Insights and Ingenuity

The [Scent of a Crayola] Takes Me Back…

Like many of my posts, this one originates from a personal experience.  A random and unreliable experience has me frustrated, and I think the opportunities I see there are worth discussing at a macro level.

My stint working with big brands on their foodservice business units taught me a thing or two about the importance of consumer expectations and consistent experiences.  I’m quite certain there’s some psychology wrapped into it–there are 5 senses and each factors into our memories of events, people, and the products we experience.  I’ve heard one branding guru refer to the approach of addressing all 5 senses as “brand sense.” Through exposure to our senses, a brand can come to symbolize certain emotions and trigger specific memories.  In our brain, a brand can become strongly associated with a person, an event.

Consistency is Not Boring When Talking About Brands

I’m suggesting that by understanding the ways your brand truly interacts (or comes into contact) with your consumers (think 5 senses) and defining the ways you can change or improve upon the factors contributing to their experiences, the stronger position your brand will hold in the consumer mindset.

I believe that marketers should place more effort into cultivating more consistent consumer experiences because A) consistent implies authentic; something that just intrinsically “is” without pretense and B) when something is consistent, it more easily integrates into your way of life because its reliable and maybe even trustworthy.  You don’t have to think (thanks, Steve Krug) because you know what to expect, what will happen and where to go. And in my observation, the implication with being trustworthy is a heightened intimacy due to an established comfort level.  Hey, we’re comfortable.  We’re pals.

Going Steady: Your Brand and Your Consumer

If a consumer is intimate with your brand, comfortable with your brand, I assert that they’ll likely forgive a misstep or two (a new product introduction that’s a miss; a random snafu with an invoice, etc.).  And if your company has a strong customer service-oriented culture, those missteps can easily be parlayed into an advocacy situation if addressed thoroughly, swiftly, with sincerity, and fairly.

Consistent experiences are critical for building a strong brand.  Repeated experience is a conduit for relationship-building:  there are either strong connection points or weak and fractured ones.

360 Degree View

So my weekend experience with a local restaurant prompts me to write this post, and compile this list of steps to ensure a consistent consumer experience.  I’m going to attempt to address the list from an integrated on/off line perspective, because consumers become involved with your brand holistically (they don’t segregate, so neither should you).

Five Steps for a Consistent Consumer Experience

1. Begin with your brand promise.  What is your explicit commitment to your consumers?  What do you pledge to deliver, to provide, with your product or service?  What is it that you stand for?  That promise should be implied in everything from packaging to shipping containers, to invoices to stationary to Point of Sale, inbound call center scripts and on…
2. Put on your consumer lenses and look.  Look around at all touchpoints.  Do they hang together?  Are they congruent with one another?  This can be especially crucial if multiple agencies or partners handle separate parts of your business communications (a PR agency, a brand agency, a promotion agency, a digital agency, ad nauseum–I’ve been there, so I get to poke fun).
3. Evaluate your internal structure and operations.  Do you have a chief experience officer?  Is communications managed separately by each facility or location?  Do you have separate teams for Internet and marketing?  Count the ways that your internal organization is potentially inefficient, uncommunicative, or lacking in central brand oversight and unity.  I’ve seen corporate branded gifts and business cards that were poor reflections on the brand, due to decentralized executions (PMS colors off, old fonts, poor quality merchandise, etc.)
4. Consider your assets.  Read your ad copy, your brochure copy, and your Web copy.  Are the intended targets of those three communications pieces the same? Is it plausible that a consumer might be exposed to all three elements?  If so, what does your “ear” tell you?  Does the material sound as though it was written by the same person?  Is the same voice used throughout?  Is the same tone adopted?  While there may be a need for different voices to be adopted based on audiences (a professional target such as a physician, versus a mainstream target like a potential healthcare patient) and material, there should be consistency across all communication touchpoints for that particular audience.
5. Evaluate your relationships and placements.  This could include sponsorships to paid placement, and even channels.  Do you have a Facebook page?  Um, really–should you have a Facebook page? Does the page compliment your communications, or feel very “me, too”?  Does it serve a purpose or fulfill a previously unfulfilled need?

What I won’t get into here is validation, testing, and metrics…an important component of evaluating your consumer experience is to determine-based on actions and inactions-how well you’re actually delivering what you said you would.

Like this post?  Well, time for a shameless request for blogroll ad, links, subscriptions…There’s lots of great material out there and it’s my hope that you enjoy mine.  Thanks!  Heather

Tags: 360 Branding, Brand Sense, Consistent Experience, Consumer, Consumer Expectations, Consumer Experience, Holistic, Offline Online

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.