential partners, competitors and industry experts, I attended a major trade show event. The goal was to get more information that would help us with our new client. This event was huge representing an industry with more than $21.3 billion in annual sales. The first day was a blur, listening to speakers and wandering a large trade show floor with hundreds of companies in various sized booths. On the morning of the second day, I walked up to a coffee kiosk and ordered a hot tea. A man walked up and ordered a coffee. The way he was standing, I could not see his name badge. Making small talk, I asked him how the trade show was going for him. He replied that it was fine. Curiously, I thought I would ask him what he thought about Amazon, the new Internet upstart in this major book industry. He replied, “Amazon’s sales will never amount to much and people will just never buy things on the Internet. We are building new 25,000 square foot stores with coffee bars and music CD’s and that is exactly what our customers want.” I saw his name badge as he turned and walked away. Boy, I thought, the CEO of Borders just does not get it. Amazon is not trying to sell books online. They are trying to build a brand to delight customers so that one day, customers will order everything from them.

  KEY TAKEAWAY

  From the very first meeting with Jeff Bezos, he made it very clear that the brand he wanted us to build would leverage a coming massive trend to buy things online. That is why we never positioned Amazon against Borders or Barnes & Noble in our early marketing campaigns. They were not the long term competition. Know the brand you are building and what you are really selling. Better yet, follow trends and know what customers really need.

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  CHAPTER TWO

  BRANDING 101: AN OVERVIEW.

  * * *

  The word “branding” can mean different things to different people. But for marketers, it should only mean one thing. Let’s look at the definition of branding.

  Branding is the process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product in the consumers’ mind, mainly through marketing campaigns with a consistent theme and messaging. Branding aims to establish a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers.

  Well if that is the definition, why are there so many interpretations of branding? Because 9 out of 10 digital marketers I meet today simply do not understand branding at all. Mixing up marketing and branding is only one of the most common misconceptions about branding that you will encounter. Many businesses and marketers handling branding tasks have the following misconceptions:

  MISCONCEPTION #1: Branding is marketing / advertising / promotion / anything to that effect. This is a misconception because branding goes deeper than marketing. Marketing, advertising, and other promotional activities only communicate your brand personality and message. Your brand is comprised of your personality, your voice, and your message; branding is the process of establishing these traits.

  MISCONCEPTION #2: You are the ultimate authority when it comes to your brand. This is a very common misconception, especially among first-time marketers and business owners. The truth is while you set the tone and get the ball rolling so to speak, and you set the guidelines that your organization will follow and live by as regards your brand, this does not automatically make you the ultimate brand authority. Your customers are the ones who ultimately define your brand. Their perception of your brand is what sticks with the people they influence. This is why it’s very important to select your brand values carefully; otherwise, your brand may be taken the wrong way – or worse, it may fail when you don’t see repeat customers.

  MISCONCEPTION #3: There must be a formula for success when it comes to branding. Just because everything in online marketing can be measured doesn’t mean everything has a formula. No two companies are alike. While a similar process for developing a brand may work for businesses
in the same field, for example, these businesses will still have unique identities and needs. The truth is that there is no formula – branding is and will always be a customized experience. The good news is you can measure the success of your brand easily. What you should look at in this case is the behavior and the interests of your target audience. You can measure initial sales and you can measure brand loyalty and repeat sales.

  With all these misconceptions about branding, it’s no wonder that in the absence of knowledge, training and mentorship, most digital marketers rely on the communication of “bullshit” to drive their marketing campaigns.

  BRANDING - BULLSHIT: WHY BRANDING SHOULD MATTER TO DIGITAL MARKETERS

  Whether you know it or not, you have a brand. Every interaction you’ve had with your customers and every one of the 140 characters you’ve sent out on Twitter has worked to develop your brand. These interactions, although seemingly small and unrelated, collectively form the basis of your relationship with your audience, and all relationships are facilitated, maintained and articulated by—none other than—your brand.

  Meaning, your brand is already alive. And if you aren’t being intentional about it, it can quickly grow to be a disorderly, uncontrollable and wild force happening in the marketplace. That’s what can make branding such a hard process to understand. Branding is indeed an intricate and involved process. The first step is to understand why branding matters.

  WHAT IS BRANDING? A WORKING DEFINITION OF BRAND.